Pondering Plot Points - Sandra Makaresz

What do you do when your plot refuses to work? Do you waste endless hours, days, or even weeks on rewriting, only to find yourself in a bigger hole? Are you a spread sheeter with complex maps that seem to have all the answers, if you could just work out where they are? Whatever your method, it’s always interesting to hear how others do it and useful sometimes to give them a try.

While many writers discuss the value of long walks and various other forms of exercise, the late Australian fantasy writer, Sara Douglass, was a huge believer in baths when it came to plot related problems. (https://www.saradouglassworlds.com/a-business-like-approach-to-baths/)

It sounds enticing. Hot water, bubbles and soft lighting seem the perfect setting for pondering the plot points of your latest piece of writing. For Douglass though, it was not so much the bath as the preparation beforehand. She’d set a time when her subconscious should have the problem solved by. Then over the course of nearly a week she would say her problem out loud twice a day. Other than this, she didn’t think about the problem at all.

When the time came for her subconscious to have worked things out she’d take a bath, relax, think about the problem once more and find that the answer would come to her. It’s a process that allowed her to tap into her subconscious mind, getting it to do the work while she got on with life. Douglass described it as a process that took time to learn, but once she’d trained herself to work in this way, she could always rely on it to solve her problem plot points. Her fantasy novels sold over one million copies in Australia alone, so her method was definitely a success!

How successful is your method? Do you need to add some rules, like timelines or verbalisation, to really get it working for you? Are you tapping into your subconscious or just getting fresh air? Whatever you do, it should be something that’s right for you. But looking to other successful writers and finding out more about their process is always a good place to get a few ideas for things to try. With the cooler weather it’s a great time to try Douglass’s method. There’s just enough time to start stating your problem, ready for a problem-solving bath this weekend!