Writing plot with executive dysfunction

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I'm pretty sure my problem is nonverbal learning disability, rather than AS, but it amounts to the same thing when it comes to writing... executive dysfunction. I've improved at organizing my thoughts but I have hit a wall with writing. Y'see, I can come up with all sorts of lovely ideas, nothing really new, but with a new spin. This doesn't worry me, because after all there aren't many new ideas left. Oh, well. But I can sit and put together whole chunks of life, build characters, all sorts of things if I can find the time. It takes ages to pick up where I left off, though, and even if I manage to write out a whole sequence with action in it, I can't for the life of me figure out what is a story. I've read books on the subject, practiced plot mapping, tried studying other authors' works... I even did this exercise one book recommended, which said I had to write down each scene in a book to help me see how the story was put together. I couldn't figure out what was a scene, where it started or ended! Even with his whole chapter on what a scene was. So I have stories assembled, in large part, but in order to complete them, I need to understand where each piece must go so that I know which ones are missing. Does this space need to be filled with an action sequence? Is this where I should have the calm before the storm? What steps must I take to reach the climactic sequence?

I know, if you take something apart to see how it works you may just break it. I'm not really worried about that. See, if I can own this knowledge, I should be able to complete a book finally. I have no trouble with material. I can write conversation. I like my characters but I can accept it if they change in the writing process. I just can't figure out what to fill the middle with and I think it's because I only see the tiny details.

I can't seem to find any book on writing geared toward people who need everything spelled out... probably because there isn't one. So my fantasy/sci fi stories will be long meandering messes or too short or will never be finished at all.

I dunno if I have a question, but I figured here would be others with this issue. It's sad because I think I could overcome it if I had more time to write and I hardly have any. And if I leave a story and come back it can change pretty dramatically. I love a well constructed plot. I wish I could make one.

found out I had the same problem. turned out to be the wall of china I kept bumping into. I made a short film with a friend and he helped with the plot.. was the closest any such story of mine that would find an edited, flowing form.

Maybe you need to be moving. Go for a walk or car ride. I prefer walking. Whether it's 2 meters or 2000 meters; it doesn't matter. Moving is like being on a train ride or or a spaceship or a time machine. It'll take you somewhere you've never been before. The artist should never really be at one particular place. Instead, they should always be in a state of becoming.

I mean, shoot, think of Huck Finn and the raft or Sal Paradise and the American car. They didn't go anywhere new because they were stuck in the same vehicle the entire time but that vehicle let the world come to them.

Who stands to gain the most? What does he/she stand to gain?
Who stands to lose the most? Ditto?

Ideally, the answers to both questions should be either your protagonist or your villain, and if both answers are the same the other should be the one who stands to win/lose the second greatest amount.

Sometimes this is kind of hard, though. For instance, if the world is going to be destroyed and everyone will die, which of them stands to lose the most? I don't know.

You need to know what they want, and what they want to avoid, for later. Make a mental note.

Why is your protagonist not just walking away?
Why is your antagonist (villain), if you have one (you don't absolutely need to, but you have a lot of work ahead of you if you don't), not just walking away?

This is called a crucible. Any answer is fine, so long as it's not "because the plot requires it." It just has to be a reason so compelling to this person that they will brave the perils of your story rather than abandon it. Possible crucibles include "because she got trapped in wolf form and can't change back," "because if the world ends he ends with it," "because he's handcuffed to the antagonist."

So, what was it your protagonist wants more than anything?
What would your protagonist do anything to avoid?

This is somewhat formulaic, and not absolutely strictly necessary in the rigid form I've outlined here, but most stories don't stray too far from it. Your protagonist has one chance to get the former, but to do so must brave the latter.

Now tell me. Before all of this starts, unless you start in medias res (in which case, a long time before all this started, but still), your protagonist is living the life that's normal for them. Protag might be a schoolgirl or a knight or a hermit, but they're living the life that's normal for them. I once read a story where the protagonist started as an enslaved warrior monk who worried about getting eaten by rats, but this was the life she'd been living for several years.

