How This Writer's Mind Works

I get asked on occasion how I plot my stories and how I do research for them.

Truth be told, I’m not much of a plotter anymore.

Back in the day when I was writing for TV we needed things laid out in rigid beat outlines so we could fit the story into the time slot, but when it comes to prose I rare do more than three pages for a novel outline, just enough to give me a basic idea of the story and where it’s heading.

Specific incidents such as how I’m actually going to resolve the thing I tend to leave to the actual writing.

Similarly research follows no set formula.

Typically I spend years -- decades! -- on research because I might have an idea about doing a story set in a certain time and place but don’t start working on it until I find the proper angle of approach.

(Old time dramatists used to call this the inciting incident but that’s not how I see it.  The inciting incident is usually the scene that kicks the story into gear, but what the story is actually about is a far more nebulous topic.)

I’ll give you an example using my current WIP.

I first came up with the basic idea for the story back in the 1980s.  It sat in the back of my head / on my computer for about 40 years.

Every now and then I’d come across an interesting factoid that I’d add to my list of story notes, but nothing really solidified on this project until earlier this year when I stumbled across some information about a real life organization that existed at the time and location my novel takes place.

The little light,
it comes on…

Now with a clear focus of what the story will be about, I could start work.

My story is set around 1910.  My primary characters are five people (3 male, 2 female) who end up working together on a project; call them Group A.

They will encounter and interact with a number of other individuals and groups of people over the course of the story, including one group loosely based on the aforementioned  real life organization that will play a major supporting role in the book; call them Group B.

I started researching things but typically wait until I’m actually involved in a scene to do specific detail, viz finding out what’s on the menu at post restaurants in that era.

In the story, I’m at a scene where a member of Group A -- an upper crust young lady from a respectable family -- sets off on a solo transcontinental railway journey that will reunite her with one of the other four members of Group A -- much to that person’s dismay.

She’s traveling incognito for…reasons…so she’s not traveling first class.

Okay, do a quick Google search on train travel circa 1910.  What trains were running back then?  What types of cars did they haul?  Pullman’s?  Great!  Wonderfully romantic way of traveling, even if consigned to a cheap berth.  Lots of web pages dedicated to the history of rail travel in general, Pullman’s in particular.  Tons of details…

…most of which I’ll never use, but which provides helpful in getting me to imagine the environment she’s traveling in.

Now, in Group A there’s a character I will describe as a hustler, a wheeler-dealer who’s always on the prowl for some new opportunity.

Logically he would link up with two of the other characters in the story (which he does) to provide the genesis of Group A.

In the course of the story he brings Group A into contact with several other people and groups, so my initial idea was that when the time came, he would be the person who first encounters Group B and puts them in contact with Group A.

That scene wouldn’t occur until after the young lady joins up with the rest of Group A (at this point, she only knows one member of Group A and they don’t know about her; her connection to that single individual is what brings her into the group).

So she’s on this train taking a multi-day transcontinental trip in disguise, trying to hide her upper class background.

Gal’s gotta eat, right?

So I did some research on Pullman dining cars of the era and found they typically offered two dining rooms with the kitchen in the middle.

One dining room for the upper crust.

One dining room for the hoi polloi.

They’re passing through the Midwest and it suddenly dawns on me that the real life organization Group B is based on had Midwest roots.

Now, the way I originally planned the meeting of Group A and Group B was:

• The hustler encounters Group B.

• The hustler suggests to Group A that they can benefit by working with Group B.

• The upper crust young lady (who by that time has joined the rest of Group A) will talk to Group B and learn something about them

• The hustler suggests the specific way the two groups can work together

But since the train is in the Midwest my young lady traveling alone can encounter some mashers in the lower class dining room and complain to the waiter about them.

The waiter feeling sorry for her goes to the first class dining room and asks a couple there if they would mind if the young lady joins them.

The couple are members of Group B, returning from a family wedding in the Midwest.

Naturally they are charmed to meet the upper crust young lady and for her protection invite her to dine with them every meal while traveling to their destination…

…which gives them (and me) a logical place to fill in all the pertinent details about Group B since they’ll be telling the young lady about it over various meals as I intercut with what’s happening to the rest of Group A.

And when they reach their final destination, the young lady is the one who can introduce Group A to Group B, giving her a far more pivotal role and realistically relieving the hustler of having to make all the connections in the story.

I had no way of knowing this when I started writing the story, all I knew was that the young lady would need to link up with the rest of Group A and eventually Group A would need to meet Group B.

Funny what just a little spur of the moment research can provide, hmm?

© Buzz Dixon