Coming up with the plan

[Zilver]

Looking for your experiences!

Did you ever write the classic scene in which the heros sit down together to come up with "the Plan"? The ingeneous or desparate plotting they have to do before they embark on their heist, rescue or invasion?

How did you approach it? Did you use the plotting scene to set up expectations you then subverted? Did you write out significant parts of that plotting scene, or did you skip over the plotting scene entirely and just start with the action? Or did anyone even do it Ocean's 11-style, where the actions is interspersed with flashbacks to the plotting...?

I'm curious to see how other people have worked with that story-situation...

 

[Karlin]

The book I recently finished (not published yet) has a planning session in someone's kitchen, where the "heroes" go over posisble options, and decide on a course of action. They do in fact follow up on that, as best as they can. Circumstances are more complicated than they may have thought, but teh plot more or less follows their plan. I didn't see any need to mislead the reader (if that is what you are asking). Personally, I tend to write more or less chronologically, so I don't write the action first and then write the planning. Unless there's a plot hole (I'm a 'pantser' so there are holes).

 

[Mad Swede]

No. That's partly because in the sorts of stories I write there isn't much deliberate plotting of that sort, certainly not in the short stories, and because in my experience those sorts of scenes just slow the action down.

 

[pmmg]

Generally, if the plan is shown to the audience, it will not go as planned, but if the plan is hidden, it will.

Personally, i dont like ‘trust me, i have a plan’. For me, that is not good enough, i want to know the plan before i trust.

 

[JBCrowson]

I agree with the dragon, that if the plan is discussed ahead of implementation, it needs to not work in some way, otherwise you've removed all the tension from the plot. If the plan isn't discussed, it may still fail though, since it is unlikely the planners will be able to foresee all possibilities.

 

[Penpilot]

I don't think what I do is anything special, but for my climaxes, it generally unfolds like this.

Come up with plan, execute plan, plan fails. come up with new plan on the fly, and execute new plan.

What you do specifically depends on the type of story you're telling and the details of your story, but generally, you want the reader to know what the plan is and what the consequences of failure are, so they know how much trouble the main characters are in when the plan doesn't work. Because you generally want tension not confusion.

Now, there are stories where keeping the reader in the dark can work, but I don't tend to write those type of stories.

 

[Karlin]

I've been thinking about this . I'm coming from a different angle, the characters. Do the characters need a planning session? I wouldn't try to manipulate the reader. If the characters need the planning, then the reader needs it too.
Not sure if your characters need a planning session? Ask them. Or, maybe they aren't real enough

 

[skip.knox]

I've been thinking about this . I'm coming from a different angle, the characters. Do the characters need a planning session? I wouldn't try to manipulate the reader. If the characters need the planning, then the reader needs it too.
Not sure if your characters need a planning session? Ask them. Or, maybe they aren't real enough

Exactly this. Most of those planning scenes are to be found in movies. They're there for a particular purpose: to mislead the audience.

I'm sure such scenes happen in fantasy fiction, but danged if I can think of an example. A similar device is with mysteries, where the group is assembled in order to review the Facts So Far and to speculate on the crime and culprit. It takes a deft hand to construct these scenes to avoid being stilted or dull. Or both.

Such scenes also require work. I've had to do this in my WIP, so I'm more aware of the issues than I usually am. The contrived nature of the scene was all too evident. I had to back up and consider each character individually. Why were they there at that particular time? What was their own view of the situation? Did they come with an agenda? Do they come in angry or frightened or coolly confident? In every case, why are they in that mind? What has happened earlier to bring them to the moment? Does the plot need them to be different? Or does the story so far mean they cannot be this or that? Sometimes it meant they could not possibly be just there, just then, even thought they needed to be. That meant some rewriting.

Oh, and in at least one case, the whole scene could slide around. Could be in this room, or that one. Could be now, or a little earlier or even later. Every possibility brought with it the need to check on all the characters again. I was very happy when I finally nailed the wretched thing to a specific time and place.

By the time I had worked through all that, I had a pretty good idea of the dynamics of the scene. Actually looked forward to a couple of interactions. But boy howdy it took a lot of work.

 

[JBCrowson]

Exactly this. Most of those planning scenes are to be found in movies. They're there for a particular purpose: to mislead the audience.

I'm sure such scenes happen in fantasy fiction, but danged if I can think of an example. A similar device is with mysteries, where the group is assembled in order to review the Facts So Far and to speculate on the crime and culprit. It takes a deft hand to construct these scenes to avoid being stilted or dull. Or both.

Such scenes also require work. I've had to do this in my WIP, so I'm more aware of the issues than I usually am. The contrived nature of the scene was all too evident. I had to back up and consider each character individually. Why were they there at that particular time? What was their own view of the situation? Did they come with an agenda? Do they come in angry or frightened or coolly confident? In every case, why are they in that mind? What has happened earlier to bring them to the moment? Does the plot need them to be different? Or does the story so far mean they cannot be this or that? Sometimes it meant they could not possibly be just there, just then, even thought they needed to be. That meant some rewriting.

Oh, and in at least one case, the whole scene could slide around. Could be in this room, or that one. Could be now, or a little earlier or even later. Every possibility brought with it the need to check on all the characters again. I was very happy when I finally nailed the wretched thing to a specific time and place.

By the time I had worked through all that, I had a pretty good idea of the dynamics of the scene. Actually looked forward to a couple of interactions. But boy howdy it took a lot of work.

