[Writing Discussion] Planning in Writing

[Aix]

There are people who let stories write themselves and there are those who plan out their story carefully. Which of those are you? Do you set down ideas onto paper or use character sheets prior to writing? Why do you write the way you do? Which way of writing do you think tends to work better?

[Ren✧]

I think both styles have their benefits and their pitfalls. Writing by the seat of your pants is great when inspiration and motivation hit you at the same time and can result in some really good writing in a reasonable amount of time. Unfortunately, as most any writer knows, motivation and inspiration hit at the same time only when the stars and planets align and may or may not require the sacrifice of your first born child. That's the upside of intense planning. Even without inspiration, you usually have a plan or something to build off of to spur the writing process. Unfortunately, in my experience, planning too much can kill a project before it even begins. You get so wrapped in minute details that your interest slowly starts to fade and before you know it, you don't even want to write the story you've spent months prepping for. 

 

As is the case with most things, you've got to find a happy medium. 

[Thar]

The former. I do usually have a rough idea of the big picture in my head, but I try not to plan too much. My motivation actually lessens the more I plan a story.

[Blake]

Both.

 

I have the most noteworthy points planned ahead, but specifics and refinement come with the writing process.

 

For example, Gale has a more prominent role than intended. He was a throw away villain in initial planning, but quickly showed to be someone I could use, and it wouldn't be entirely untrue to the guy's basis in regards to me before.

 

He's more relevanr to my story now than ever. No main, but important.

[The Warden]

I prefer planning stuff out, so I know what my direction is and thus avoid minor blocks during the process by not knowing what to do during a certain part. Granted I do like to improvise along the way should I suddenly come up with something good during the process.

[Forest Fire]

i have, believe it or not written a story or two (mostly for school, but still) i have found spontaneous creation to be my forte for most anything i'm doing. also, if i ever get that scary story thing we had to do back, i'm gonna post it here.

[Maeriberii Haan]

Used to purely plan only the very general flow of the story and let myself run wild in writing it, but it proves to make the story to be really incoherent at times in my case, which especially makes proofreading and editing it a huge pain.

 

Right now I plan the story scene by scene. Basically in a given story or chapter, I set out to plan the progression by dividing each of the chapter or story into smaller scenes, in which I put up the general thing happening there to create the rough flow of the chapter or story. It still allow a lot of room for me to improvise, and at times I still ignore a predetermined scene since I figured out something better to replace it. It helps a lot in keeping me from straying away too much though, and since my attention span can get really bad when it comes to writing (I even often forget about the previous paragraph I wrote whenever I'm writing), this helps keep the coherency of the writing for me.

[mitchermitcher]

I've tried out both but when I try to write without thinking I eventually end up thinking and planning it out anyway. Either way I've never finished writing something so it doesn't matter.

[evilfusion]

Ugh.

 

I've always been more the type to write with minimal planning. This usually allows me a great deal of flexibility in terms of the direction I want the story to go, and I like to leave myself further breathing room to change the outcome of something if I like it better.

 

However, the pitfalls WILL strike, and they will cost you almost everything. I've had great ideas, but horrendous executions. I've had things drag on purely because I didn't have enough direction, but I've also had times when it really helped out, and I really struggle to plan things out in-depth. This could actually be a side-effect of my normal personality, to not really have long-term focus.

 

More recently, I've been doing sort of a mix of the two, by doing some character exploration and development on the side, before even considering the story itself, and then making a few character profiles to have sort of a record of my results. I don't adhere very closely to it, or really inspect it regularly, but it lets me get my thoughts regarding a character into a more coherent structure so that if I do want to look over the traits or personality quirks, I do have something to look back on.

[Kazooie]

I mentally cannot plan. If I try to plan things out, I just get bored and stop.

 

So I have to write whenever the mood hits... Which is rare...

[Sethera]

I agree with what Ren said. I've experienced both times and while it's awesome when you have inspiration, when you don't...good luck writing anything. Plans are good to prevent that, but as I'm a person who gets wrapped up in details I tend to get more interested in story planning than actual story writing and then I never write anything.

 

For when I do write, I generally go off of a prompt or idea and write from there. I write out all my ideas in bullet point or paragraphs during moments of inspiration and put them aside to look at later. It helps me get a sense of what I was feeling during that time, which I use to push me onward during those dry spells. Either that or I just don't do anything, which is a bit bad.

 

I like to let the story write itself, mainly through the characters, which take on lives of their own as the story progresses, and plot ideas which come to me. I see myself as a person who nudges the story/characters in the right direction but otherwise lets it do its own thing, especially since characters often think of things that I wouldn't normally.

[Aerion Brightflame]

I'm more of a planner. Like, I'll plan out most of how I think the story is going to run in my head (All major moments, and semi-major moments, and some that just seem like they'll be awesome), even the the point where I start writing the scenes in my head. But I mean every writer has some aspects of being a Gardner, and let the evolution of the characters dictate the final place the story will end, because that's just how good writing works. 

[Fusion X. Denver]

TIL a lot of YCMers are writers.

I've only written one story, and that one was along the lines of what Yui said where I had the general plot, the ending, and certain other scenes planned out, but free-formed the rest. Which I can agree had its good points, but definitely also its bad points.

So I think it's good to find a happy medium too. This one other time I had heavily planned out a fanfic, but I ended up losing interest.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

Ahhhh now this here is a fun topic. I don't plan really. The book I still need to edit, I had maybe the first two chapters planned. As in I knew what I wanted to do, and a very basic idea of what I wanted to happen. Then, I just went in whatever direction felt right to me and the characters. I can't plan, planning makes me not want to write if I go too far.

