How much do you plan?

[Incanus]

The day you sat down to begin your novel, how much planning had you done? Did you have just a few ideas and a handful of scratch notes? Or did you have everything about plot and characters all worked out ahead of time? Maybe something in between? What things do you absolutely have to have ready before you start? Is there a minimum? Do you do more than the minimum? How did you know you were ready to begin writing?

I’m interested in how my fellow Scribes have gone about this, not so much to replicate it, but to hear a variety of ‘testimonials’. I’m taking into account that no two stories are the same, and that different kinds of preparation are necessary for different kinds of stories.

Also, I realize world-building projects can be anywhere from zero to ridiculously vast.

I’m not looking for highly elaborate details, just a general idea of ‘how much’.

 

[Androxine Vortex]

I am purposefully taking a long time to write my book because the scope of timeline in it is so vast and everyday I come up with new and better ideas. The basic idea of the story has always been the same but I have revised and changed and completely rewrote ideas that my story a year ago looks extremely different. I spend the majority of my time world building and creating "lore" since my story is more of a poetic narrative. I want to take my time and not rush my work. You shoudn't rush art. I plan on taking many more years dedicated to outlining everything and "setting the stage." Is this necessary? For me, yes.

 

[Gurkhal]

I'm not writing novels but at this point I plan the key parts rather detailed, but the road between these parts are most often given a fairly general treatment.

 

[Svrtnsse]

My current project is a short story and not a novel, but I used a very similar process when I wrote my novel. I basically start with a very short and simple outline, which I then rewrite in more and more detail until I know almost exactly what's going to be happening at any stage of the story.

To give some numbers: The outline for my story is just below 20k words. This includes all rewrites from the first one, which is less than 50 words, until the fifth, which includes all the lines for all the conversations as well as notes for what emotions the characters are expressing when they say their lines.

The first time I started on my novel I had no outline at all, just a vague idea about what I wanted to do with. After ten pages I was so far off track I decided to scrap it all and think things over a little.

 

[Penpilot]

What I need to start is as flows. For the plot, I need the major story beats for my major characters. For each major character I need to know, what do they want physically? What do they want emotionally? And why?

That's the barest bones of what I need. Often I have more than that, but if I have those things, I can get going and everything else can be put together on the fly.

 

[Incanus]

To give some numbers: The outline for my story is just below 20k words. This includes all rewrites from the first one, which is less than 50 words, until the fifth, which includes all the lines for all the conversations as well as notes for what emotions the characters are expressing when they say their lines.

The first time I started on my novel I had no outline at all, just a vague idea about what I wanted to do with. After ten pages I was so far off track I decided to scrap it all and think things over a little.

Impressive, Svrtnsse. 20,000 is pretty detailed. I'm wondering--how long did it take to go from the 50 word version to the fifth version of the outline?

My first (4 or 5? I've forgotten how many) attempts sound like the last thing you said here--Not doing that anymore!

 

[Svrtnsse]

I don't have the exact dates for when I started on the outline, but it was sometime in early May and I started on the first chapter in early June. So less than a month but more than three weeks.
If you want to have a look, the full outline is available online here: Emma’s Story – Full Outline | s v r t n s s e
There's no summary available, so you won't get an overview of the actual story, but you may get an idea of how I work with rewriting the scenes and adding in more details with each attempt.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

The day you sat down to begin your novel, how much planning had you done?

I do a lot more planning now than compared to my beginning. Full pantsing doesn't work for me if the story is longer than a standard short (say 5k words or less). I've planned for as long as 4 months before, but I should note, that story is currently on the shelf as I've realized it's a bit big for me at this stage in my development.

Did you have just a few ideas and a handful of scratch notes? Or did you have everything about plot and characters all worked out ahead of time? Maybe something in between?

The main characters are fleshed out pretty well, and after a considerable amount of time has passed just stewing on characters and plot ideas. Not every detail needs to be worked out. I like to leave some room for discovery writing in between major plot points, but the big ones, they need to be relatively firm

What things do you absolutely have to have ready before you start?

1) Main characters: How many, what are their roles, who is/are the POVs, 1st/3rd person, narrative style and voice.
2) How I can begin in a way that'll grab
3) How I can end in a way that'll please and surprise (The inevitable yet unexpected)
4) Inciting event
5) Key event
6) Story structure (I typically default to 3 Act)

All of the above are must haves before the story takes shape.

Is there a minimum? Do you do more than the minimum?

See above. That's my minimum for anything larger than short stories. Is that more than average? I don't know

How did you know you were ready to begin writing?

When I have a firm grasp of all the points mentioned above, I'm ready to start planning scenes. The scenes linked together, form a rough, but general and dynamic outline, which is expanded or reduced as needed, & followed for each writing session.

