It’s All in the List

A major difficulty in writing a novel is plotting, and one aspect of that process I always seem to get stuck on is coming up with plausible reasons for characters to do certain things.

For instance, say I want my character John to come to the realization that wife Marsha is cheating on him. His discovery has to be believable and make sense in the context of the story.

One method I’ve found works well is to simply write out a list of possible ways that cheating Marsha could be found out. It’s a form of ‘brainstorming’. I don’t claim to have invented this idea, but I can vouch for its effectiveness.

The process might go as below:

How does John find out Marsha is cheating?

• 1. She tells him
• 2. He sees her in a compromising position with another man
• 3. He finds a man’s name and address when he rifles through her purse
• 4. He follows her
• 5. He hires a PI to follow her
• 6. He accidentally sees an email from her lover on her phone
• Etc.

I try to leave all avenues open when performing this exercise, and I try to include any ideas I can think of, no matter how outlandish. One variation that helps is to set a specific number that you have to come up with, say ten – then you’re not tempted to just jot down the ‘easy’ ones and stop there. Of course the list items should make sense in the context of the story. Rifling through Marsha’s purse might or might not be a reasonable option, depending on John’s personality.

Once you’ve come up with a list, you can sift through it to see if any of the ideas work. A great side-benefit of this method is that often the act of writing down the list generates new directions that you might not have thought of otherwise.

You can continue this process ad-infinitum. For instance, say I decided to go with idea five, John hires a PI. I could create another list:

How does John hire a PI?

• 1. He finds a PI in the paper
• 2. He bumps into a PI at a bar
• 3. He’s got a buddy who’s a PI
• ETC.

(Note that I don’t claim that the above are good ideas, but they are ideas).

I’ve found that list-making is an excellent way to inject some kind of forward momentum when I’m stuck on how to proceed.

If you’ve never tried it, check it out.  It might work for you too.