Today we’re going to take a Deep Dive into how to use Jane’s Plotting Roadmap.  I created this tool to help myself plot better and more efficiently. I hope it works for you as well as it does for me.

You’ll see as we proceed that readers of each genre come with specific pacing expectations. What I’ve done in this drawing is to create what I think of as a “norm.” By adjusting the placement of plot twists—which is an umbrella term that includes three specific variations—I call them TRDs, an acronym I’ll define in just a moment—you can speed or slow the pace of your story based on those reader expectations. This particular rendition is what I aim for in writing my Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries, which are traditional mysteries.

I discovered the importance of TRDs when I was writing KILLER KEEPSAKES, Josie #4, and I got bored. (Interestingly enough, when I mentioned this during a recent workshop, someone called out, no, it wasn’t KILLER KEEPSAKES… it was DEADLY THREADS, Josie #6! Isn’t that a hoot! I haven’t looked it up, so I don’t know for sure… but I can say with complete confidence that when writing one of my Josie novels I got bored!) I was on page 280 or so, and I realized I was yawning away, and I figured if I was bored, my readers would be really bored—so I burned someone’s condo down! I really did! It was Gretchen’s condo, Josie’s much-loved assistant.

An important point—by burning Gretchen’s condo down on p. 280, I had to make many changes in the first 279 pages. I had to have her call in sick to account for being home. That happened on page 230, if I recall. I had to make a point that she and her new boyfriend Jack were heating up. I added several incidents relating to that fact starting on page 18.  But I didn’t have to add anything about Josie’s character to account for her buying Gretchen flowers and stopping by to see how she was doing—that’s exactly the kind of thing Josie would do.

By the time Josie pulls into the parking lot, Gretchen’s condo is fully engulfed in flames. Josie breaks through a sliding glass door in the back hoping to save Gretchen, but the heat and smoke are too intense and she can’t. Josie weeps. Don’t worry! Gretchen was at Jack’s place. The condo’s gone, but Gretchen is fine. The point is… burning someone’s condo down adds a jolt of urgency. It was a moment of heightened danger, the D in my handy, dandy acronym TRD.

An important point is that danger can occur on any level, not just on the physical level, although that’s certainly the most common approach. Danger can occur on an emotional level, an intellectual or mental level, even on a spiritual level, a loss of faith, that sort of thing. As long as your character feels threatened, the danger will work.

Okay, let me explain what I’m talking about regarding TRDs.

Under that umbrella term, “plot twists,” there are three variations:

• Plot Twists, which take the reader in an unexpected, but not opposite direction


• Plot Reversals, which take the reader in an unexpected and opposite direction


• Moments of heightened Danger, which refers to an incident that adds tension through fear (mental, spiritual, emotional, or physical)

The T from Twists; the R Reversals; and the D from Danger—put those together and you have my TRDs.

Let me give you an example.

In January, right after the new year, a shop near my home announced a going-out-of-business sale. This actually happened. I went in and poked around and found a North Face jacket my niece Marci would love. There it was in her size in a color I knew she’d like. It was marked down to $10.  Ten dollars! I had Marci’s holiday gift for next year.

I paid cash. I got home and threw away the bag and the receipt. Later, I held it up to show my husband—and that’s when I saw the security tag. Oh, no!

I didn’t have a receipt. I didn’t even have the bag. Maybe it’s because I write mysteries, but I was certain that they’d think I’d stolen it and was now trying to scam them into removing the tag. I was only sort of joking to myself about this. What isn’t a joke is that I’m so confrontation-adverse, I was fretful all night.

The next morning, I girded my little loins and marched back to the store. There was a man behind the counter, not the woman who sold me the jacket. She was nowhere in sight.

I’ll tell you what happened in a minute, but first, let’s plot it out, integrating a TRD. I’ve developed a character, right. A woman (me) who hates confrontations. She’s anxious. She feels unwarranted guilt, as if she did something wrong, when, in fact, it was the clerk’s error. This is a mundane incident, yet to her, it’s become a big deal.

Our character expects a confrontation. She expects the clerk will ask for the receipt and when she confesses that she doesn’t have it—note the language choice… not that she told the clerk she doesn’t have the receipt or announced it or explained it; rather, she confessed—that’s in keeping with her character, right? So when she confesses that she doesn’t have the receipt, she expects the clerk will smirk and roll her eyes. She wouldn’t be surprised to be escorted by security to a back office to wait for the police.

The clerk says, “Darn… I’m so sorry… I hate when this happens. Unfortunately, I don’t have the authority to take the tag off and the manager isn’t here. You’ll need to come back tomorrow. But I can give you this $5 off coupon for the inconvenience.”

He’s nice, right? That’s a totally unexpected response. This isn’t the opposite to what we expected. It’s different. It is a twist.

So I go over and look at a display of UGG boots. And boom, in come two guys with guns. That’s a moment of heightened danger.

Here’s what actually happened. The man behind the counter said, “You bought this yesterday, right?” I said yes. He shook his head ruefully. “Mandy was on duty. She always forgets. I’m really sorry.” He removed the tag and I was out the door in thirty seconds flat. That’s a reversal, the exact opposite of what I expected.

We’ll go back to my plotting roadmap in a moment, but first I want to share a nice story about the power of TRDs. As you may know I’m a member of the fulltime faculty at Lehman College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY). One of my students was herself a teacher. She taught middle school special needs students, and, she told me they uniformly hated to read. She taught them the concept of TRDs and changed their reading assignment. No longer were they to read to page x or chapter y; instead, they were to identify the next TRD. They loved it. They couldn’t wait to get into their reading circle and  compare notes. Isn’t that terrific?

In other words, TRDs won’t just he