 

[Incanus]

I don't have the exact dates for when I started on the outline, but it was sometime in early May and I started on the first chapter in early June. So less than a month but more than three weeks.
If you want to have a look, the full outline is available online here: Emma’s Story – Full Outline | s v r t n s s e
There's no summary available, so you won't get an overview of the actual story, but you may get an idea of how I work with rewriting the scenes and adding in more details with each attempt.

Wow. Even more impressive. So you wrote all 5 of those outlines inside of a month? I don't think I could do that even with a gun to my head. I have difficulties linking abstract thoughts to abstract thoughts, and I have difficulties coming up with ideas I like enough to go with the ideas I had difficulty in coming up with in the first place--if you follow me. Yeah, I need to stew on my ideas before they start to solidify.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Wow. Even more impressive. So you wrote all 5 of those outlines inside of a month? I don't think I could do that even with a gun to my head. I have difficulties linking abstract thoughts to abstract thoughts, and I have difficulties coming up with ideas I like enough to go with the ideas I had difficulty in coming up with in the first place--if you follow me. Yeah, I need to stew on my ideas before they start to solidify.

I think the trick for me is to start with something very simple and then elaborate on it little by little. That way the logical leaps that needs making won't be as big. In the outline I also don't have to care at all about making sure anyone else understands what I'm writing, so there's no polishing on language and sentences and choice of words etc. I can save a lot of time there.

Once I got started on the actual story it got a lot slower and now I'm averaging a little over 2k words a week (the plan is one chapter a week and I've managed that for the past 12 weeks).

 

[skip.knox]

I'm doing this backward, or so I think after reading Svrtnsse's posts. The only way I'm able to get to a 50 word outline is by stumbling my way through much longer exercises. Or, to put it another way, if I gave you a brief outline of my novel at the *beginning* it would have been about entirely different characters. It still would have been about an invasion, but that's about the only point still in common with where I am now (working through Draft 2).

To go back to the initial question, I do very little planning up front. I get an idea that intrigues me (what if goblins rather than barbarians invaded the Roman Empire; or, a fellow learns how to grow human beings like growing plants) and I have to write my way through it. Oh, I can plan up front, and I have, but the actual writing rarely resembles the initial plan. Maybe I'll learn to plan better, but I dunno.

So what I wind up with is more or less constant planning. I don't know how I would even begin distinguishing between writing that is outlining, sketching, prototyping, and writing that is writing, and writing that is re-writing. It all just feels like writing to me.

 

[DanJames]

I change, from idea to idea. I also don't just write fantasy.

The crime thriller I started has a lot of detail within it's planning. However, the drama I'm writing has no plan outside of a few details in my head.

With the crime thriller, there's a lot of head games stuff, mysteries to unravel, puzzles to solve and the all important twists in the tale - because of this the level of detail in the plan has been unbelievable, deciding on any named character and how they fit in. Who is a red herring, who is the real killer, motivations, etcetera, etcetera.

The drama I'm writing is about a guy who always wanted to globe trot finally being put in a position to do it, but it goes from bad to worse every step of the way before finally coming home. This will have planning, but it will all be done as a rolling process, I want to write as if I'm experiencing it as the character, so I want to be surprised when he goes to Hong Kong for example, by reading up and researching what I need to know about Hong Kong. Experiencing the world as he does.

With the fantasy work I'm doing it's all a little different. There is planning involved, but the venture is a joint project with a friend, so all our planning goes through each other, which does slow down the process if we're not seeing each other often. We'll also often write about something that will be a continuation of something one of us has already written, but from another perspective or further on down the timeline. Because of this when one of us changes something we may both be required to. This is a large amount of effort on our part, but is making the verse stronger as a result.

 

[Miskatonic]

It varies a lot. If I'm creating a complete fantasy universe then it's going to take a lot of planning. On the other hand if I'm creating something that takes place in our world but has some supernatural or fantasy elements thrown in then I really don't have to take much time at all.

I've thrown a few ideas together for a paranormal/supernatural detective story that is ready to go when it becomes a priority. I didn't really need to spend a lot of time thinking out all of the details as far as the "rules" of how the fantasy elements work. I can adjust anything that needs adjusting while I write without having to really worry about creating glaring contradictions that I have to go back to and fix constantly.

This is the main reason why I spend a lot of time doing my research and planning out all the details when I'm creating a full scale fantasy universe. Once all the details are in place I can just write the story and not have to worry about having to constantly adjust the rules to make things work. It takes a lot of time if you are really focused on all the little details, but it will pay off in the end.

 

[Incanus]

@skip--I think the only 'backwards' way is the way that doesn't end up working out. The approach that works is the right approach. I seem to be somewhere between you and Svrtnsse.