 

I've had my moments where I don't feel up to writing but I honestly don't have many moments I don't know what to do, because I just do whatever feels natural. Hell I've had people lose fights that I was wanting them to win because it just fit better with what was going on.

And as for character sheets and the like, nah. All my characters and ideas are somewhere floating in my head and they'll come out in the right moment. If I wrote it all down It'd just mean I'd have to check it constantly because I won't remember. These guys have been in my head for ten years in some cases and they will grow however they see fit, no point for me to write it all down.

 

I can't really think of a time I wrote where I had a solid plan for more than bits and pieces, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy myself much more when I just let whatever happens happen. Not to mention making plans and sticking to them story-wise forces me to have to do things a certain way and really gets in the way for me.

[Maeriberii Haan]

Really, in my opinion, the best plan is the one that can take account and adapt to as much thing as possible. Your initial batch of planning is never something perfect, after all. You'd bound to find a better idea for the parts sooner or later no matter how much detail you put into your plan for your story. The plans are quite useful to give you some sense of direction, but I don't think you should follow it down to the letter. The story plan would do better as a guideline rather than a blueprint.

[evilfusion]

Ahhhh now this here is a fun topic. I don't plan really. The book I still need to edit, I had maybe the first two chapters planned. As in I knew what I wanted to do, and a very basic idea of what I wanted to happen. Then, I just went in whatever direction felt right to me and the characters. I can't plan, planning makes me not want to write if I go too far.

 

I've had my moments where I don't feel up to writing but I honestly don't have many moments I don't know what to do, because I just do whatever feels natural. Hell I've had people lose fights that I was wanting them to win because it just fit better with what was going on.

And as for character sheets and the like, nah. All my characters and ideas are somewhere floating in my head and they'll come out in the right moment. If I wrote it all down It'd just mean I'd have to check it constantly because I won't remember. These guys have been in my head for ten years in some cases and they will grow however they see fit, no point for me to write it all down.

 

I can't really think of a time I wrote where I had a solid plan for more than bits and pieces, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy myself much more when I just let whatever happens happen. Not to mention making plans and sticking to them story-wise forces me to have to do things a certain way and really gets in the way for me.

 

Yup, you and I are still more or less the same person. I've also allowed characters to lose fights they were anticipated to win, and kept characters in head for multiple years. In fact, some of my longest held characters have only just now truly been allowed to develop properly because I realized I was restricting them too much to adhere to an intended development path/narrative. When I stopped restricting them, suddenly I got a huge cache of info.

 

I do prefer freedom of approach to planning, because other than sucking at planning, I just feel more creative or get better creative ideas and ways to weave other characters and ideas into the developments if I leave things more open.

[Azure Wolf]

I never really plan outside of characters. I get the idea of what I want and then just write, which I can usually do fine until I give myself time constraints, then I just get overwhelmed as I suddenly can't think and get less done in the same amount of time before.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

So I've discovered that in some way I do plan things. Not...exactly as most "planning things" works but basically...I suddenly will come up with an idea of what I want to do for future parts and I tend to stick to it...generally, or at least the basic idea.

More of less I let the ideas just hit me but when they hit me I do a little planning to make sure it works.

[Frybread002]

I have to pick the latter: A lot of my early stuff were stories that came together as I was writing them and most of them become cliche ripoffs of other stories that were popular at the time. I had tons and tons of ideas, but because the majority of them had no real direction, I abandoned the lot of them. Only a few stayed with me throughout the years and became something I diligently work on.

 

These days, I like to plan them out ahead and make the writing process easier on myself.

 

-Start with a concept or theme I like.

-Make various drafts of different plots to support the concept/theme.

 

-After chosing a plot, I vaguely make the begining, middle, and end clear in my mind.

-Create the cast and setting for the story. I have two ways of doing this.

  +I start with a story first, then create characters and settings to support the plot I have.

  +The character(s) comes first and I base the plot to help tell the story of the character.

 

Lastly, when I get to the dialouge and minute details of exposition, I always write them in the back of my mind and only deal with them when I actually get to writing. So my plot may be great, but its balanced out with terrible descriptive words.

I have to pick the latter: A lot of my early stuff were stories that came together as I was writing them and most of them become cliche ripoffs of other stories that were popular at the time. I had tons and tons of ideas, but because the majority of them had no real direction, I abandoned the lot of them. Only a few stayed with me throughout the years and became something I diligently work on.

 

These days, I like to plan them out ahead and make the writing process easier on myself.

 

-Start with a concept or theme I like.

-Make various drafts of different plots to support the concept/theme.

 

-After chosing a plot, I vaguely make the begining, middle, and end clear in my mind.

-Create the cast and setting for the story. I have two ways of doing this.

  +I start with a story first, then create characters and settings to support the plot I have.

  +The character(s) comes first and I base the plot to help tell the story of the character.

 

Lastly, when I get to the dialouge and minute details of exposition, I always write them in the back of my mind and only deal with them when I actually get to writing. So my plot may be great, but its balanced out with terrible descriptive words.

[Sploda]

More often then not people are going to be a sort of blend between the two. I personally won't physically plan out anything more than a general chapter outline to refer to as needed. All my planning is done mentally, and as such, at random. As a result I even tend to write Scenes for a Chapter out of order. I believe having a plan for a story is great, but if it's going to be done it needs to be done to the point where there is little left to add by the time you write it.

 

In short, I'm the kind of guy with an imagination that doesn't really settle down long enough to plan something completely. I do find that any planning I DO do ahead of time benefits from having someone to discuss the idea with.