The imaginary hordes following this blog will recognize that this post more than resembles the very first post in 101 TIWIK. Why am I blogging about planning again?
I want to emphasize planning because of all the mistakes I’ve made in the process of writing my first book, lack of planning was probably the costliest. Costly in time, money, and my evolution as a writer. The heart of this blogging series is to elucidate the lessons I’ve learned so that, perhaps, others can write their first book without making the same mistakes.
The other reason I’m placing such a heavy emphasis on planning is because I think many writers naturally resist it. I hear over and over in my writing community, “I don’t plan,” “Planning doesn’t work for me,” “When I try to outline it stifles my creativity,” and so on.
I think what may be required here is a shift in thinking from “I can’t plan because planning doesn’t work,” to “The planning I’ve been trying hasn’t worked, what planning method will work for me?”
Allow me to illustrate with an example. Unless you are somewhat fringe, you probably wouldn’t endeavor to build a house without a plan. Certain standards apply to every house; every house has walls, doors, a roof, a floor. Most houses have windows, plumbing, wiring, some sort of HVAC. If you started just hammering two by fours together, pretty soon you’d have a mess rather than a house.
Ah, but a book is much different from a house, you might say. When you build a house, the goal is a standard, formula outcome. You want the house to resemble, at least in its basics, all other houses. But a book should come out unique. Sure, I could write a formula book, but what would be the point? I want to write my story, and my story is original, and my process is original, therefore there’s no way I can plan it.
Fair and true. We do want our books to turn out unique. However, like a house, all books have some shared elements (again, ruling out highly experimental or fringe examples). All books, for example, have a beginning, middle and end. All books have characters. All books have a plot (though some are more obscure than others). All books are set somewhere. All books use chapters, scenes, paragraphs, and sentences. All books have a central conflict and an overarching theme.
In essence, writing, unlike construction*, has two facets at play: the parts that can be standardized, and the parts that cannot be (the unique, creative, organic, “my story” part). Incidentally, these two facets bear a striking resemblance to the ideas of left-brain vs. right-brain thinking, or reasoning vs. intuition, or whatever psychobabble you care to apply to the artistic process. That is why books are so hard to plan–in the writing process, those two faces are always in tension. Try to plan, and the creative process disrupts the plan. Fail to plan, and you end up with a pile of nailed-together lumber.
So what is the answer to this conundrum? Plan as much as you can (all the elements universal to a book as stated above) but accept that these elements are going to be disrupted once you start writing, so be willing–maybe even eager–to change the plan as you write.
Now, as I mentioned in the last post, the stages of the writing process are never linear. You may already have a draft written, and right now you are thinking, well, guess it’s too late to plan, maybe I’ll give it a try on the next book.
Wrong. It is never too late to plan. I had already drafted an initial version of the Dreams of QaiMaj series when I realized I needed to start planning. I went back and answered world building questions, filled out character sheets, tried to outline the plot (that was before my grand discovery of the summary method). And, if and when I return to tackle my first writing project, the one I floundered in for ten years, my very first step will be to write a summary. That will be after drafting three books.
Because of the importance of planning, I’ll be dedicating the next few posts to it. First I’ll talk about the goal-finding part of planning–why are you writing a book in the first place? What is your vision for the ultimate outcome? Then I’ll devote some time to planning the writing process, with an overview of various methods and some personal tricks for getting the most out of having your plan fall apart.
Next post, coming soon: 101 TIWIK #47: Envision Your Ideal.
What is your experience of planning? How has it helped you in writing or just in your life in general?
*Note that I’m referring to the building process itself as a parallel to the writing process. I realize that the design process of architecture can be a highly artistic process, probably fraught with similar perils as writing.
