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