Plot Bunny Mob

Plot bunnies are everywhere. In everything. In everyone. In snippets of conversations overheard in what passes for public these days. There's no need to hunt them. If you're open to them, you'll stumble over them at every turn. A little like tripping over a cat who wants to be fed.

Plot bunnies carry no malice as far as I can tell. Might they be distractions wrought by a brain desperate for a bit of cognitive conservation of resources? Sure. Human brains consume a crazy high percentage of the daily calories we consume. We're designed to want to shirk heavy mental loads. So along come plot bunnies to tempt us to follow them into the weeds in a day-dreamy daze. They could also just be the delight of human brains that are designed to take a bunch of disparate data bits and combine them into new and interesting patterns.

I can't say I notice that plot bunnies strike more often while I'm supposed to be working on something else. In fact, quite the contrary. For me they mob me when I'm already doing something else - something like taking a walk, washing dishes, vacuuming the floor - anything physical that requires low cognitive input. Ideas come gamboling out of nowhere. So it pays to have a strategy for handling them. Otherwise, you end up starting twenty bijillionty things and finishing exactly zero. Don't ask how I know this.

I pat my plot bunnies on their furry little heads, smile, and say, "It takes a number, and it stands in line." The idea gets jotted down in barest form - a few sentences - just enough to spark the idea back into life at a later time. The file gets a name and gets remanded to a folder with the imaginative name of "Story Ideas." 

Have I ever mined that folder? Indeed, I have. The Nightmare Ink books were an idea languishing in "Story Ideas" folder when I hauled it out and got to serious work on it. The books and the original plot bunny bear only the slightest resemblance to one another. When a bunny graduates from the "Story Idea" folder, it gets a name of its own that serves as the working title for whatever it's going to become. 

It means I have plot bunnies in various stages of metamorphosis. Some are still itty-bitty things nibbling grass. Others have turned into the Vorpal Bunny of Antioch. They've got these big teeth. I have one of them chewing on me right now. It looks a lot like Frankenstein's bunny, being a mishmash of Civil War historical, fantasy, and a little horror. It doesn't know what it wants to grow up to be, so we just keep staring at one another over the pages of the SFR I'm contracted for. So yes. Sometimes, the plot bunnies start looking a little like the clown from IT.

Where...where's the plot bunny?!

 

(me doing my version of hunting...not very well)

Shhh…be vewy vewy quiet, I’m trying to write. 

Have you ever come to a point in your manuscript where you thought you were going to reach the end, but you find out the tunnel veers a different direction? You keep digging and digging, but you can’t find a plot bunny for nothing! 

I’ve been there. Sheesh have I been there. 

Wait…we’re talking about how do you corral plot bunnies? That means you have too many of them, that you have to pick and choose which plot bunnies to keep and cuddle! And if you don't know, a plot bunny is a sudden, wonderful, story idea…that may or may not be related to what you’re currently working on.

I guess that means I find two different kinds: plot bunnies that take my current work in progress (WIP) in a new direction and plot jackalopes that are completely new ideas not related to anything I’ve written before. 

And now I wish I had some statistics on plot vs. jackalope bunnies! Looking back, I’d say I’ve caught way more jackalopes. Currently, I have roughly a dozen documents of new book beginnings on my laptop. I'm not sure about the number on my external hard drive. 

When those plot jacks bound on in I have to write out the scenes they bring, I have to. They’re intriguing and shiny, who can resist intriguing and shiny?! And once I have the scene at least sketched out they can sit and rest. The reality is because these undoubtedly show up when I’m in the middle of a project I need to finish, but also because I like to let the new ideas percolate and see if they stick around…meaning, does it stay sparkly and continue to draw me back to imagining what happens next, or do they hop away and drift into the out-of-mind zone.

Now, plot bunnies…the I-need-a-new-story-direction ones. I sure could use more of those. I’m a scientist, I follow the procedures. Beginning. Middle. End. And if I’m stuck in a tunnel that failed to stay straight I get a bit bogged down in the muck. Plot bunnies…plot bunnies…I'd be alright upping that side of my statistics.

WHERE DO YOU FIND YOUR PLOT BUNNIES and can I have some?

Plot Bunnies: The Coffee Test

Plot bunnies. I love them. I will hug them, and squeeze them, and call them George. The ones that really love me, I'll take to bed. If they're gone by morning, c'est la vie. If they last three nights, well, dear readers, they get their own notebook page, maybe even two, while we share the first cup of coffee. I can be generous like that.

For the ones that hit-on me while I'm "researching" on the internet? Well, that's what the Bookmarks folder is for, aka "the Plot Bunny Graveyard." Oh, and the ones that give me a little tail wiggle on Twitter? Those poor buggers end up in the limitless Likes list, never to be seen or heard from again. Tragic the short lives of those bunnies. 

Plot bunnies, if they stick around for coffee, we could have a long tumultuous future together.

Kill the Rabbit: Death to Plot Bunnies

 

THE PROMISED QUEEN has a cover! I just love how those jewel colors pop off the screen. This is book three in the Forgotten Empires trilogy, out May 25, 2021. But you can preorder now!

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is all about those Plot Bunnies: How/where do you corral them? How much room do you give them to grow?

For those unfamiliar with the term, a "plot bunny" is an idea that catches a writer's attention and imagination, but isn't what they're intending to focus on right then. I did a bit of (very causal, not all thorough research) and found this definition: From the metaphorical image of the writer's brain producing ideas with the abundance and speed with which rabbits are fabled to breed. There's also this: the term is thought to be related to the oft-quoted John Steinbeck quote about ideas and rabbits.

The Steinbeck quote is: “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”

That makes some sense, although I'd point out that the Steinbeck quote treats the cultivation of ideas as a positive where most writers seem to use the term "plot bunny" as a non-productive distraction.

I'd always associated the term with Alice chasing the white rabbit down its hole and ending up in Wonderland, the source of our metaphor "going down the rabbit hole." You chase the plot bunny and you end up in a place where you've left your project - possibly with deadlines - behind and pretty soon you're talking to caterpillars and having tea with insane creatures.

I'm not really a fan of plot bunnies. 

But you all know me: I'm not a fan of anything that interferes with getting a book written. 

So, I treat plot bunnies as what they are to me: distractions and procrastination bait.

Writing is difficult. Writing novels in particular requires focused concentration on a single story over a long period of time. It's the nature of our minds to look for ways out of that difficult work. It's also the nature of the universe to test our resolve. I look on plot bunnies as challenges to the work. If a plot bunny is the universe's way of asking if I *really* am determined to write that book, then my answer is not to chase the bunny down the rabbit hole. 

Sometimes I jot down the idea. Mostly I just it run away. If it's a good one, it'll come back.