How Planned is Your Plan?

[hotdogwater]

I tend to come up with ideas for stories and just want to start writing immediately. Of course, this doesn't make for a very motivating start after the first few pages.

Well, I've been thinking on my world for the past year or so and I think I have something I can really stick with. I purposefully planned it way more than I usually do, but I left several gaps for me to fill in as they come to me. I also have several alternatives that could happen, should the story feel like it's leaning a certain way over another. I guess I'm just wondering, do you typically extensively plan your world before writing? Is it normal to come up with a general plan and fill in the blanks as you go, adjusting previous drafts and world mechanics?

Since I tend to start drafts and never finish them (I haven't made it past 50 pages into a novel yet), I want to make sure I'm not writing too soon. I usually have an idea and run with it the moment I think of it. This story has been swimming around in my brain for a year and I want to make it come to life.

 

[Gurkhal]

I tend to go from big to small and essentially start with an overview and this overview gets more and more detailed, filled out and revisited until the story is finished.

 

[pmmg]

I do not plan my world. I just let it come about organically.

Stories are not about world building, They are about conflicts. These usually take the form of Man vs Man, Man vs God, Man vs nature...or some sort. You need to figure out your conflict and what it means to your main character, your side characters and your world. Without conflict, you dont have a story in the making, you just have game world.

 

[skip.knox]

Starting is the easiest thing in the world; finishing is the hardest. How you get from the one to the other is the deepest of secrets because it's different from one person to the other. It took me close on sixty years to figure it out, and I still can't identify the magic because it seems to be different from one story to the next. The only real secret is painfully obvious: don't stop. If you keep going, that's no guarantee, but stopping is a dead certainty.

As for planning, that's no guarantee either, but it works for some people. Maybe it will work for you. The only way to tell is to start. And not stop.

 

[ThinkerX]

Anymore, I don't start a story without solid notions of the beginning, middle, and end. Longer stories get a short outline.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Every writer is different, some plan everything and write 20k word outlines, others sit down with nothing more than an interesting looking character and take it from there. Find what works for you. If it doesn't work, try something else.

I used to start a lot and never finish anything. Mainly because I had a few fun scenes in my head but a book needs a lot more content than just a few scenes. And I wouldn't know where I had to go from there. I then started planning out my stories. Nothing too fancy. Just a sentence or two per chapter. And with that I found that I could actually finish stuff. I would know what to write when I sat down, and that helped me immensely.

 

[Qaraq1001]

Given the responses, it looks like your issue is more about forward motion and sustained writing than world-building. I also think people world build in many different ways, including adding on ideas in later books in a series. But the plan vs spontaneous writing is an old issue. I love outlining, so I always spend a few months drafting and re-drafting an outline for the entire book, which includes some world building and research, but mostly chapter by chapter planning. The outline then keeps me honest and schedule-conscious of getting to the finish (and that's just first draft). But if your natural tendency is to jump in and write while it's fresh, do it. But when that urge slows, I'd recommend doing a full outline based on what you learned from that first fresh start.

 

[xena]

It’s totally normal to start with a general plan and then refine things as you go. Maybe set up a light structure to guide you, but don’t let perfectionism stop you from actually writing.

 

[Incanus]

I definitely used some planning to devise a plan for the plan of my novel.

I spent a bunch of time in world-building mode (a long time ago, over ten years now), but it wasn't strictly necessary. Still, now that it is done, I'm glad I have it. I largely did it out of enjoyment and fascination. Very little of it helped me figure out a plot or characters though.

If you do want to go a bit crazy with the world-building, I think that's fine. But I would say that going out of your way to include as much as you can about the world into the narrative is almost certainly not a good idea.

Working out a plot was quite a bit more difficult for me, but I now have something I am more or less happy with.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I can't pants my way out of a paper bag, and my two partners are supportive. Our last outline came in at about 100 pages. Book's 660. Next two are looking about that, too.

 

[Vaporo]

My plan (do not steal, been working on it for years):

Spoiler: The Plan

Step 1: Get rich.
Step 2: ??????
Step 3: Write book.

 

[hotdogwater]

I do not plan my world. I just let it come about organically.

Stories are not about world building, They are about conflicts. These usually take the form of Man vs Man, Man vs God, Man vs nature...or some sort. You need to figure out your conflict and what it means to your main character, your side characters and your world. Without conflict, you dont have a story in the making, you just have game world.

I think this is definitely true. As I've been working on this story I've found that writing first to explore who my main character is has really helped me shape her motivations and reactions. I've been trying different tactics to really build her personality and internal conflicts. It's really helped me when I reach a point where she needs to make a decision, I'll quickly write down several different things she can do or say. Then, I'll write what the internal intention or reason is for each of them.

So if she's asked a question like "Why didn't you do this thing?" I might write she doesn't respond - reserved, unsure, or annoyed. Or "because you didn't do this thing" - prideful, protecting, feeling anger. It changes based on the context of course, but writing out the different things she can do has really been helping me write a consistent character with reactions that actually make sense given her external and internal conflicts. It also helps me notice things that align with a side character that I could use in the future.

I find the external conflict is easier to morph to my character than to morph my character to my external conflict. I don't tend to enjoy a book unless it's character driven and explores complex thoughts and feelings. If a character is flat, I don't want to read it. So tying my character and my conflicts together early on is important to me in order to actually build her story.

 

[hotdogwater]

Given the responses, it looks like your issue is more about forward motion and sustained writing than world-building. I also think people world build in many different ways, including adding on ideas in later books in a series. But the plan vs spontaneous writing is an old issue. I love outlining, so I always spend a few months drafting and re-drafting an outline for the entire book, which includes some world building and research, but mostly chapter by chapter planning. The outline then keeps me honest and schedule-conscious of getting to the finish (and that's just first draft). But if your natural tendency is to jump in and write while it's fresh, do it. But when that urge slows, I'd recommend doing a full outline based on what you learned from that first fresh start.

Yeah, I definitely have problems with consistently writing. I've given myself a vague outline for the main plot, then I vague outline for my first act. Then, before I start writing each chapter, I do a tiny summary of what is going to happen, and bullet point my goals for that chapter. Reader should learn x, reader should feel x, MC learns x, Tension established x. or something like that. Usually, by the time I'm done with the chapter, it looks nothing like the summary lol. But that's okay, the summary just helps me get started.

I've also tried taking tension off of finishing everything when I'm there. If I feel stuck on dialogue or an action scene, I just move on. I'll come back to it later when I feel like I've learned enough about my story to complete it.