Storytelling, not plotting

I have an idea and I go from there. Right now I'm at 27,000 words on my first novel and I thought I'd finish this first part of the series during NaNoWriMo. While writing I have added some ideas and stuff to a separate page, just to have something to save my sanity. The trouble of course with not using an outline is that it's hell on continuity, forcing you to think while writing, which slows down the process. That's what I'm gonna use the NaNoWriMo for, to just write the whole thing out without worrying about how it may be coming out. Because frankly -my self-discipline leaves a lot to be desired. I do all my writing without outlining, short-stories too. Though I'm thinking about trying this on for size, see how it feels. So I'm an the opposite place to where you are. ;-)
Basically -variety is joy.

"Plotting" is not a dirty word. If it works for you, then keep doing it. If you want to do the organic storytelling, go for it, too -- it's fun. But it really depends on the type of stories you're telling. Some stories are plot-heavy and it's probably better if you sit down and plot it out. Some are highly character-driven and it's probably better if you just go with the flow and see what your characters do. But there's no "one size fits all" approach.

With my first book, I had some plotting -- at least I knew exactly how it was going to end. And I had some big "set pieces" I wanted to hit. That's the amount of plotting I did, especially for the first half of the book. The second half (except the ending) is kind of organic. Funny thing is my readers tend to think the second half is more twisty and unpredictable! Go figure.

Right now, with my WIP, I am doing the organic thing. I've past the 60K mark but I am a little stuck, but it's not because I'm not sure where it's going. It's because I am scared of where it's going. It gets really big and complicated from this point on, with multiple story threads and a much bigger cast. That's why I'm stalling a bit. But the organic method is really exciting to me at this point because as the writer, I don't really know where the story is going. And for once, I have NO IDEA how it's going to end. It's both scary and fascinating.

I agree with Ray: there's absolutely nothing wrong with plotting. In point of fact, it probably makes some things easier.

I don't plot because if I *do* plot, I get bored with my story by the time I'm done doing an outline and then I give up. I enjoy it much more if I slog through the scenes, figuring it out as I go. It's not work for me, it's sheer enjoyment.

How much do I have to have? With novels, I tend to have quite a bit...but not intentionally. I don't have a threshold of ideas that I have to cross before I'll start writing. It's just that the ideas which tend to turn into actual moving writing projects tend to show up with lots of details attached.

My current novel turned up with a main character and a basic "what if" idea. From there, a lot of the storyline was logically figuring out the "what if" and figuring out the character. As I started writing it, other characters and scenes occured to me, plot lines occured to me, things that should happen/would be fun to have happen/need to happen occured to me. As these things show up, they sit in the back of my head and wait until I get to them.

....that said, with my last novel, I started with two characters and a house on fire and I went from there. I had a ghost of an idea but very little more. I didn't have the whole story figured out until I was 5,000 words away from the END of the whole story.

Some people are just wired to write without planning first and some aren't. That said, there are times every now and then when I'll sit down and plot out a chunk of a novel, or I'll try plotting out the whole thing just because I like to try different things.

So by all means, try writing a novel without plotting it. The worst you can do is not get very far, and then you can plot from where you stopped and keep on working.

Sesselja said:

I don't think plotting and outlining is the evil of all writing. I'm just fascinated by the story telling method, and I would love to try it, to see what it's like to discover the story as I'm writing it.

Click to expand...

Didn't mean that you thought that. There ARE some writers who look on outlining and plotting like the world's greatest evils, up there with editing and selling. We were just making sure you weren't leaning in that direction.

I'm very happy that you're restless and want to experiment with how you write stories. That's the best way to improve, constantly trying new ways.

Sesselja said:

I can die a happy woman: I have made PeeDee very happy.

Click to expand...

Hah. Yes. You have pulled me out of the deepest darkest parts of my angst-filled writerly days, when all the world is arrayed against me and I carve these immortal words into sheets of paper using only the blood of my veins and the blood of my soul and cry unto the heavens when the words stop flowing but the blood does not.

Barring THAT (I probably just described 90% of beginner writers out there, the ones who listen to crappy internet advice; also, teenagers) we can assume that I'm a fairly happy person from the get-go and just pleased to see a writer who's willing to mess around with her craft instead of assuming that it's fragile and breakable.

Hurray for no plotting!

Seriously, you have to do what works for you.

Some of us plot, and some wing it.

I don't plot. I guess I have an over active imagination.

My stories come from the developed characters. Once they have an identity, they drive the story by who they've become, they tell me what will happen, and I watch the movie unfold in my head, and write what I see.

I do have a story idea, what happens in the middle, and how I want the book to end.

That's me.

I am a rambling storyteller of the worst sort.

