Crash Plotting A Novel For NaNoWriMo or otherwise

By Thue (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

OK, so I'm not quite sure if I am going to attempt NaNoWriMo this year - though I do know by now that 50,000 words is not where I stop to end up with a real novel.  That said, making it through 50K of the first draft in the first thirty days would set me well on my way towards getting something decent on paper.

Still, you would think that 1 day before November, I should have an idea if I am writing something or not. Let's leave that obvious procrastination until the very last minute and talk about how I would go about planning a novel to write (using all kinds of maths and things) should I decide to write one (because, let's be honest, I want to write something, I'm just not sure if I am more comfortable at the 250 word-a-day pace of the Magic Spreadsheet or the frenzied almost-2000-word-a-day pace of NaNoWriMo).

So, I've decided to write a spy novel.  Partially because I have an idea for one, partially because I've watched Zero Dark Thirty recently, partially for other reasons that I won't bother to describe.

I have no idea how to write or plot a spy novel.  And remember, I'm like a wannabe-reforming-pantser, so plotting is something that I do very loose and painfully, leaving me with a heap of spaghetti that I am supposed to try to form a novel out of later on in edit, which I never get to.  So, I decided that I'm going to try to crash-plot a novel (despite the image, I mean crash in the sense of crash course, not crash a vehicle).

First, I did some Googling and found a pretty reasonable breakdown of a spy novel plot.  That tells me that the rough ratio I'm looking for is: 15%, 60%, 25% in terms of the three acts.  I further break it down to get to a "suggested number of scenes I have to brainstorm up" to plot this out.  I will now share my logic with you and the math and I must admit, it all starts at the end.

What I am looking to end up with is an 80,000-85,000 word novel.  Since I fully estimate that at least 10-20% of what I write in a first draft will be total crap (OK, let's be honest here, about 40% of it will be crap, but I am optimistic that I can make up about half of that in better stuff during editing and keep the word count there), I know I've got to target around 100,000 words (which makes math so much easier) for the first draft to tighten up and edit down towards my target word count (or edit down and then re-build up as I previously described in that last parenthetical).  Beyond that, I average around 1500 words per scene (this is a number you will just have to know after writing a lot and doing some evaluation of what you write), and this number can fluctuate as much as 20% or more.  So, I need to estimate a 20% overage of scenes.  Worst case scenario, that puts me at 120,000 words, which I can still edit down, and I will be in good shape.  I'm much more worried about writing too little than I am too much.  So here's my breakdown.

Act	Percentage	Scene Functions	Rough Wordcount	Number of Scenes	Padded Num of Scenes (120%)
Act One	15%	Setup	15,000	10	12
Act Two	50%	Chain of Events	50,000	33.333	40
	10%	Devolve Into Disaster/Crisis	10,000	6.6667	8
Act Three	15%	Get Out of the Crisis	15,000	10	12
	10%	Final Resolution/Wrap Up	10,000	6.6667	8
Total	100%		100,000	66.6667	80

So, there you have it - I need about 80 scenes mapped out to get where I'm going, and they are roughly broken out into chunks of 12, 40,8,12 and 8.  With that many scenes to set up (and to make up the wrap up), I know I need at least 4 sub-plots and ways to tie them all together.  So there's likely a main threat, a political sub-plot, a personal sub-plot, and potentially an internal protagonist sub-plot to go in there.

Now that the math is done, it's time to get to brainstorming, so I'm off to employ my two tools in that front: Scrivener (using cork boards roughly grouping cards in the Acts and scene groups above) and FreeMind, brainstorming mind-mapping to track various thoughts and threads.

(To be fair, I'm ACTUALLY writing this on October 30, so the plotting will have to happen in the next 24 hours (minus work-time and trick-or-treat-time), so we will see where I end up November 1 - if I am not done, but I know where it starts, I can always start, and keep brainstorming the 80 scenes as I go, so long as I have at least 4-5 scenes to start)