Planning a Plot

[Savvy]

I'm doing a research project and my research question is 'How is a fantasy novel planned and developed?' I was wondering what various techniques writers use to plan a plot and develop characters. Are there common steps you go through before beginning to write? I'd be really grateful for anyone's responses (which will be used in my research)

 

[Chilari]

I don't think any two writers do it the same way. I don't think I even do it the same way twice. Having said that I've only ever completed one first draft; the published authors might be more helpful than me. But I guess for me, the general steps are that I start with an initial idea - a character, a scene, something like that - and think about what happens next. I then build on that sequence of scenes to make it into a proto-plot. I then work on the motivation of the characters and other character elements, and maybe a little worldbuilding, then plan out the plot again taking into account the decisions I've made about characters and world in the interim, and this often changes the plot quite a lot. Mostly when I'm working on this, it's in note form, sort of train of thought, and usually in emails from work. A paragraph or two on one thing, like a character, then a few on a tangentally related thing, like social strata and how this character fits into it. At some point I might formalise planning and plotting using the Snowflake method - start with a sentence plot summary, then a paragraph, then a page, and the same for each of the major characters - but not always. Throughout the first draft I am still planning, usually the smaller events and individual scenes that I didn't go into detail about before, or the way minor characters might be woven into different parts of the plot.

On my current WIP, I've barely done any planning - just 14K words of rather rambling emails to myself on topics ranging from currency to naming conventions, covering very few characters and several different incarnations of the plot - and I am keeping track of things like characters and places in a table where the name, a brief description, and page first mentioned or named is recorded. Nothing else. At the moment the brief description might be something like "Jantia's younger half-sister; has crush on Marney" or "Labourer in Sweetbrook, friend of Rew"; but at the same time I'm adding to that 14K word document of collected emails with new information about characters who didn't even exist a week ago, and where I will bring them back in the future and what role they'll play. So while I'm writing I'm still developing and changing the plot based on new ideas, reconsiderations of the themes, following threads in this forum that make me think about what i'm writing and how, or in the name of simplifying things or making the story more complex.

 

[TWErvin2]

I don't know how much detail you need Savvy, but here's the basics of how I came up with my first novel"

The initial thought that sparked the novel’s writing occurred while I was driving home from work. I was thinking about a few of the books I’d recently reread: Roger Zelazny’s The Guns of Avalon and Harry Turtledove’s World War: In the Balance. One of the main turning points in Guns of Avalon occurs when Prince Corwin discovers a way to get gunpowder to function in the magical city of Amber. In the Balance is about an alien invasion during the height of World War II. The disparity in technology between the invaders and humanity is a major element in the novel’s conflict.


Then I began to ponder, what would happen if a dragon encountered a World War II aircraft? Maybe one can see how the line of thought formed. From there I began to devise a world where such an encounter could take place. Then came the peoples and creatures that would inhabit the world, how it came to be, and the long-running, multilayered power struggle that would come to influence events in the plot that I was devising. Finally, came Krish and Lilly, Roos and Road Toad—the main characters in the novel.

After that I sat down and determined where the story would start, and how it would end. I wrote this down in a spiral notebook, along with other plot elements and idea about dialogue, places and characters. Then I wrote down major events in the story that would lead from the beginning to its end. Looking at it and thinking about what I had I pondered which would be the best POV to use, since I already knew who the protagonist would be.

After than, I began writing. I wrote the first section. Then the next writing session, I reviewed and edited what I wrote and added new words. The next session I reviewed and edited the previous new words added and then wrote new words. After the first three chapters, I read and assessed if I had what I needed to go forward with the rest of the novel. I jotted notes on what I would have to research, and in my notebook I gave names to the kindgoms and countries, with a few facts and information. Jotted notes about other major character encounters and places, to be filled in more as the time for their appearance approached, etc.

Hope that helps you understand my process for preparing to write my novel. I used much the same method for the second, altough, since it was a sequel, many of the characters and details of the world/setting were alread established.

 

[shangrila]

I usually come up with a rough plan to start with. This involves where the character starts (prison), what sets them on their journey (inciting incident), a plan, how it goes wrong, a mid- or turning point, then conflict and resolution. That's a broad summary.

From there I begin writing, taking it a step at a time. I'll keep my rough story plan in my head but I'll also let my writing take me wherever it wants. If my inciting incident changes to something better and my plan no longer fits, I'll change it. If I need a new character, I'll create them. And so on. Basically, the idea is to stay as fluid as possible.

Once that, the first draft, is done, I go back and try to really nail down the story. At this point I should have a good idea of the story I want to tell and so I'll be less fluid this time around. I'll fix up parts of the story that don't fit with later parts, due to changes, and examine my characters more thoroughly.

When that's done I'll re-write it and edit it so it's better. Usually I'll take a long look at my themes here too, to make sure they make sense, there's no half developed threads or anything like that. If so, I'll re-write it again. If not...I'll probably re-write it anyway. It might sound tedious to some, but it really helps me know my story better.

And that's basically how I do it. If I need to do worldbuilding I'll usually do that after the first draft (being fluid and all). I think I'm in the minority, at least here on the forums.

