Writing before plotting

[BlueTexas]

I wrote 10,000 words before I had a plot solidly worked out. Now it looks like I'm going to chunk all 10,000 and begin where the story really begins.

This is really, really, painful.

Would having the plot fixed before putting a single word down have solved this, or do you guys find you have to get a feel for the story before you can figure out the end?

Someone please tell me this is a first novel flaw, and it won't need to be done with every single one.

[aadams73]

Ouch. Look at it this way: you can use those 10,000 words as reference notes for yourself.

Here's what I find and your mileage may vary: I don't outline. However--I write mystery-- and I have the whodunit figured out beforehand. The howdunit and why is usually established in my mind but not set in stone, leaving me breathing room and not boxing me in. Everything else is more or less up to me, the muse, and my characters and not necessarily in that order.

[katiemac]

Kira, I don't really think plotting this one or not would have made a difference. It's tough to have to scrap that much of the story, but even if you had plotted there's bound to be scenes that needed chopping.

I have this silly little notion that the entire story is already in your head. Subplots, climax, beginnig, middle and end, it's all there. And then, for every story, there will be different ways of unlocking it from your brain. Can't reach point B until you've hit A.

For some people, that means writing the first sentence before the second one. In this case, it can simply be understanding the background before you start up. Even though I've finished my first draft and well on the way through the second, I'm still finding pieces to slide in here and there, but I had to get to The End before I knew what those pieces were.

[Jamesaritchie]

I don't hink plotting or not plotting has anything to do with starting the story in the right place. Doing so is really a matter of experience.

Where plotting is concerned, I'm fully on the side of Ray Bradbury and Stephen King.

Bradbury, in his book "Zen in the Art of Writing," says: "Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. It cannot precede action. It is the chart that remains when an action is trhough. That is all plot should ever be."

Stephen King puts it in a somewhat blunter manner. In his book "On Writing" he says: "Plot is, I think, the good writer's last resort and the dullard's first choice."

[BlueTexas]

Sounds like I'm making this harder than it has to be. I'm really thinking about tossing this whole story and starting fresh with something more developed as an idea in the first place, something that's already humming and won't need pushed.

[stormie]

I'm of the school of thought that a writer should never throw away any bit of writing. In this day and age, it can be saved on a hard drive or cd. What you should do is toss it aside. You might find that a character or idea from that story will work in some future story.

As for plotting the story out before I write it, I never do that. I let the story take me where it goes. The characters, too.

My two cents.

[BlueTexas]

No fear, Stormie...I don't think I could throw away any writing I've ever done. It is going aside, though. I can salvage the two good characters from it later.

[dblteam]

I usually start writing without a plot, and the story invariably comes together in the end. I'm often startled by how well it all works out. I'm sure that just means I do a lot of the working out in my subconscious, as you probably do, too.

I suspect you'll be throwing away less and less with each new story because you'll refine your own process of subconsciously figuring out the story and you'll have fewer false starts.

Don't know if that encourages you or not, but for what it's worth...

Valerie

[WannabeWriter]

It depends on the individual. For me, I find that I need to have the whole thing outlined before I could even write the first draft. For others, just writing freely works better.

[ANNIE]

I don't outline either,but I do spend a lot of time listening to my characters. once they tell who they are I put the words on paper and somehow the plot falls into place.

[Jamesaritchie]

If someone isn't in serious trouble, or at the very least, if a looming serious problem isn't evident, in the first chapter, and preferaboly in the first ten pages or so, there's a good chance you started the story too early.

[hpoppink]

I wrote 45,000 words in my novel before I felt like I was at the real beginning of my story. I was tempted to scrap the whole thing 20,000 words later, but I kept going.

Part of me was worried that if I didn't stick with it, I would do this with every novel I attempted to write. Perhaps I was just reacting to being midbook, which is what killed my previous efforts to finish a novel. The inevitable "this sucks" period. Hitting the wall, not unlike a marathon runner.

Flip side: by finishing the (crappy) draft, I am establishing the habit of finishing. Not unlike BIC, establishing the habit of writing every day.

Now I'm at 125,000 words and still hate the story, the characters, the world ... but there is a joy to having surrendered to the process. I'm letting the characters do their thing (whatever that thing turns out to be -- I'm one of those who outline but fail to stay the course). Maybe there will be a diamond in the rough.

[SRHowen]

Plot--what is plot anyway? I agree that plot happens, you don't plan a plot--LOL

Whatever that means, think I sniffed too many bleach fumes today --ooh wait that was my hubby when he mixed tile cleaner with bleach and I could smell it all the way in the kitchen --went running, opened window and said, don't do that again! He said, but it was working really really good. Sheesh.

[PattiTheWicked]

Plot? What is this plot you speak of?

Seriously, I just write stuff as it comes to me. Sometimes I work with a very bare-bones outline, and other times I don't.

