To Plot Ahead or Not?

[elfscribe]

One of the things I struggle with in writing a story is how much to plan it out before I start writing and how much to trust the process and allow it to unfold as I write. There are those who sit firmly on the outline-the-story-in-detail side of the fence and those who like to discover their story haphazardly as they write. And then there are those, like me, who find themselves somewhere in the middle, although granted, I'm much more on the allowing-the-story-to-unfold-organically side.

I read an interview with author Ken Follett who wrote Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, books about building a cathedral in medieval England. He said he meticulously outlines his books before writing them. Pillars of the Earth took him a year to outline. The books are intricately plotted and well crafted, but I must say, having read Pillars, I could tell that was the technique he'd used. It felt a bit like paint by the numbers. He created characters and then moved them through the plot, and for me, they didn't have that spark of life that comes from learning about them as you write. However, the books are engaging to read and very popular, so clearly many people would disagree with me.

Personally, I find myself constitutionally incapable of a detailed outline for a story. I've tried to make them on occasion, oh yes i have, but I simply can't do it in any detail or stick with it. Before I start, I usually have a good idea of the main characters, and some scenes I'd like to see them in, and a general idea where I'm headed, but that's usually it. I find that as the characters evolve and the events unfold, that even if I had made an outline, I'd end up modifying it so much that it would be useless.

For example, with Elegy for Numenor, the overall plot comes from canon. Within that broad outline, I had some events and characters I knew I wanted but that was it. In the course of creating characters that were simply there for window dressing, such as Tigon the messenger, I found that he was there conveniently for Elendil to use as a spy and then, the minute he started those late night sessions with Sula and they developed a relationship, it became something that I had not foreseen and so it wouldn't have been in an outline if I'd created one. So, if I'd stuck rigidly to my outline, I'd have missed out on an interesting development in the story. As that relationship evolved and other plot lines developed, both parallel and convergent to that one, and the characters interacted, the whole story progressed in ways that I hadn't imagined in the beginning. Characters, because of who they were, acted in certain ways that led to other events happening. Even within chapters this occurs. In the last chapter I knew Dulginzin would end up dead, but I thought Sula would go back to Tigon's room for a farewell. It wasn't until I put him in the room with the dead lord that I realized he wouldn't do that. Writing without a detailed plan in hand makes writing the story somewhat of a scary adventure. I feel like the proverbial trapeze artist without that reassuring net.

So, I have this nagging feeling that I SHOULD be making a more detailed outline than I normally do. That if I did, it might make the writing go more quickly because I wouldn't be feeling my way in the dark quite so much.

I'm curious what your take is on this. Do you make detailed plot outlines or not? If you make one, do you stick with it, or do you end up throwing it out? Does making your outline help your writing process or not?

[Darth Fingon]

Jan 19, 2011 19:43:51 GMT -6 elfscribe said:

I'm curious what your take is on this. Do you make detailed plot outlines or not? If you make one, do you stick with it, or do you end up throwing it out? Does making your outline help your writing process or not?

I make a vague plot outline. Generally, I know what I am doing and where I am going (eventually) with a story. I know how it will end. I know that I want to include a few specific scenes. I do not know all the crap in the middle. So if we say the beginning is point A and the end is point Z, I may know points E, J, N, R and W, but not much else, because all of that tends to just spontaneously appear. Usually to my annoyance.

With the exception of the Lauron-Nama arc, I don't write any of the outline down. I have all of that one written in point form in very vague terms through to the end. But everything else, I just try to remember.

The lack of plotting goes for the entire story, though. For chapters, I do think each one through fairly extensively prior to writing. I usually know which scenes it will need to include and approximately how long each of those scenes will be, and I'll sometimes go so far as to plan out specific lines of dialogue that need to be said. Often for chapters I'll think of how I want them to end, very specifically, and write with a clear goal in mind. Sometimes I actually write the final paragraph(s) first and then go back and work toward them.

And even with all this, a story that was meant to be five chapters somehow mutates into twelve.

I think about two chapters ahead of what I'm currently writing. The next two chapters are more or less planned, though I frequently change my mind as I think of something better more ridiculous to include.

[russandol]

Jan 19, 2011 19:43:51 GMT -6 elfscribe said:

I'm curious what your take is on this. Do you make detailed plot outlines or not? If you make one, do you stick with it, or do you end up throwing it out? Does making your outline help your writing process or not?

I haven't written many stories, so I can't say I've developed a method. Also, I haven't had any fiction writing training, so I haven't got a clue as to what should be right or wong when tackling a story.