 

[JCFarnham]

My process probably isn't particularly invotative, or outside the normal, so I can't say I'll be able to help you produce a decent argument for your project. Anyway, here it goes:

The two novels I have on the go at present, represent my two different methods (two as currently defined mind you). One is fast vague outlining from a setting, the second is slower.

Which path I take depends entirely on how the idea first came to me.

On my SF novel, Blitz, the idea came to me via a need to have something to write for NaNoWriMo. My time was short. Therefore, I picked some worldbuilding I already had, brainstormed an idea that would fit in such a setting, and blasted through an outline and wrote 50k of the draft for NaNo '11. It's perhaps the closest I've come to discovery writing to date. Being that it came and went so quickly I didn't have time to worry about the hows of plotting. I later decided (in the January/February after) that I needed to heavily rearrange things for it to work. Namely it became two books, because it happened that I could clearly see a split in the plot. Two complete arcs.

My other novel (the Urban fantasy, Faebound), came to me during a black out--though the black out had no influence on the plot or any elements. I was working on Blitz at the time and since my desire to do so couldn't be fullfilled (no power, no laptop, no draft to work on) I picked up a notebook and brainstormed. It all blossomed from one idea, "Assuming magical beings exist in our world, Why can't we percieve them?". The fleshing out of this idea and the mechanics behind it lead me neatly to a well-developed magic system. Given the limitations it set for me, there could only have been one kind of mage to fill those roles. That being someone of a secret and possibly ancient organisation who uses artefacts and the effects therein rather than work pure magic directly. This combined with my love of Dresden Files style urban fantasy, and Faebound was born.

An outline spiraled out of that, and me working through the first draft followed, although at present I'm am constantly revising my outline.

I hardly ever start off with a plot worthy of hooking anyone's interest other than my own for any length of time, so my outlines hardly ever stay the same throughout a project.

The experience of writing these two novel are pretty different, but in both cases I hashed out a setting before hand that could easily support multiple and possibly standalone novels, novellas, and short stories.

 

[ShortHair]

For me, plotting is somewhat like storyboarding a movie.

It starts with a scene in my head. That scene may come from a half-remembered dream, or an item in the news, or something from real life. That gives me a place, a few characters, and a conflict. If the basic idea seems sound, a related scene will present itself. After a while I have enough scenes to begin plotting, which means fitting those loosely connected scenes into one structured narrative. Once I have an underlying structure for the story, I need a structure for the world in which it takes place. This world building may suggest things to add to the plot, and at least will add color to the eventual story.

All through this process, of course, I'm making notes. There's a truism in writing that you wind up cutting 90% of your material. Ideas get refined, changed, added, dropped. Characters get motivations that I didn't expect, or they "come to life" and start telling me how to handle them. A whole culture, even a whole universe, may come about in those notes and later disappear.

As with any document, you can outline and develop and define and illustrate, but at some point you have to put some text in there (the "top-down" approach). Others can start writing first and make sense of it later (the "bottom-up" approach). Most people, I'd guess, fall somewhere in between. Like Hitchcock, I lean heavily toward the top-down style. Even then, I can get surprised. Putting yourself inside a scene gives you a perspective you can't get from the outside.

How is this process different from writing regular fiction? With fiction, you can leave it to the reader to fill in a lot of the blanks. We all know what a mall looks like, so there's no need to describe it from scratch. With fantasy, you can start from nothing and go in any direction, so a marketplace could look like anything. Maybe dinosaurs trade books on a pier, or elves and dragons buy medicine in a mountain pass, or spiders sell doughnuts to raccoons in a cave.

The one thing that every writer of speculative fiction does is ask, "What if?" What if we could travel to other planets, what would we find? What if rabbits could speak and use magic? What if you were a goblin, how would you live? Once you answer those questions, other questions will arise. The process of creating fantasy is asking "what if" even when the answers are impossible in the real world, and following those answers wherever they lead.

 

[FireBird]

I am one of those huge outliners. I always come up with characters and the plot first before I start writing my story. After that I will usually attempt to write the first three or five chapters devoid of details. They are only filled with the characters and whats happening to them at the moment.

If I find that I can make the idea work I go back to outlining. This is when I start worldbuilding and this part generally takes me a long time. After I have a full outline of the plot with the worldbuilding details I will start from scratch and *try* to finish. I'm still not finished with my first novel so thats all I have for now.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I'm doing a research project and my research question is 'How is a fantasy novel planned and developed?' I was wondering what various techniques writers use to plan a plot and develop characters. Are there common steps you go through before beginning to write? I'd be really grateful for anyone's responses (which will be used in my research)

Obviously this varies from writer to writer, but I would recommend making at least a vague outline before you start writing the actual story.

I tend to invent the characters and the settings first, then think of a beginning, and ending and scenes I want to include in-between, and try to stitch a plot together from that. In the past I've not really bothered with outlining because I've found it tedious, but then again I've also had trouble getting my plots to come together.

 

[writeshiek33]

for me i have rough idea what i want in my head and first draft is outline because i might add or take bits in later versions i am dyslexic in writing but i read no problem so i have main idea flesh oit out as iwrite first draf