Filers and Pilers: The Disparate Ways to Plot a Story

Let me explain my “filer and piler” theory as it applies to fiction-writers. The world is divided into two types, those who file and those who pile.

The filer gets a stack of papers and picks one up and says, “Oh, this begins with A, so I’ll file it in the A folder.” Etc. Eventually all the papers are filed away neatly in the pre-existing and universally recognized alphabetic order.

The piler gets a stack of papers and picks one up and says, “Hmm. I think this should go into… this pile. Don’t know why. And this paper… emanations tell me it should go in THIS pile.” And when the papers are all distributed into piles, the piler picks up a pile, looks through it, and finds a common thread. “Oh! Of course! These are all about MOVIES. So this is the MOVIE pile. And this pile, they’re all about BOOKS. So this is the BOOK pile.” And each pile gets a yellow sticky note stuck on it. And eventually every pile is identified in a clear but definitely idiosyTurning Point Spreadsheetncratic way.

Well, when it comes to plotting a novel, there are also filers and plotters. A filer would take out that plotting spreadsheet (like this one I created), with nine clearly labelled turning points, and say, “Oh, I see I need an opening scene that sets up the character’s ordinary world. And then I need an initiating event. Let’s see, what can I do? And after that, I need a conflict emergence event.” And for each event, they’ll figure out (probably in order 🙂 what needs to happen at that point in the plot. This is like the filer, perfectly comfortable with frameworks and organizational structures, and able to use that organization to spark creativity.

But even though I created that spreadsheet with its list of turning points, when I’m actually plotting my own books, I’m more of a piler. Rather than thinking sequentially through the plot events, I usually have an idea and a few characters, and then the characters start interacting in my subconscious… and soon several scene ideas appear in my head. Never the first scene, oh no. Maybe there’ll be a scene where she discovers a clue, and another where he realizes he’s been betrayed by someone he trusted. And there’s probably a big action scene like that escape from the city jail, and…. I’m a piler.

Soon all I have is a big pile of scenes and pieces of scenes and scraps of dialogue and maybe a thread of theme. I find that even though I teach filers to plot in an organized sequence, I myself can’t just write an initiating event to order!

What do I do with all these disparate scenes? Well, I figuratively throw them into a figurative pile. I realize that somehow my subconscious has produced these as turning points – or at least as major scenes that will be important drivers of change in the story.

What I need to do is to look through what I’ve got and find out which sort of seems like an initiating event, now that I know I need one. And stick that near the beginning. (I usually write that “ordinary scene opener” later, not at the start of the process. Sometimes I don’t write it till I’m almost done with the book. 🙂 And gee, this betrayal scene kind of seems like a reversal! So I stick that in the middle. Rather than write scenes to order, I find among the plot stuff I already have and stick the yellow sticky notes on them. “Initiating event.” “Reversal.” I always find that there are big gaps, but gaps are easy to fill when a piler has the boundaries of the gap.

I’m a piler. The only way I came up with the structure I designed in that spreadsheet is to analyze lots of books and see what was already there and in what order and apply labels to them. (I also never balanced my checkbook. <G>) I wish I were a filer, because I’d love to write in sequence. But I’ve stopped trying to force myself into that writing process.

I have learned that either way, writers can come up with a coherent plot. Pilers generally have to be open to a lot more revision and re-organizing, however, because sequencing scenes written out of sequence takes a lot of good transition-crafting.

Anyway, either one of these processes can produce a good plot. And both of these types of writers need structure– they just go about getting it in different ways. It’s important for writers to figure out their optimal writing process, and also to realize other people write differently… because we have different types of minds.

I am currently writing a mystery novel, and have 40% of it written. But I still don’t know who did the murder, or why. My plans for the characters’ detecting scenes are vestigial, like, “The two cousins go to Fortnum’s and pretend they’re planning a tea party, and somehow they trick the tea manager to telling them who the tea smuggler is. And that’s probably not the reversal scene, but after it.”

I’ve finally learned to trust my writing process, and I figure sometime before I write “The End,” I’ll have figured out the who and why. I just have to keep writing up these piles of scene ideas until that overworked subconscious of mine produces the solution! As E. L. Doctorow said about writing without outlining the plot, “It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”