The Pantry Method of Plotting

In writing, there are a lot of key principles that are easy to overlook when you're starting out. The funny thing is, most of the time they seem obvious once they've been pointed out. But before someone points them out to you, you probably never consider them.

The Pantry Method is one of those seemingly obvious things. It's a way of thinking, more than a rule, and it's as simple as this:

Plotting a story is like stocking a pantry.

When you go to the store, chances are you buy whatever you think you'll use, whatever your family is likely to eat, whatever looks good, whatever is a good deal. You get as much as you can afford within your budget.

When you get home, you put those groceries away in your pantry, fridge, and freezer. When it's time to make a meal, you only pull out the ingredients you need, and in a given grocery cycle, you may or may not use everything in your house.

Think of each scene in your novel as a meal.  You only need a handful of ingredients from the pantry to make it.  You don't add any ingredients that will take over, or clash with the main flavor of the meal.  But it's nice to know that you have a well-stocked pantry to pull from, because the meal could go in any direction.

By developing a solid foundation of notes, sketches and outlines, you stock your pantry for enough "meals" to get you to the next "grocery trip", or really, enough scenes to get you through a complete story.   But you may not necessarily use every ingredient in your pantry.  Often times, your character sheets will include info that never gets used in the story.   If you've done detailed setting sheets, maybe there's a detail or two that never comes up.

The point here, is that you don't need to use everything you've supplied, and you can go looking for extra ingredients any time you want.


This way of thinking will help you avoid feeling boxed in.  Just because you've bought a certain group of groceries doesn't mean you have to make a specific meal.  And an outline is not a strict to do list.  Outlines are constantly evolving as the story goes through unexpected changes.  That is the magic of writing.

If you take one thing away, let it be this:

The outline doesn't determine the story, the characters do.

Give your characters a well-stocked pantry to draw from, and be ready for them to surprise you.  Your final draft might look nothing like the outline, but without a well-stocked pantry, nobody eats.