To plot, or not to plot? ~ T.K. Conklin

  

  For those of you that plot, I applaud you. I was never a plotter. Winging it was the way I did it. As I wrote, the characters would usually take over the story and do their own thing. It's a method that has worked pretty well for me so far. Then the dreaded writers block hit!!!

  For several years I struggled to get my brain to refocus on writing. It took an author cruse, the Love Lit Cruise, and a four day cruise alone for my brain to finally reset. So worth it! During Love Lit, author Krysta Dearson put me in writer's bootcamp, and I set time every day to get with her and author Victoria Taylor to write. Progress was made. On the four day cruise alone, I kept up that routine and got quite a bit accomplished.

  A while back I had a brilliant idea for a new book. This time I was going to attempt to actually plot it out. I have tinkered with Scrivener, but couldn't get the hang of it. I tried Dabble, but no success. I'm currently working on a series with EberWrite, but haven't made it far. Ellipsus has some interesting and unique features. I may mess around with it more in the future.

  Several years ago, at the Chanticleer conference, Plottr was one of the vendors and were giving a great deal on a lifetime membership. Troy Lambert was the Plottr representative and did a great job of explaining the software. I signed up for the lifetime membership and forgot about it for a year or so. I messed around with it now and then and did some of the YouTube tutorials, but with the new book I was determined to use it and make progress.

Plottr comes with many templates for various genres and that is helpful. It's easy to move the scene cards around and rearrange your ideas. The Character tab and Places tabs help you keep track of your characters and places. Especially if you have a series.

  So far the story is coming along nicely. Yet, as always, the characters tend to take over to I have to adjust my outline. But that is super easy.

  It's definitely been helpful but I still have a lot to learn with the program because there are tons of useful things in it.

  I still write with Word but if you want you can write your chapters in Plottr on the scene cards. It's easy to export it into Word later.

 Most people I talk to love Scrivener. I have attempted to use it off and on over the years but, for some reason, it doesn't click with me.

  If you are a plotter, what is your preferred plotting method?

  If you want to check out Plottr, here is my link. plottr.com/?ref=tara