As for that ten thousand words, can you use it as backstory at all? Condense any of it and work it into the rest of the story without doing an info dump? On my current WIP, I started out with an absolutely brilliant 18-page chapter. Now that I'm to the final draft, it's outta there... along with six other absolutely brilliant chapters about some characters I really loved. I removed them all because they slowed down the story, but you know what? Those seven chapters gave me a lot of background information that I needed to write the whole rest of the story, even though it's not really info the reader needs to have.

And if nothing else, someday when the work gets published, I can stick those chapters on my website as "the Lost Chapters" or something, and everyone will read them and tell me how fascinating they were. It'll be the literary equivalent of Special Features: Outtakes on a dvd.

[azbikergirl]

I outline, but only to a point. I use my outline as signposts directing me toward a destination. If I find a different course that looks better, that's where I go. Sometimes the characters tell me to go a different way than my outline -- and they know best. Sometimes chapters I write never make it to the final draft, sometimes they find a home in the revision process long after I'd put them aside thinking I didn't need them. Funny how that works sometimes. Go with the flow. Sometimes it's fun to ride the rapids.

[Mistook]

Having come to writing from a musical background, I can't help plotting. With a peice of music, you definitely want everything to follow a certain path, and you can plot it down to the sixteenth note of the measure, if need be.

And with recording, the whole idea is to layer everything. You put down the rhythm and bass first, then go back and work in the guitars, keyboards, whatever. Then if need be, you rewind and tweak things to accentuate the drama. You punch-in to fix little parts of one track or another.

I see writing a novel like that, but of course, the devil (as always) is in the details, and it's easy to get bogged down, or to overproduce.

I guess the non-plotting, or lightly-plotting approach would be like jazz improv, and admittedly, that takes much more skill than working out a chamber peice note for note, or throwing together a rock jam with a few flaming guitar solos. But then again... different strokes for different folks.

[BlueTexas]

Thanks for all the thoughts, you guys.

I did set it aside, and got hot on the story that been in the back of my head for awhile...I'm taking a different approach on the new story...I have an end in mind. I think that's key for me.

The 10,000 words story was too big, I think. The concept was too big, not the 10,000 words :)--I'm not there yet--and it wasn't until I stepped away that I could see I had no small parts in mind to break it into, nor did I know the end. I think I need to learn how to finish a novel before I can write that one. My idea is broader than my skills, I guess.

So those 10,000 words and folders of notes will join the other two abandoned novels in my file cabinet, but at leat I have hope to ressurect it when I can get my brain around it. Those other two have been sitting since 1998 and 2001, and I think they're going to get burned one of these days.

So I'm going to write this new, simpler, more direct story, and when I finish it, maybe I'll know how to write the problem story. It won't sit forever...one of the characters is so alive it's scary.

Shorter stuff is so much easier!@!#@$

[zornhau]

Really! It's only 10,000 words - about a chapter and a half. Bin it and move on. If writing 10K is a chore, you're on the wrong career path!

If it's a well written 10K then...

...every word has its purpose. If every word has its purpose, then how could the 10K fit anywhere but where you put it? If it doesn't belong there, where else could it possibly go?
...it's well written because your skills enable you produce that quality work. You can be fairly confident about repeating the exercise.
My advice. Declutter your harddrive.

As for outling/not outlining - do whatever works for you.

Stephen King (1) writes a particular kind of fiction, and (2) does it full time so can hold his story in his head, and afford blind alleys. Just because he disses outliners doesn't mean to say he's correct. He's a top writer - anything he writes is bound to be convincing!

[loquax]

Stephen King is a dullard. If he honestly had no idea what would happen at the end of The Shining, I'll eat my hat. Come on, the boiler was mentioned throughout the whole book. That's foreshadowing, which is a part of plotting. Sure, he could have added the foreshadowing as an afterthought.... but adding such heavy alterations, in my opinion, is a very awkward way of going about things.

I think the idea of having no plot is overly romantic, and not at all practical. Novels have to have some kind of structure. They have to have a beginning and an end. These things only come with plot. I think that what the people who say "I don't plot" really mean is that they don't outline. They don't write the plot down on a piece of paper and follow their writing to those points. That's fine, but to say there's no plot in your mind at all is very..... strange.

[WriteSpot]

I never understand why this is always such a big deal. If you write with no outline or a detailed outline, big deal. Do what works for you. If it doesn't work, then you consider something else. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[katdad]

Save those 10k words. They will turn up somewhere else. Nothing is truly wasted.

I've had the same thing happen to me when I began a new novel. I find that after writing a while, I'm way off tempo and out in left field. The story I meant to write hasn't worked out at all.

I save what I had written, begin anew. But this time with renewed energy, because my batteries are now charged and my muse is sitting squarely on my shoulders. Those earlier forays were just to test the water, I tell myself.