But that cannot continue. Something must happen to end that. Does your protagonist wake up in another world? Does her presumed-dead father return? Does she stumble upon a conspiracy?

Whatever it is, something says THIS IS NO LONGER PART OF YOUR ORDINARY RUN OF DAYS. This inciting incident may cause the crucible, as well. Like a werewolf who for some reason doesn't change back one month-- this is the inciting incident and produces the crucible.

From here, the stakes get higher. Protag gets into a more and more desperate situation. Follow a build-release format of building tension and letting it out, but always build up a little more than you let out. Let the protag start from a worse place next time.

Some ways through, suddenly raise the stakes drastically and destroy some part of the protagonist's hope. I read a published story where the artifact she thought would revive her massacred extended family turned out to be an evil artifact that would destroy the world.

At some point, there must be a climax. This is not the end of the story; this is the point where the tension is highest. This is where they storm the Dark Lord's fortress, if that's what kind of story you're writing. Or this is where he asks her to marry him despite all odds, if that's the kind of story you're writing. This is the point at which there is no backing out (there might've been no backing out before, of course), the point at which protag and antag (if you're writing that kind of story) come together for the last time. Two go in, one comes out, this has to be quite clear. This is the worst hurdle protag has ever faced.

You can end it here. Your readers may hate you, but it's a valid technique to end without showing how this comes out. Or right after showing how it comes out, such as ending with the protag running the antag through.

More common, however, is a tail of denouement. This is just you talking about what happened next. So-and-so married such-and-such, rain returned to the land, democracy took root... whatever fits your story. You can have this follow immediately-- the protagonist walking out of the ruin of the Dark Lord's castle to hug his little sister and find out what's happened to his mother. This could also be set a while afterward. This device is called an epilogue. Some time after the main story, generally but not always in third-person omniscient, you wrap up the loose ends. The person whose fate was unknown is revealed dead, the two lovers who've spent the book carefully not revealing their feelings hook up, the destroyed country rebuilds. Answer a lot of questions, but not all of them if you want a sequel.

That's a pretty good simplified version of the stuff in the books. It reminds me of one that I found that was very good but that failed me personally in one respect... you couldn't get the point all in one sitting. It was a whole book about how to write a whole book! So I'm going to save your summary as a kind of crib sheet of plot writing. The hard part is still in my hands, though, at least it's the hard part for me. Creating from scratch a series of events to lead up to these climactic moments. I can write beginnings and some random middle bits and climaxes are plentiful but I have to tackle these middles and, well... there are just SO many directions a story can take that it's hard to get anywhere! Does he go looking for something, does something find him, does he transform into something and can't change back (yeah, I have one of those on my list, but it's not a wolf), or does he change back and the real problem is something else?

Well, I suppose I'll get it yet. I find it hard once I create a character to give him problems to deal with but I'll try. I did manage one tonight. It seemed like the three characters would get through the forest too easily and so I had one who seemed to have had a blunt blow to the stomach turn out to be bleeding. Now they have to find a way out in time to save him. Muahahaha!

Have you seen the film "Memento" by Christopher Nolan? I have been wondering whether it was written from this sort of space, of not knowing how to go forward, so instead made looking back at how got there "the story". But but but ... I seem to stall on that too, as in how to express that search into the past in such a way that it constitutes action rather than endless analysis.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Sep 2010, 1:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

you could always draw lots to pick from the better ideas if you wanted. also you could write it from a journal type perspective (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beka_Cooper i think this is written like that but i might not be remembering right) to deal with this after all a journal is just an analysis of your own memory.

"Have you seen the film "Memento" by Christopher Nolan? I have been wondering whether it was written from this sort of space, of not knowing how to go forward, so instead made looking back at how got there "the story". But but but ... I seem to stall on that too, as in how to express that search into the past in such a way that it constitutes action rather than endless analysis."

You can always make your story under the form of a serial; Chapters by chapters, each one ending on a climax, letting the story and the adventure flow, always wondering "What's happen next?" and discovering it as you writting it.
Readers and critics may be seduced by such a "retro" style like in the old serial magazines.

