Plotting with Spreadsheets

It's not the most romantic-sounding plotting method, but I've been working with spreadsheets to help me plot my murder mystery novel-in-progress, Marie/Elise. If you've been around with me for a while, you'll have probably noticed that I've been working on Marie/Elise for... a very long time. One of the recurring problems with the story was a general indecision about the plot.

Earlier versions of the book felt very juvenile to me. While not completely outside the realm of possibility, the settings I had chosen (one of which was a boarding school set on an island) made things much grander than they needed to be, and the series of events in earlier drafts were unconvincing. I must have reworked the plot over a dozen times - and with each iteration of Marie/Elise, I felt myself getting closer and closer to that vision of the book that I wanted.  

As summer turned to autumn, however, I realized that once again, despite my most recent - and most complete - draft of the book, I was nowhere near finished. I was once again unhappy with the plot. A great deal of the indecision came from the end reveal: who the killer was and why they did it. With so many suspects set up, I wasn't certain which of them to choose. And then there was my reluctance to place my favourite characters in a position of evil in the story. 

I put all of that aside this time around. Sometimes you just have to throw your favourite characters under the plot-bus, I guess. But the main reason was that I came to understand that nobody - not a single character - fit the role of the culprit as well as one of my favourites. It was simply the only way.

So: culprit chosen. Now to fix up the rest of the plot to support this end reveal (there was more than that, too - a big change in narrative approach, a series of other "flashbacks" added to the story, a total re-vamp of a certain character's personality, and so on). 

The plotting portion of writing a story has been a trial-and-error process for me so far. I've tried a bunch of stuff: discovery writing, detailed outlining, flashcards, and even mind-mapping. This time around, I felt I needed something a bit more structured that could help me really visualize all of my plot points, along with all of the scenes that I would need to write for each plot point. There was also the fact that I was going to be reusing a great deal of the writing that I'd already done for Marie/Elise, so I needed to keep track of what I needed to write, what I needed to edit, and what I could keep as-is from the most recent draft.

And, since I've been working a lot with spreadsheets at my new job, I was in a spreadsheet kind of mood. It felt like the perfect fit.

So, what does my plotting spreadsheet for Marie/Elise look like right now? I can't show you the actual spreadsheet for spoiler-related reasons, but here's a template that will give you a pretty good idea:

You can click on it for better resolution.

What you see above is a simple spreadsheet that allows you to plot your story (preferably in chronological order, even if you later on decide that you're going to tell it out of chronological order, like I'm doing with Marie/Elise) and track it at the same time. In other words, as soon as you're done writing a scene or editing it, mark the relevant box green or blue or any other color your heart desires. Add a date, too, if you want to keep track of how long it takes to write the story and when your most productive days were. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We start at the top with Plot Points. Get all of the major plot points down, one after the other. I like to give plot points different colors so it's just visually less confusing. You can choose anything you like - a grey-and-white theme, a blue-and-pink theme, a green-and-yellow theme, or a random multicolor theme like I'm doing. 

Below them we'll insert the Scenes that are required for each Plot Point. So far so good, right? It's that simple. Scenes can be added or deleted later on, and this can be edited any time you want. 

After that, you'll see the Scene Number row. I like to number my scenes, because you never know when that might come in handy. For example, if I'm jotting down notes, I can simply refer to a scene by its number rather than writing out "the scene where X and Y happens." 

The Time row is essentially all about tense. With Marie/Elise, certain events take place in the past, while others are in present, with tenses to match. To make matters a bit more complicated, there are also flashbacks to events that take place prior to the the point where "past" section of the story starts (it starts with Adrian arriving at Blackwood, and these flashback events take place before that). It helps me to keep that in mind. This may not be something you need if your entire story is in past tense and chronological order, but this is certainly going to help me keep everything organized.

After that is the POV row, which is just the name of the character whose POV it is in that scene. Most of my scenes are in Adrian's POV, but every now and then we get another character's POV, like Victor's, Marie's, Aaron's, Perry's, etc. So, it's important for me to keep track of that as well.

From there on, it's the tracking portion of the spreadsheet. I've got 4 different phases down - writing the scene the first time, editing it, revising it, and then polishing it up into a final draft. I figure that's enough, but you can do whatever you think will work for you. There are other rows you can add, if you'd like, like a word count row or a row that helps you keep track of a specific object and when in the story it resurfaces. You can also keep track of characters who die/exit the story, settings, and so on by putting them in their own rows.

If ever you feel that your plot needs a significant change, this method makes it easy and lets you have as many versions of a plot as you'd like in one workbook. I prefer to have separate sheets in the same workbook for different versions of the plot. It looks something like this:

 

So, if I do my plotting in September and the plot changes significantly in October, I'll duplicate the sheet that I have with my plot, rename it accordingly, and start editing it. That way, I can also keep track of how the story has evolved over time. And, if something doesn't work out, I can always find my way back to a previous version of the plot.

And that's the spreadsheet plotting method I've been using for my latest draft of Marie/Elise! It has been especially helpful with this book because I've already written so much of it, and many scenes carry on from previous drafts to current drafts. It helps me figure out which scenes I need to write, which scenes only need some editing, and which scenes I already have and don't need to spend more time writing.

I hope this little tutorial helps you as you experiment with plotting methods and see what works best for you as a writer. Since every author's process is different, give yourself the chance to try out different methods and see which ones work! (And, I'll let you in on a little secret: I personally find that different methods word with different stories, so there's not one way to go about it. Change it up and find what works for you in that moment for that story.)

~⭐~

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