Looking back at the stories I've written already, in the shorter ones I knew exactly what was going to happen, almost word by word, they wrote themselves (what a wonderful feeling that is...); in the medium-sized ones (around 10,000 words), the detailed plot was almost there from the beginning except perhaps for a couple of scenes or the specifics of the ending, of which I only had an idea (best example is the one you've just helped me with).

For my long ones (grand total of two, both unfinished), I create the skeleton of the story, those "A to Z" points Darth refers to, and I write the ideas down into a rough outline. Then I begin, and I realise I don't want "D" anymore, or I need something between "F" and "G" (and the number of chapters grows and grows, as Darth said). The outline keeps changing, I haven't had a case of throwing it out, but some changes are radical and ripple through the rest of the plot. Certain "must-have" scenes I develop further into a draft, even many chapters ahead (e.g. Steel has helped me with a scene which must have been written for over 8 months now).

I don't plan for chapters (should I?). I plod along to go between one point and the next, and then break the story in places where it feels logical. So that some chapters can have much more crammed in them than others (and maybe that's the issue of those chapters you looked at recently - will talk offline).

they didn't have that spark of life that comes from learning about them as you write

My characters certainly surprise me as I learn about them. In the long fics, their "personality" and behaviour have massively affected the detailed plot. In Mirages, there was always going to be a relationship between Mairon and Eonwe, but only when they faced each other for the first time I "knew" that Mairon would want to dominate Eonwe physically, and the D/S element came into the scene, originally unplanned. The smaller characters (the "window-dressing" characters, as you say) grew, because I felt I had to tell more of their story as soon as they began to interact with the main characters.

Writing to a very specific recipe may work for other writers, but I can't flesh out the entirety of the plot before I begin. If the characters want to take me somewhere, I usually let them. Things just happen...

[aearwen]

As a general rule, I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer. I "turn on my mental TV" and then simply write what I see and hear my characters doing. I find I enjoy the dynamic process of being surprised by characters suddenly taking center stage and hogging the spotlight when they were intended as 2-dimensional space fillers.

Only with my latter Pretender fanfics, and with IDD in this fandom, have I tried working from an outline. With the former, that was a case of having had my son (and sometimes daughter) conferring with me in planning the skeleton of the story. With IDD, the story is so massive, with so many different characters and threads, that I try to keep one to two chapters ahead of myself with the outline.

But normally, my outlines are really nothing more than very flimsy scaffolding on which I have to build and hang the whole of the story. It gives me the high points I need to hit on the way through, the climax and the denoument, and that's about it. In IDD, however, my outline is a lot more detailed - although if the story seems to insist on moving in a different direction, I follow my instincts and then adjust the outline to conform with what has happened.

On something like In The House of Elrond, however, I have canon to provide those high points for me - so what I have to do then is to find the canon references and simply work them into the context of the situations I'm presenting seat-of-the-pants. (Does that make sense?) For example, I know that Aragorn met Gandalf a few years after Elrond sent him back to the Dúnedain. So I simply worked that into a tale where Aragorn and Halbarad come to Imladris to celebrate Mettarë with the Elves - and end the chapter with his having taken off for parts unknown.

Which way do I prefer to write? Frankly, I'm not sure. If I have an outline, I have more of an idea where I'm going and what kind of things have to happen when. On the other hand, having the story tell itself is a rewarding process in and of itself. I guess I'll do it whichever way works the best for the project at the time.

[erulisse]

There are many writers who outline and plot out completely. It can work well for some authors, but I think it is more important to have notes of names, alliances, relationships and basic plot where you allow yourself opportunities to explore side themes but can then finally return to the main theme.

I do similar things in my art, where I will decide on what I want to portray and the media that I want to use, but often I will need to make changes as I go along in the project to accommodate the vagaries and varieties of the media. The better I can shift to meet the desired end, the better the end result of the artwork.

I think that writing is another form of art and that every writer must also move with the punches and be willing to explore side plots, but must still return to the main plot and achieve the main goal by the end of the story. If an outline helps the author to do that, then do it by all means. Personally, I find keeping the basic outline of the relationships between the Feanorians almost an essential part of my personal research - they do tend to get confusing.

- Erulisse (one L)

[jael]

I definitely know where I'm going and how the story will end before I even write the first word. I begin with a story idea in a word text file. Then I will write a paragraph of notes with a very rough outline of the story and what will happen in it. Those notes will also have names of characters, ideas, and lines of dialog that come to me and I don't want to forget.