Given my time constraints, that's how I intend to go on, but I get frustrated because I do have to interrupt myself so much and because of the affect that has on the continuity of the story, for me, anyway. I hope that once I have written enough I will be able to come around to the parts I can work out... for some reason I do have the ability to produce ideas for the climax sequences, I suppose because they're very exciting things to think about, the parts everyone loves. But even when I read or watch someone else's story, I often find that the middles are the parts I have trouble enduring. I suppose that's because other people do what they should and create tension all through the middles, and I steer clear of the tense bits instinctively. Nuts. This means that to finish a story I have to have less fun. I will attempt it, in honor of the fun I will have when the good stuff comes around.

Anyway, the idea I had was to write enough stuff to work with, because I actually do alright at editing, refining, and embellishing once the material is in place. Let's face it, it's much easier to pick something apart than to make something from nothing.

This all makes me think of the tedious plots I've come across, when you cringe because you just know what stupid thing is about to happen to the hero to complicate things and then sure enough, it happens. The misunderstandings tick me off and so many people use misunderstandings. I can see why so many people get frustrated with predictable plots.

I'm afraid that I would want something a bit more "over-determined" than that to fix on one option, or that if I did pick one that way I would be inclined to abandon it at the first problem and switch to one of the others, and so on ad finitum. I need something a bit more "definitive" to decide it for me in order to invest in/commit to one over another. So I'm hoping for some sort of oracular pronouncement/"sign"! :lol Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Try NaNoWriMo.

The problem that I hear you saying that you have is twofold
1) you are having trouble with big picture thinking

2) you cant seem to grasp how the smaller parts are connected and build together

Well your solution may not be in plot books but in books on goals and organzing your life because the plot books do not address the problem with big picture thinking and the break down of its compents

Here is what I mean:
In goals...you first state a long term goal
translation: What is the main focus of your book? Is there as message, lesson, or experience you want to convey to the reader
What is the Main event of the book? Plots should not be to complicated or you will lose your reader along the way. You have to have an overall Idea of what is going to happen otherwise it will be just random events.
Once you have an idea of what will happen. list what needs to happen to make this goal happen. This is done with a timeline. Dont go into full detail of each event, just give it a sentance or two describing what has to happen, this makes seeing the big picture easier and parts can be moved around easier without writing a bunch to find out you goofed.
write more than one timeline to see which one you like best.

Then once the timeline is in place and you have an idea of how the story will go then fill in each entry on the timeline with some details about what happens at this point in the story. Write about a paragraph for each entry on the timeline.

Once this is done, you will have a more thorough focus of how each event flows together
After you fill in the details on each event, it should be like following a map to fill in all the rest of the book.

You have to start with the big picture first then step down to the details, not the other way around.

ohhh and what is a scene??

a Scene is characterized by people, places and things and ideas....nouns basicly.
If any of the nouns that are present in that scene change, then the scene changes.

example: two men are walking along a street after their car broke down...they are talking and holding up their thumbs to catch a ride. Someone stops and picks them up, they are now in a truck driving to a gas station.
The scene changed once the truck pulled up and picked them up because the nouns that made up the scene changed.
Here is the breakdown: two men and a road= scene 1
three men and a truck= scene 2

that is the simplest way I can explain it.

@jojobean, I have trouble with that. Change is a gradual process, and I can't pinpoint exactly when something changes. Or in one instance, I have characters who are teleporting rapidly, as in with only a couple of seconds between; do I start a new scene when they jump from place to place? Every time?

well the teleporting is a scene in itself...it is the glue that holds it together into one scene.

Give me an example of a gradual scene change because I dont think I have read very many of them too subtle to notice?

I'm not talking about successful scenes bleeding into each other, though I can't pinpoint scene breaks in published works with any kind of ease, but about not being able to figure out where a scene ends. For instance, when a character is convincing another. (Character change is so hard; I can write static or nearly static NTs passably well most of the time, but make them gradually change, or subtly manipulate them? Who am I kidding?) Does the scene change when the character goes "fine, I'll listen" or starts to think it makes sense or agrees or says so or sets out to act on that newfound conviction?