Fairy Revel

I’m working on a “new” project, working title Foxglove, and it’s almost as if I’ve forgotten how to plan a story. (I put quotes around “new” because really, the idea is old, but I’m starting over with it.)

I did no planning for my NaNoWriMo manuscript, Dogwood, and even though it left my novel an unmitigated mess, it was freeing and helped me see that things don’t have be perfectly planned for the manuscript to get finished. In my case, over-planning is a detriment. It’s probably the reason why I’ve got so many unfinished stories in my files. It’s not that I feel like “I’ve told the story already”; it’s just that having all the scenes planned makes me feel committed to them, and saps all the joy out of writing them down.

In spite of that, I wanted to do a little planning this time around, and realized as I started that I’d forgotten how. I stared at my barely begun 7 1/2 Point Plan, wondering what should happen. I sat down for a few minutes with Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy (a classic genre how-to, especially great for beginners), and he reminded me that story planning is all about those “what if” questions. A light went on. “Oh, yeah! Brainstorming!”

Brainstorming is something I’m good at, up to a point. After I get a certain amount of framework in my mind, however, I have to start being organized and sitting down with a pen and notebook to draw maps and do free association. I don’t know if it’s OCD or what, but I start circling around the same ideas over and over after awhile, broken record-like, and if I don’t start writing things down I can’t get past that point.

I’m feeling positive about Foxglove, which will be the first novel in my Searoyal setting. I have a much better understanding of my own process than I did before NaNoWriMo. While I plan out the 7 major plot points of my story, I’m also going to work on a setting bible, just so I can keep everything straight.

I’m endlessly fascinated by how different successful authors approach the story planning process. Cheryl at Learn to Write Fiction compares the processes of three authors in The Many Faces of a Plotter. She says of Lois McMaster Bujold:

Lois makes a broad section outline, what she calls “the event horizon”, which is how far she can see to write until she has to stop and make up some more. This is usually between one and three chapters. She gets mental pictures of what scenes should go in the next chapter and she pushes them around until they slot into sequence. She then pulls out the next scene and outlines it closely, as a kind of messy first draft. She choreographs dialogue especially carefully.

I find this approach interesting. Cheryl doesn’t say whether Bujold knows the ending, but she does mention that she re-outlines frequently, since each scene can change what comes next. If I was ever going to try writing a story in linear order again (the order in which the finished novel would be read), I think this is the method I’d try. But I’d have to have at least an idea of some ending, even a pretend one. I need that false sense of security to keep the pages coming.