Then, I begin work and 'write into' the notes, erasing them as I reach that point in the story. I will sometimes have to go back and change minor things in an early chapter either to clarify points or avoid repetition, but the basic story never changes. Of course, little flashes of inspiration will happen as I'm fleshing the story out. Example, in Call of Duty, I had reached the scene where Thranduil's army is about to leave for Erebor, and I asked myself, what happens at this moment? And voila, Galion trots up through the ranks and forces Thranduil to forgive him -- which then requires Galion to play a slightly more significant part in the final chapters.

Other than that, I keep events under pretty tight control.

[dracoena]

Hi! I´m new, but I´ll add my two cents.

I think that the way I work goes more or less with what most people here say. I plan the outline of things, but I can´t plan a story scene by scene from the beginning. First, because then I wouldn´t write it anymore, as there would be nothing creative left to do and that would bore me. Second, because you don´t really know if things will work until you actually put them on paper. And third, because development is the natural way of things: the more you think of anything, the more it will keep developing, because your mind is still working. And I trust my mind better when it has been thinking of a story for three years than when it has been thinking of it for just a month.

I would compare it with seeing the future. Your story is a place where you can see the future, because it´s you who will eventually write it. But the future is constantly in the making. You don´t know when you will have a better idea or suddenly come upon a new character, or realize that this or that doesn´t work. One of those changes can trigger a chain of new changes, just as an action triggers a set of consequences. It can be unnerving, and it can be trouble, but if you ignore it it´s definitely worse on the long run -at least from my experience.

[crowdaughter]

I tend to start writing a story with an idea or a scene I see in my mind, and a dialog the characters have in my head; and the greater plot is coming to me while I write that scene. Then out of that come other scenes later (or earlier) in the story. When I know where the story is going and how I want it to turn out, I make notes, write a raw outline around the already drafted scenes. And then I start on writing the real story. The downside is that sometimes, later in the story my characters develop other ideas about how they want to react and how the story should turn out tan originally drafted. With Mael-Gul, that happened several times, already. And currently, I have written drafts and detailed scenes for the end of the story, even though I am yet several chapters away from reaching that end.

Maybe that process is why I usually suck at writing stories for a challenge. -_______-

[Darth Fingon]

Jan 19, 2011 22:24:23 GMT -6 Darth Fingon said:

With the exception of the Lauron-Nama arc, I don't write any of the outline down. I have all of that one written in point form in very vague terms through to the end. But everything else, I just try to remember.

For the sake of curiosity, I just opened my Lauron-Nama outline document (which I haven't touched since before I started writing Further Shadow). The previous two stories in the arc followed the outline closely, with everything happening in the proper order between added, unplanned scenes.

So far in Further Shadow, with nearly ten chapters written, I have managed to cover exactly two of the outlined plot points. HA HA HA.

Oh hell, I'm failing at this.

I'm also planning to rewrite my outline to better coincide with what's actually happening in the story.

[virtuella]

Ooooh, great topic, thanks for bringing it up!

I think we have a case here of right brain versus left brain dominance. Given that writing is a creative process, it's hardly surprising that most people here seem to prefer a go-with-the-flow approach, using structure only as a rough outline.

Like dracoena, I would find it hard to write a story that's too minutely planned, because then it would feel to me as if it was already finished. I had that problem with Truth Be Told, because I couldn't write it at the time I conceived it (I had this self-imposed writing ban due to academic commitments), but thought it all out, and then when I was at liberty to write again, I had no motivation. It wasn't until I got a few new ideas that the story began to flow again.

I can start anywhere, really. I have written whole passages just to accommodate a punchline, and then found that the scene became structurally necessary to the wider context. Sometimes I start on a passage simply because I want to describe a certain setting, and while I'm at it, I suddenly "see" what ought to happen in this place. When I start on a new story, I write down anything that comes to mind, and I write out any scene I feel motivated to write, regardless of where it comes in the story. At that point, I might have very little idea of the overall structure. Planning is something that I do as I go along, for example, about halfway through any longer story I find it necessary to make a schedule so that times match up. That can be a tricky business, for example in my story The Truth About Penguins, I was working with the real calendar of 2009/2010 and had to get specific dates to fit. It's the same with the story I'm working on now, using the calendars of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999.

I usually find that my completed stories have a rather neat structure that just happened to evolve. I think my brain does that while I'm not looking. Interestingly, I'm neither left brained nor right brained, but bilateral.