I read on Authoress Anon’s wonderful blog today about how she has started planning her plots as she writes. That got me thinking about my own process.
My first two novels I just wrote straight through. No planning. This went reasonably smoothly in the first one, except the entire ending had to be redone. It was less smooth in the second one: 60,000 words into the story, I realized I was telling the wrong story, so I had to start over (and was only able to rescue about a third of what I’d already written. And this was the same premise, with the same characters — just a different plot.
So I started over, and finished a draft. Then, I wrote three (four?) different beginnings for it before I found one I liked. Then, in the course of the revisions I just finished, I realized that I had failed to put an actual climax at the ending — so I rewrote the ending, completely.
This is not so smooth as a process. And the plot of the book is relatively linear and not all that complicated!
My current novel-in-progress is considerably more complicated. I did some planning (mostly of the various settings and a few major conflicts) before I started it, and took a long break in the middle of writing. When I tried to come back to it, I realized I had to have some kind of structure to hang it on, or I was going to get confused. (It’s got a lot of double agents, double-crossing, shell games, and other confusing plot devices in it.) So I wrote a (long) synopsis, and now I’m writing off that.
And so far, I love it. I was always worried that once I knew where the plot was going I wouldn’t want to keep writing, but this book is so much fun to write that it’s even better with the synopsis. I don’t have to worry about the plot, so I can just enjoy the zany situations the characters get into.
I may even write a synopsis next time…
What about you? Pantser, or plotter?
I’m a plotting pantser. I sketch out a rough outline, usually about one sentence per predicted chapter, or envision the story arc if it’s a shorter piece, and once I’ve got that, the characters, and the world, I just write—and I’ll edit the “outline” as I go along, because the characters naturally decide to do things different than I’d planned.
My characters like to surprise me, too. And I’m still frantically filling plot holes in the current WIP despite the synopsis. And steadfastly ignoring them until it’s time to revise….
[...] already mentioned that I’m not a major outliner. (OK, last time I talked about this I discussed my long synopsis for Elves in Space. Turns out, I kind of started ignoring the synopsis [...]