Actually they did me a great deal of good. They let me start writing and allowed me to discover that my 'bright idea' wasn't really that good -- but it was the actual writing itself that energized me for more productive stuff.

I've got threads saved from earlier writing that eventually got used in another way. It's an excellent source for later fill-in and for 2nd plot levels.

You sound like you're doing okay, BlueTex. Keep on keepin' on.

btw, what part of Texas? Myself, Houston.

[Button]

If it's not the plot, it's that the characters are not right. I went through three good chapters before I found the main character for this novel I'm writing now. I had him going in all different directions. He was saving chickens from a dog in one, he was walking through a mysterious part of the woods in another and I finally settled with him robbing the pawn shop in the other.

I figured the first two were just my trying to actually figure out who this guy is. They were all very different chapters but I don't feel they were a waste. I may use those scenes later, or for another book but even if I never do, I don't feel they are a waste of time. They were for me, to get to know who my characters are and what the plot really is before going much further.

:p At least you know now. Imagine being 30,000 words in and you've yet to achieve any plot at all! I'm sure some editors could tell you stories of having read 100,000 word mss where the plot was completely missing.

[Jamesaritchie]

Stephen King is a dullard. If he honestly had no idea what would happen at the end of The Shining, I'll eat my hat. Come on, the boiler was mentioned throughout the whole book. That's foreshadowing, which is a part of plotting. Sure, he could have added the foreshadowing as an afterthought.... but adding such heavy alterations, in my opinion, is a very awkward way of going about things.

I think the idea of having no plot is overly romantic, and not at all practical. Novels have to have some kind of structure. They have to have a beginning and an end. These things only come with plot. I think that what the people who say "I don't plot" really mean is that they don't outline. They don't write the plot down on a piece of paper and follow their writing to those points. That's fine, but to say there's no plot in your mind at all is very..... strange.

It has nothing to do with having no plot, it has to do with telling a story and letting the plot come from that. I foreshadow all the time, and do so very well, if I do say so myself, and I never, ever plot, never ever want to know what comes next in a novel I'm writing.

It may seem strange to say there is no plot in my thoughts when I'm writing, and it may well be strange to those who don't or can't write this way, but it's the absolute truth.

Foreshadowing is only plotting IF you're the kind of writer who outlines and plots. And I find foreshadowing that way a true pain in the rear. It's far more difficult, at least for me, than foreshadowing without knowing what's coming next. I don't even understand how those who outline and plot do effective foreshadowing. I've tried it, and my mind simply will not work that way.

Leave King out of it, and look at Bradbury. "Plot cannot precede action." This is exactly how I write, and how the great majority of writers I most enjoy reading write. The same thing can be said for foreshadowing. In the way I write, you write the foreshadowing first, as a natural part of the story, and as often as not, you have no clue it is foreshadowing. But it inevitably leads you to the proper place and time and event. It's simply wrong to think you can't write good foreshadowing without even knowing it is foreshadowing.

I do try to stay one or two sentences ahead in a book. It's difficult, I think, to write a quality sentence on the first try unless you've thought about that sentence for a moment or two, but if I find myself plotting out ahead, thinking about what's actually going to happen out ahead, I know I've goofed bigtime. I back up and get back in the grove of simply writing the story.

I always want to be writing behind the action, not out in front of it. I want to be behind the characters, following them, writing down what they do, see, hear, think, feel, etc. I don;t know where teh characters are going, or what's going to happen to them, anymore than they know. I'm just telling a story that's happening as I tell it.

At any rate, foreshadowing is not difficult when writing in this manner. For me, it's far easier and far more effetcive because I'm not trying to force events to happen because I foreshadowed them. Forced events seldom read well. I think the foreshadowing should simply be a natural part of the story, not a device to make you go to a preconceived destination.

There's nothing romantic about it. It's simply the way many of us write. I'm not a natural writer, but I am a natural storyteller, which means I can make up a story on the spot, from a given first line, and just tell a good story, complete with foreshadowing, without thinking, caring, or wanting to know what is going to happen in that story somewhere down the line.

It probably does seem very strange to those who don't write this way, but I know far too many writers who do write very good novels in this manner to doubt how well it works, and I know it's the exact way I write. It's the way I've always written, and it's worked very well for me.

I do suspect it has something to do with oral storytelling. If you ever get the chance, go to a gathering of oral storytellers. Sometimes a couple of the best ones will let the audience throw out a line, and from that line they will make up a story. With no chance to think out ahead, no chance to plan, no pauses at all in their speech, they will quickly tell a long and detailed story using that line as a starting point. This is exactly how I try to write.

But do not let foreshadowing fool you. Foreshadowing is the easy part of writing this way because you don't have to force fit anything. You never have to say, "Okay, I'll do this now because it foreshadows something that will happen in chapter eighteen," and then try to guide events so that it really does make a certain thing happen in chapter eighteen. I wouldn't do that if I could, which I can't.