I've also been doing a webcomic for three years now, which adds a new sort of terror because it's all on-line and people have read it all ready. So I'm out here at page 345, and I have no option to go back and insert a gun on page 15 if the hero comes across someone who needs shootin'. But if I sat down and storyboarded the whole thing in advance (I've tried) I get bored to tears and doing the strip becomes a death march. At best, I can write dialog a few days out, and sometimes I get to the crunch and go "This will be boring for people to read. Time for something bad to happen," and scrap half of what I've written.

Instead, I start somewhere, look around for a landmark--a scene I'm pretty sure I want to do--and start walking in that direction. The path is often aimless and roundabout, and sometimes a lot happens before I hit the landmark, or the landmarks turn out to be in a different order than I thought, or I ditch one completely because I'd have to go so far out of my way to get there.

People occasionally ask if I'm not afraid I'll plot myself into a corner, and I find that I'm really not. The trick is to leave trails of breadcrumbs through the story--minor characters, visual silliness, strange critters--and if you get stuck, you look for the breadcrumbs and follow it back to the plot. You have all manner of little things in there that you add along the way, which aren't all that important except as background flavor and world-building, until you need one. You write yourself escape hatches.

Then when you go back and use one of those escape hatches, your readers think you're brilliant because you planned this all the way back at page 15, and good lord, this thing must be intricately plotted! (At least, I delude myself that that's what they're thinking....)

Granted, somewhere other than a comic, this might well be sloppy or less-than-tight writing. Probably. But meh, life is hard all over.

I think the important thing with rambling storytelling is to add things that seem important or cool at the time, and not worry about where they wind up going. If they're important, your brain will tell you why they're important at the appropriate time. If they're not important, and you have the luxury of editing, yank 'em out.

Plus, when all else goes wrong, you can never go too wrong with ninjas falling from the ceiling.

What works for me is to have a general idea of where the story is going. Then I write a summary for the story, it's usually one page long and has all the plot description and what happens in the story along with the climax, but I wouldn't call it an outline. Once I have that decided, I start writing.

I can't plot a thing. When the centerline occurs to me, I start writing on the first page but it never lasts. I jump to a scene that excites me and write it, then to another and another. I don't even know where the scenes belong at that point. I'll then write the in-betweens to pull scenes together. Eventually it is complete.

That's the way I write but that is the way my life is too. I doubt that everyone can write that way just as I can't write an outline. Do it how it works. But if you get a notion to skip ahead, don't suppress it just because you aren't there yet. And an out line is flexible. Hey, it is your story, your world. Do it, change it, twist it, any time, any order you like.

I usually "go with the flow" in the very beginning, until I can begin to see the actual shape of the thing come into being. However, there does come a point where I have to plot or outline in order to know where it's all going to head in the end. Neither approach is "right" or "wrong," but for me, a litle of both works just fine.

Well, I guess I'm a little bit of everything plus some. I'm working on my first ms after doing RPG writing for the past ten years or so. So storytelling is a big thing. My WIP was thought in my head for a few years. Then about 5 or 6 years ago, I wrote some drafts of the idea, with no real plot or outline. Then this summer I decided "Why the hell am I waiting to be a writer? (I was giving myself the excuse of waiting until I had time, i.e. the kid(s) grew up). So I dug up the old files and went from there.

My outline is in my head. My drives to work with the right music (each of my works/ideas for ms's have a soundtrack btw) keep me thinking of each chapter and where my story is headed. As for the plots, well, I didn't start out with one concrete plot. But as I started to write, the plots and subplots pretty much created themselves. I'm about halfway through my WIP now, and I got stuck at 40K words. So THEN I decided to sketch a skeletal outline of the rest of the chapters so I could get an idea of where I wanted to go with the story. That helped, and now I'm at about 50K and going strong with a fleshed out idea of how my story will end. (That was a major challenge seeing as it was originally going to be a cliff hangar. I'm still not sure if my ending will work in a resolute way, so I'll probably write one or two and see which ones my beta readers prefer.)

Most of the ideas/plots/subplots came from my characters and not me. It's one of those "taking on a life of their own" sort of scenario.

Regardless, I agree with everyone who says plotting is not an evil thing. Like babies, every writer is different. Different things work for different people.

Sesselja said:

Question: So I was wondering: those of you who use this approach to writing, how much do you have before starting?

Click to expand...

I didn’t have anything when I sat down to write and I’m still immature (JK). The story was in my head and I wrote it all down. Of course, it has changed for the better during revisions, but I didn’t have an outline. It’s my fourth revision at 95,500 words so there is still a lot of trimming to do.

