I just finished reading Carrie for the first time, after reading Margaret Atwood’s piece on its 50th Anniversary in the New York Times Book Review. I read it as a writer—pen in hand, taking note of structural elements, POV choices, timing of twists and reveals, character development, and curiosity seeds.
I was shocked.
Not because of the story or the dated racist language or the tampon abuse or the murdered pigs or any other thing that happens in the book; I loved the book—read it in a day, then posted about it on Instagram. I was shocked because it’s plotty af and I remember oh too well what Stephen King has to say about plot.
And now I have a bone to pick.
In On Writing, King says: “I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible.”
A few paragraphs later, he doubles down: “Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored.”
Damn, that’s so harsh! Imagine reading that at 22, as I did, desperate for a guidebook to becoming a Real Writer. Imagine believing that there was a good way and a bad way to write a book. Or to be creative. Or to do your work. Believing if you outlined a novel, you were a hack and everyone would see through you. Imagine letting the bullshit idea that “plot is for dullards” guide you for decades! (And after reading Carrie, I’m very comfortable calling bullshit on King’s idea.)
First, let’s decide what it means to “plot a book.”
Is it mapping out beats? Pinning scenes to a wall and moving them around? Using a three act structure, or spreadsheets, or Save the Cat, or jotting down what-next ideas in a notebook? Does knowing character arc count as plotting? Does it matter when you do this? What if you don’t write it down, if it’s only in your head? Wait—are you allowed to know how the book ends? Are we supposed to meditate until our minds are blank white sheets before the muse arrives?
Come on.
King says that “stories are found things, like fossils in the ground… Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.”
Okay, cool. I like this image; I like imagining that I’m delicately brushing a big hunk of dirt to unearth something precious, then cleaning it off and presenting it to my readers. But I also like to think that I can use all the tools in my toolbox to get that relic out, not just the ones certain anointed people tell me I’m allowed to use.
Which is why, after years of refusing, my toolbox now includes outlining. And fwiw, for me, outlining makes writing easier, faster and more exciting— once it’s outlined, I don’t have to worry about plot anymore. I get to dive into the juicy stuff (like character, setting, and dialogue).
My first manuscript was a disaster because it had no plot. I started with what King calls a “situation” and never moved on. Scene to scene, chapter to chapter, I followed a woman through a tumultuous week in the art world. To continue King’s fossil metaphor, I was puttering around an excavation site with a metal detector, watching it beep, assuming there was something cool under the dirt, something definitely worth checking out, and then… walking away. Never setting up flags, never digging.
My second book started out the same way. I still believed that plotting was cheating, so I thought up a new “situation” –an ambitious artist in New York on 9/11, trying to figure out how to survive toxic relationships. I heard criticism from beta readers–nothing is happening, this feels repetitive–but I ignored it. They didn’t understand. Nothing needs to happen. Plotting is for dullards. I am a Real Writer.
It took CeCe’s R&R letter for me to understand how wrong that was. It took rewriting my second book to understand how vital plot is. No matter how specific the setting, how interesting the characters, or how beautiful the prose, you cannot have a novel without plot.
Now, going back to Carrie. I believe King when he says his first novel started with a situation—a girl being bullied for not knowing what a period was, and that girl having latent telekinetic abilities. I believe that he followed his nose to the book’s climax at prom night.
But to say that means he didn’t plot is misleading.
From the very beginning of Carrie, we know that a catastrophe is coming and we know this pitiable girl is going to be behind it. At some point, we (and King) realize Carrie is going to blow up the town on prom night. The hints are everywhere—King drops in news articles, book excerpts, and White Commission testimony all throughout the book. Every story line and every character builds up to that moment in the school gym.
While I don’t doubt that King wrote the first draft of Carrie without physically writing an outline beforehand, I believe he did plot this book. I believe he plotted by writing a draft, then editing that draft once he knew beginning, middle, and end—dropping in curiosity seeds and epistolary elements where appropriate, making things happen in the right order and at the right time.
Also known as plotting.
My question for him (and you), then, is—does it matter if the plot comes while writing paragraphs in Word or while writing bullet points in Excel? Do you really think anyone could tell the difference? Is there even a difference to tell?
I don’t think so.
After I went out on sub with TELL THEM YOU LIED (now with plot!), I decided I wanted to go back to my first book and see what I could do. Same characters, same set up, same “situation.” I plugged new beats into an outline I cribbed from my friend Francesca and rewrote the whole thing. Guess what! It worked.
I know, I know: the question has become a kind of Meyers-Briggs test for writers. We want to identify as something. A pantser—well then, you must be the freewheeling creative type. A touch lazy or slightly messy, you might say, but that’s part of the process. Maybe you have a mood-board or a writing playlist. You like to say that your characters are guiding you, and that you could never write a book if you knew the whole story before you even started. (How boring!)
A plotter? Okay, you probably keep your home screen in an alphabetized grid and got really good grades in school. A little anal, a little controlling? I bet you unpack your suitcase as soon as you get home from a trip and make the bed every morning. You have a daily word goal that you never miss. It’s entirely possible you run marathons while listening to publishing podcasts and audiobooks, because you might as well kill two birds…
But, like almost everything, most of us are not perfect examples of either stereotype. We exist in between.
Which is a long way of saying that pantsing and plotting are two ways of describing the exact same thing.
And that thing is work.
This is exactly why I like to think of myself as a "plantser"! I don't make outlines (too overwhelming for me) but as I'm writing I do think about the three act structure and what plot point (whether the inciting incident, the midpoint etc) needs to happen next.
I had a writing teacher once who likened writing a novel without even a vague sense of plotting as building a house without a foundation (you can do it, but it doesn't hold up very well, and it's hard to fix afterward!)
Over the last 10 years, I abandoned two books at the 40,000 word mark because I couldn't get past "then something happens" in the middle. So I made myself do scene cards for the one I'm working on now, and the writing is so much more fun!