When writing this way, foreshadowing is simply a natural part of a good story, and the less you know about whatever it is you're foreshadowing, the better.

But simply put, not plotting out ahead most certainly is the way many of us write, and it works very, very well for us.

Your milage may vary, but because it doesn't work for you in no way means this isn't the way we write. . .and foreshadow.

[SRHowen]

I won't quote what James said, but if I wrote out my thoughts on plot, foreshadowning ect they would be the same as his--who knows why my MC picks up the quarter in chapter one that he keeps in his pocket thinking it is good luck--I don't have any idea, do I decide nope he doesn't need the quarter? No. If he picked it up, he needs it.

Then in chapter 9 he needs the quarter---

I don't have any idea what is going to happen next, where I am going to end up or how I will get there--I sit and I write. I am also a pretty good oral story teller. Poof, there it is--

Shawn

[Shadow Otenaki]

Hmm.. I plot as I write.
I'm one of those that don't outline. Anymore. >.>
I used to outline, but then I felt restricted and weird by going off of an outline. So I stopped doing it.
It may be odd to plot as you write, or before you write.. or whatever I was trying to say. =P

All I know is that when I write, the story comes out straight from my head. I don't know what happens till it happens. The only times I get stuck is when I have to stop writing for some reason, and then forget where I was going to go. >.>

[Puddle Jumper]

Perhaps you can think of those 10,000 words as your plotting stage and the necessary information you needed to have before beginning your actual story. :)

[mkcbunny]

Hi Kira,

I think direction is more important than plotting. Meaning that having an idea where your characters have to get to in terms of their evolution and having a sense of where your story is going to wind up is more important than having a point-by-point plot. However, every writer is different and every genre has different considerations.

I am about 246 pages into the first draft of my first novel. Although I loved the first chapter when I wrote it, I am pretty certain that I will have to scrap or heavily edit it when I am finished. But that's OK. It was the first thing I spat out on the way to where I am now going. I think that if you felt the story was coming to you, I'd say continue and then later edit out whatever wasn't working. However, if you're not feeling the story speak to you in a way that maintains the momentum, then either it's not interesting you enough to hold your attention, or you need to think on it longer to determine what it really is that you are trying to do with that tale. If it's more complicated than you can wrap your head around, as you suggest, then maybe you just need time to think on what the various themes are.

If it helps any, I had three "first novel" ideas to pursue. I began with the current one, but after two chapters, I thought I was in over my head. So I started Idea #2 and got about three chapters into it. Then, one day, a little lightbulb came on, and I just went back to the first one. It's complicated, and I'm not sure I can really do the themes justice. And it's probably going to be too long, as well. LOL. But when the time came for me to tackle it, I knew that was it.

So save it. Maybe it will call out to you in the future.

[BlueTexas]

Hi Kira,

I think direction is more important than plotting. Meaning that having an idea where your characters have to get to in terms of their evolution and having a sense of where your story is going to wind up, is more important than having a point-by-point plot. However, every writer is different and every genre has different considerations.

r yoo need to think on it longer to determine what it really is that you are trying to do with that tale. If it's more complicated than you can wrap your head around, as you suggest, then maybe you just need time to think on what the various themes are.



Those two things, lack of direction and not having my head wrapped around it, were entirely my problem.

Part of the problem is centered around one of the Idol entries. I was working on a the novel, then the contest happened. I decided to turn a scene I hadn't yet written in the novel into a short for the contest. Then, I tried to put it back in, but by then the direction had changed entirely and I had a whole new conflict. Oh well. Maybe it'll be like wine and get better with age.

[mkcbunny]

I decided to turn a scene I hadn't yet written in the novel into a short for the contest. Then, I tried to put it back in, but by then the direction had changed entirely and I had a whole new conflict.
Which one? You can PM if you want.

[cwfgal]

I didn't plot anything out ahead of time in my earlier years of novel writing and I wrote the first novel I sold by the seat of my pants, never really knowing where it was going to go next. All I had was a premise. It was fun! But when I sold it and then learned I could sell future books (and get cash advances) based on a well-plotted synopsis/outline/call-it-what-you-want, I learned how to do it and now prefer to do it that way, even though I'm no longer in a position to sell a book based on an outline alone.

And I generally sidetrack enough from the original plot/plan as I go and get new ideas to still keep it fun and exciting.

Beth

[l.stormgaye]

I don't mind outlining and charting the backstory of the main character, but I do not like grafting every single detail about all the characters. But my idea of outlining may be another author's first draft. I write organically. I jot down any- and everything that comes to my mind and all the story details from my heart in whatever form available. Later, I'll come back -- after all of it germinates in my mind -- and go through the first of many drafts.