I am much relieved to see that not everyone plots or outlines. I started my story quite a while ago and life interupted me. After reading a few threads on this forum I actually stopped trying again. For some reason I got the impression I didn't know Jack Shyte about anything anymore and I got overwhelmed and intimidated. I thought I had to know how my book was going to end and I honestly don't have a clue. I was wandering through my story and it was growing as I went.

Whew...what a relief to know there is no rule about this.

Casiopeia said:

Whew...what a relief to know there is no rule about this.

Click to expand...

I suspect the only valid rule is the one applied by agents and/or publishers that counts. Oh and when the novel becomes a number one best seller then that's the other rule: "The readers loved it."

Other than that the individual writer has to decide what works best for them.

Sometimes plotted/outlined stories become canned or obvious. One of the biggest advantages of not knowing where you're going, is that the readers won't either.

I think one of the many writing books I have on the shelf has a quote somewhere to the effect that you have to let your story go where it wants to, but always land on the right foot--where you've decided it has to go.

Personally, I think I will try sometime thinking up an ending first, and then making up a story to go in front of it.

I only make an outline after the action in the story gets complicated enough that I run the risk of a paradox/contradiction if I just keep blindly writing without stopping to take inventory. That is to say-- I only use an outline for reference, to see when things happened and who they happened to, and which dog belongs to what character, and is that one guy's car red or blue, and what story of the building did the priest's illegitimate daughter decide to jump from and wasn't there a pop machine on that floor...?

When I used to write everything out by hand or type it out, dang was that ever a mess. I would go back looking for some forgotten detail, reading chapter after chapter until it was four in the morning my eyes were ready to fall out.

Computers are really great things.

Erm... well, anyway-- now I'm old and wise enough to know that as soon as some sort of detail creeps into my narrative that I'll need to remember later, THAT'S when I start the outline.

As for the action, I let the characters do whatever they want; I just sort of follow them around like a camera man on that show "COPS", losing them occasionally when they jump over a fence or duck into an alley.

It sure makes me feel good to hear all of you who say that they don't plot or outline. In past writer's/critique groups, that was always made to sound like a big no-no. I've tried so many times to do the outline route, and I would just get bored or else I'd find myself hating the whole story and giving it up.

I'm one of the ones who get an idea stuck in my head and I run with it. After awhile, my characters seem to come alive and let me know what is going to happen next. But then again...talking to people who aren't there does seem to run in the family.

I try to write outlines, and I will be very honest here, I've yet to follow one. For some reason, characters plot their own course and end up going elsewhere.

I usually write the first two or three chapters to get the feel of the charachters and the situation. Every novel has been different so far. One of my novels I had this whole plot in my head, and I ended up with something far different. The one I am writing now, I can see the end very clearly, and certain scenes ahead of time.

I think as you start writing novels in full, you get better at figuring out what works and what will get you from beginning to end.

I frame the story in my head until I have something that I feel is solid enough to write a story around. I try to make sure that it has critical elements like plot, conflict, and a cast, and I want to have a good idea about the direction before word one. After that, I outline. I don't, however, outline to the smallest detail, and the outline is just a tool to me that helps keep me on track and remind me what I was thinking when I put the story together. If the characters take it somewhere else entirely then 9 times out of ten they're going to win over the outline version

Amiton.

There's a happy-medium you can use that's helped me a lot. I take my premise, my "what-if", and resolve more or less how it will end. Myself, I need to know where I'm going and the fun in the writing is how I get there. The only pre-writing of the story is a list of major plot points; that is, I start at A, which leads to B, etc. Maybe a line or two for each plot point; this is certainly shorter than a proper outline for a novel that can run longer than a short story. That gives me a descent enough map and allows for considerable organic moments. Often, it leads to a new path and I (happily) re-work the path/plot points. It also helps that I outline my characters ahead of time, usually after I have my quickie outline in place. Knowing most of the characters' histories, psychologies, goals ahead of time provides me with more fodder and helps me tweak that initial outline.

But like most say, do whatver works for you and helps you reach THE END.

PS I write a complete outline after I finished the story. I find this helps me with revision in that I can see where the plot slows, where it's too quick, where I've skipped too many connecting scenes or repeated too many similar scenes.

I tend to make long, detailed, excited, scribbly outlines... and then misplace them, delete them, get annoyed by them or otherwise completely disregard them when it comes time to actually write.

I can't outline for crap. So I just sit and type. I'm very anal retentive (yes, me, I know that's a shocking revelation) so I have to progress chronologically. So when later scenes pop into my head, I have to make notes on notecards. I do know that eventually I'll get to that point, but I don't know how until my characters show me.

I know that in the end, the guy and the girl will end up together, but I'm not sure how yet. They'll let me know.