I like how you said that all the different parts still 'feels like writing' to you. I could use that sensations a little: somehow, brainstorming doesn't feel that productive to me, because it doesn't generate any prose, just a few scraps of notes. Of course that's silly because the early ideas are crucial and everything else depends and builds upon them.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Well as I've said before I'm pure pantster. I've never planned at all.

My system is more organic than that. I start with a scene or an idea write it, and then go from there. So for example my current work - provisionally called "Spaced" - began with a single concept - the idea of someone - a pilot on a ship completely alone - completely lost somewhere in the universe with no way home. The ship works but he simply doesn't have a map. From there I asked the basic questions - how did he get lost? What sort of drive could dump you anywhere in the universe with no direction home? (That would actually make a good title now that I think of it.) Who is this guy? What does he do?

From there I expand the scene and the elements of plot come. For example is the book about his getting home? Is it about how he got lost / spaced? I world build and do all the rest as I go.

As for how well it works, for me it's perfect because it means I can only write what inspires me. To give you some idea, I started Spaced on the fifth of the month and it's currently 92K, close to finished the first draft. I can't imagine that I would be anywhere close to this if I'd tried writing a plan and then writing according to it.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Chessie]

Hi, Incanus. How much planning I do really depends on the story itself. I always do plan because having a strong sense of what's happening in that story allows me to write more efficiently. I write more short fiction than novels, so I loosely plot the shorts whereas the novels take more time to construct before starting to write.

I will say this: plotting in general, whether it be just a little or a lot, has allowed me to know enough going into those scenes that my word count has essentially tripled since I first started writing. I know a lot of writers shy away from "knowing everything" and all I can say is that no, I don't know everything, just some things, and planning has been a boon to my writing.

 

[FifthView]

I plan in detail before writing, similar to T.Allen.Smith's approach. The problem I have, from time to time, is the perfectly planned scene that turns out to be boring once the writing begins. I don't necessarily mean boring only for myself as I'm writing, but the realization also that it will be boring for the reader. The scene can still be perfectly logical, seemingly necessary, etc., but simply be boring. When this happens, it always feels like a major roadblock in the whole process and throws me off my game.

 

[cupiscent]

I prefer to plan a lot. The novel I've just finished polishing and am starting to shop around had a rough plan, but that still led to lots of false starts, which led to some chapters taking a couple of weeks to write. The rough draft took me something like two years. And then when I came to revision, I trashed whole sections and did different things, because that didn't suit the overall story. That was when I decided that I needed to nail down the overall story before I'd written 100k words.

For the next project (currently sitting in a drawer awaiting revisions) I planned a lot. Before I started writing, I had a fifteen-page outline for a thirty-chapter novel, which ended up being about 70k words long (it's YA, and still missing some meat in rough draft). I wrote the rough draft in under 30 days. I've only just started looking at it with an eye to revisions, but while there's going to be a lot of colouring and polishing, I'm not envisaging any major lift-and-shift work.

For the project I'm currently rough-drafting, I had a medium-level plan when I started writing - chapter points but no scene details, about five pages for a novel expected to be 100k words. Everything was going great until I stalled in the fourth chapter, with absent details that had big story ramifications. I've now accepted that I need to plan further, and am taking a couple of weeks to get my planning across the novel down to scene level. If I solve all the problems now, writing goes much more smoothly.

I will note that my planning has been influenced hugely by having completed and revised two novels. Revisions have shown me the sorts of things I need to know and have in place for the big story elements, so I can start working those into initial planning such that I don't have to fix them in revisions. I'm not sure that planning - no matter how careful or intricate - can help without full experience of your own storytelling.

 

[Incanus]

Thanks everyone. I'm all out of 'Thanks' for the time being.

I'm not even certain why, but I like hearing about the various ways in which people approach these things. I guess I like knowing where I fit in the bigger scheme.

I hardly know how to even get my head around psychotick's production levels. Leaves Stephen King in the dust. Thus I have to assume you are a professional writer and earn your income that way. I'm not sure I could even copy down an already written novel in a month much less think of one I like, develop the characters, theme, setting, style, pacing, and execute it all in that time, while holding down a full-time job. Talk about rushing art (as Androxine Vortex mentioned)! 12 novels a year is incomprehensible to me. Though I have absolutely no idea one way or the other, I do find myself wondering about the quality level of such output.

I'll be spending the next month or so simply developing ideas. After that, it will likely take me at least a couple of years to draft and edit a single, average-sized novel. psychotick will apparently complete 24-36 novels to my 1 in that time. Totally mind-blowing.

 

[SugoiMe]

I like to at least have a timeline of where my characters are gonna be at on which days. I also have a rough idea for how many chapters I'm gonna spend in a certain location. Then I just fly at her.

This NaNoWriMo, I actually have some examples for scenes I want to use, so there's a bit more planning involved.