The Council of Elrond is a planning meeting of sorts. Do we use the ring, hide the ring or destroy the ring? Ok we're destroying it, so who and how? And of course it all goes pear shaped...
With reference to your comment on getting the players together for such a meeting, Tolkien had Elrond invite the others, yet I think the time for a message to get to say Gondor, and Boromir to get back to Rivendell, would be longer than Elrond had knowledge of the ring's re-appearance. All of which is to say, perhaps we don't need to sweat the finer details as much as we think we do.

 

[Incanus]

I'm sure such scenes happen in fantasy fiction, but danged if I can think of an example.

Unless 'plan' is here defined differently than I would image, aren't fantasy stories involving a quest essentially using 'plans'?

The Hobbit--the opening chapter shows fifteen characters discussing a plan (to recapture the mountain stronghold from the dragon who had taken it over).

LoTR--First, to get the ring out of The Shire. In Rivendell, the longest chapter in the book depicts the characters going over the facts, discussing many alternative plans (e.g. - guard the ring, use the ring against Sauron, give it to Bombadil, throw it in the sea), before deciding on destroying it in the only place it can be. They change plans often as they go (instead of going south they cross the Misty Mountains, they have a meeting at the 'Breaking of the Fellowship' chapter to discuss plans, Gandalf has plans to gather the disparate groups in Rohan to fight in Helm's Deep, Rohan plans to aid Gondor in the war, after the battle of Minas Tirith the plan is to draw the forces of Mordor away from Mount Doom).

Some plans are more implicit than others, but they are still plans, and they rarely go as intended.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I've been thinking on this a bit, and my conclusion is that the big planning scenes are never actually about the plan. The plan is just a means to a different end.

The council of Elrond is a good example. The actual "let's take the ring to Mordor and destroy it" part is small, and other than painting a target on the horizon, it doesn't do much. Instead, the chapter is about broadening the scope of the story. Until the council, the whole story was: Get the Ring to Rivendell, and then everything will be all right. Frodo achieved that, and then the council happens and suddenly it turns from a small 250 page adventure story into a 1.000 page epic.

At the same time, it shows the conflict itself is broader than the reader thought, with Dwarves from the Lonely Mountain being there, and Elves from Mirkwood, etc. Now there is wizards involved and the opposition is even bigger than they thought

The council also fills in blanks in the past (which don't actually matter to the plan if you think about it). It explains to the reader what happened to Gandalf and a few other bits.

Lastly, it introduces us to the different characters, and why they are even there.

None of these are part of the plan. The planning part is just used to give the reader all these bits of information. The plan itself is pretty boring and it's what the reader will be reading about anyway.

Two other reasons for a planning meeting from a narrative perspective (which aren't present in the Council of Elrond) are: to show how impossible the job at hand is (so create tension) and to draw a map for the reader.

The first you can see in stories like Ocean's 11, where the planning meeting is something like we need to do X, which is impossible. And then we have to achieve Y, which is also impossible, which leads to Z, which we don't know how to do yet. It gives an idea of the scope and the odds they're facing. Note that the planning itself doesn't contain any solutions in this case. Only the problems are mentioned.

That's because of part 2, namely drawing the map. In such a heist story, there are a lot of side-quests. They need to get McGuffin X, and infiltrate Y, and learn how to do Z. All these are separate things that seem unrelated. By having a planning meeting at the start (where they're mentioned as problems only), the reader knows that they all go together to serve a distinct purpose. They stop being random side quests and become part of a larger plot. They also become a way of marking progress. The characters can (sometimes literally) tick off their progress on a list for each item they completed.

 

[Incanus]

I've been thinking on this a bit, and my conclusion is that the big planning scenes are never actually about the plan.

I partially agree. I would say that big planning scenes are never ONLY about the plan. Which is part of a larger piece of generally good advice for fiction: scenes should be doing more than one job at once. In the case of Council of Elrond, the plan is the point of the chapter and the most important part; the other elements serve to back it up or round it out.

To answer the OP, in my WIP I have a few plan discussion scenes. As far as I know, I'm not doing anything unusual or special with them. They help to focus the plot, and they set up expectations. Fairly standard stuff--the plans don't go as they are supposed to.

 

[Mad Swede]

I think the use of planning scenes also varies with the way you write. If you're writing in close third person then a planning scene can become one persons view of a meeting, which allows for the use of interpretations of what the plan is intended to be. That makes it possible to vary how the plan works in the story without it being too contrived. Things going wrong can be due to something as simple as a misunderstanding of what was agreed at the meeting.

 

[minta]

That is really nice tho.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I agree with the dragon, that if the plan is discussed ahead of implementation, it needs to not work in some way, otherwise you've removed all the tension from the plot. If the plan isn't discussed, it may still fail though, since it is unlikely the planners will be able to foresee all possibilities.

I circumvent the cliche of them discussing the "plan" at all by having them get interrupted (during the plan) by one of their obstacles (A Giant) and one of the party uses his silver tongue to befriend them instead.

One of the party members calls him out on a 'perception check' but the idea works anyway. The scene is meant to be a short comedic romp, not a proper base raid. (They're just small time bandits that got cocky) Later the party member makes a 'connection' with the giant and the pair become fast friends. (Perhaps too fast for the tiny)

When the conflict starts to get too much for the party the giant recuperates their kindness by quitting her job as a body guard, especially after seeing the exact artifact that was stolen. Throughout all this she's shown to be more intelligent than the average 'tiny' thinks most giants are. The heroes respect this intelligence and thus win her to their side.