Perfect Awful Moment

I can't plot. As a writer, that sucks for me. Now when I say I can't plot, let me clarify. I can write a story and so, obviously, I can plot. What I can't seem to do is plot a gripping story. An emotive story. A freakin' cool story. I must be an okay plotter, because I've gotten some very nice rejections from editors (see "It's What I Do"). But I KNOW I haven't figured it out yet. That plotting thing. I haven't figured out how to mislead and hide the truth in plain sight. How to play with the readers' emotions. Get them to grin like a fool when they read the final words of the story. I know I'm OH SO CLOSE, but my brain just can't (or won't) make that final connection so that I GET IT!

Connie Willis, obviously, figured it out:

I could not wait to become a writer and learn to do that - trick and mislead and hold back information and make one thing look like another and hide the clues and leave the red herrings out in plain sight and feed out the line little by little till the reader's hooked, and then land him!

Or even better (again, from Connie):

Of all the joys of reading, the best is the surprise. The awful moment when you realize who really killed Gatsby....

What I wouldn't give to write a story that contains a moment so awful that it floors the reader and leaves her gasping (at least figuratively). But my plotting is too simplistic for that. I have these "awful moments" in my head, but they don't materialize on the page. When I'm writing, the plot gets smoothed out and homogenized and left for dead by the side of the road (can it really do all three of those things?).

So outline it, you moron! Know where you're going before you ever put fingers to keyboard. Don't you think I've tried that? My brain, for whatever reason, doesn't seem to think that way (the plotting way). Sure, I can throw in some twists and turns, but they're never strong enough. In my mind I know I've just thrown some twists and turns onto the paper because that's what you're supposed to do. My brain still hasn't grasped the nuance and the meaning of those twists and turns and how to use them to "feed out the line little by little till the reader's hooked, and then land him!"

And create that perfect awful moment.