Challenge Mode

Or, Planning To Discover

Or, A Brief Guide to Vibes-Based Plotting

A member of my critique group is starting work on her sophomore novel. She's a self-professed "vibes-based" writer, but she wants to add plot earlier in her process this time, and she asked the group chat—especially the planners among us—for advice.
Here's mine.

Step 1: Darlings

Get a bunch of index cards. Anything you know, or think you know, or vaguely suspect about the story and characters and ✨vibes✨ goes onto an index card(s). This can range from character notes "Protagonist [think of a name!] plays the violin, make this important somehow???" to an image "they kiss while the love interest hangs upside down in the rain" or to notes on a whole scene (if needed, paperclip or tape multiple index cards together). These are your Darling Cards.

Step 2: Challenges

If possible, get a different color of index card, or run a highlighter down one edge, or otherwise do something to make this next set of cards visually distinct.

For each Darling card, try to find ideas that challenge whatever you've written on that card. Write a Challenge card for each differnt potential challenge/barrier/etc you come up with. For example, "Main character plays the violin" could have multiple challenge cards, like "music is outlawed???" and "she breaks her wrist right before the big concert!"

Some challenge cards may be mutually exclusive, and that's okay. The point of this phase is to generate plot ideas—plot is born out of conflict, but it's not always a Big World Shattering Conflict. The goal here is to generate micro-conflicts that you will later be able to stack and snowball, to resolve in ways that create new problems, etc.

Step 3: Integration

This is my favorite part. It is also the most iterative part, at least for me. I return to this stage with every round of revisions, tugging at problems uncovered during beta reads and finding new threads of connection and consequence.

I believe this is also the part where you can do as little or as much as feels right for you! In this step, you take all of your Darling Cards, and all of your Challenge Cards, and you look for threads that can bind them.

For example: "Ohhh! If MJ breaks her wrist right before the big concert, she isn't able to use her Music Magic to seal away the demon. Something bad can happen then, IDK what I'll find out when I write that scene, but Spiderman does something to stop the demon?? or divert it, do I need a demon running around later? Anyway, AFTER the big Demon Concert Scene, Spiderman gently deposits MJ safely on the ruined stage(?), hanging from one of the battens that wasn't destroyed when the demon burst through the roof (oooh that's good). Rain is falling through the half-destroyed fly loft, and they smooch while Spidey hangs upside down."

Write these ideas down in whatever medium makes sense to you! I like to use a third color of index card, but that's not strictly necessary.

Step 4: Choose Your Own Adventure!

From here, it's up to you! Personally, my outlining process continues from here, getting quite granular, but that isn't right for everyone. Maybe you want to figure out what you're writing towards, choose the biggest/most exciting Challenge as something you want to face down in the climax, and weave everything towards that. Maybe you'll decide to stub out a few scene ideas, following the threads you found during Integration, and see where they lead. Or maybe you'll get straight to writing!

But hopefully, wherever you go, you've got a net of challenges strung (more or less haphazardly, that's up to you!) between your tent post darlings. And if you find yourself falling into a hole of only vibes, no plot? Shoot out a new strand of integration, and another, and Spiderman your way back up.