This topic has been covered many times in this and other forums, but I read something at Natalie D. Richards website (http://nataliedrichards.com/) that resonated with my own approach to structuring stories and thought I'd share it with this forum. Natalie Richards is a NY Times best-selling author of young adult novels. Below is what I read at the About page at her website. "As a writer, she tends to write by the seat of her pants without much of a clue as to where she is going with each scene, often with the entire book as a whole. Natalie finds this helps her maintain an authentic edge of suspense in all her work because she honestly has no idea just how or even if her characters will get out of whichever mess she has written them into." At one of my Books-In-Order sites, I read this about Natalie Richards. [Urls are mine] "When editing, however, she follows Joseph Campbell's The Hero’s Journey [https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/story-structure/heros-journey/] because it's a powerful way to evaluate a manuscript for coming-of-age stories. She also uses Freytag’s Pyramid ([https://thewritepractice.com/freytags-pyramid/] and sometimes the Three-Act Structure ([https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-three-act-structure]. And who could forget Kurt Vonnegut's Eight Shapes [https://bigthink.com/high-culture/vonnegut-shapes/] of a story! Like Natalie Richards, I never know how my story will end. The saying, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." is true in positive and negative ways. Positive if you don't want to stunt your spontaneous creativity. Negative if your story wanders aimlessly because you don't have an ending to write towards. Yes, it seems paradoxical that your characters can lead you to their ending. But free writing, if I can call it that, opens me to twists and turns, surprises and suspense I'd never discover by outlining or planning my stories. Like Natalie Richards and many authors, of course, there comes a time when you must find ways to edit all that stream of consciousness. Let the adventure begin!
My current fix for this is to create a bare skeleton of a plot. No details, just a thread that keeps me from getting lost as I write my way through, and so I know basically what ending I'm working toward, though not in any detail. This allows the magic to happen that can if you're writing a little beyond the edge of known territory. I find if I plot in detail it loses all that magic, which only happens at the actual writing level, not at the potting level.
I've written a novel based on a great ending line and I've written novels based on a single image that came to mind. The plot and characters grow from there, and as I write, I probably outline a couple of dozen versions of the story before writing the final words. It took me months to figure out how in the heck to kill off the bad guy in the last novel, but when the answer came to me, it was with angels singing and rainbows arching. No unicorns, though. I was a little disappointed, but I went with it anyway.
Your comment reminds me of how difficult it was for me to find a satisfying ending to my novel. I wish my answer had come with angels, rainbows and unicorns! Mine was more like a struggle to find a way for the main character to solve his problem without divine intervention, luck or serendipitous circumstances.
Maybe you didn't spend enough time staring at a wall or gazing into middle distance while losing track of conversations people kept trying to have with you?
Oh, guilty as charged. I'm frequently disconnected from what's going on around me -- my thoughts in some imaginative world, struggling to get hold of some idea or memory just out of reach, or struggling to keep up with the stream of consciousness with my two-finger typing. Reminds me of Sean Connery in the movie Finding Forester, where he tells his student to write with your heart, then edit with your head (disconnect yourself from everything and anything that could distract you from your free writing and focused editing).
Writing without planning or an outline doesn't mean it's all coming out like stream of consciousness. I am a 100% pantser and my writing is pretty clean and clear even in the first draft.
Being a pantser, has been hit or miss for me. I am finding that I need to build a structure to work in. For me it is like planning a trip. Going across country, I know I have to stop at specific places, to refuel. How I go between any two stops, I have options for which road to take. Perhaps this isn't the best analogy, but having that planning helps my process.
I struggle a whole lot when it comes to plotting. Usually, I have an idea of where my story should go, but I don't think I have strong enough climax to make the story engaging. I think I lean more as a panster then a plotter, but I know if I go off with nothing, I'll most likely lose any sense of direction. I've been thinking of writing solely on conflict with characters, but I have issues with that too, since I'm not too sure on how to make them fully fleshed out without making them too similar or whatever. I overthink too much, and it's the main crutch I have with writing. I have problems with making my characters suffer as well ( I can never be the bad guy in video games no matter how much easier it would be), so yeah. I also thought about focusing on writing scenes, to break down my projects in little increments. Then after, I could thread them together in a more coherent mess to edit. I still don't have my process with plotting down pat yet, but I think I can figure it out more by writing fanfiction, since I know more about characters already established then ones I made myself.
Panster, plotter. I like the distinction. As I've mentioned earlier in this thread, I tend to be a panster in my early drafts, then I becone a plotter to identify and correct inconsistencies in my panstering... is that a word?
That's a good approach. It prevents you from thinking too much about plot and structure in the early drafts, which can resuslt in a mechanical story. Early stages should be more driven by feel. Then where there are problems you apply what you've learned about plotting. I also believe it's helpful to study several different approaches to plotting so you aren't stuck with having to slavishly follow just one. After learning the first one you're familiar with the ideas, like plot points, what a hook and an inciting incident are, how they should connect with the climax etc. Then you're able to think more clearly about the essentials of plotting, rather than just follow one method with no understanding or knowledge of what plot really is.
Would you drive Coast to coast, without any planning? I use the https://storygrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Journal-Foolscap.pdf to give a rough outline of the story before writing it. It gives me a road map of where I am trying to go, while letting me take side trips as inspiration hits.
Yes, been there and done that and the trip was full of surprises I would not have encountered if I had tried to control my trip with a rigid rather than just a rough plan. This reminds me of a memoir I wrote about the approach my wife and I took toward our retirement... "Life can't surprise you with unexpected pleasures and uninvited challenges if you restrict yourself to only what you can dream. So, we kept our dreams alive and real. We made ourselves available to opportunity, and when it knocked, we opened the door. And that has made all the difference. Dreams matter, and they are easier to find and follow if you give up your need for approval and your fear of failure."
Count me in with those who have headed out on long trips with the vaguest notions of where I'm going or how I'm going to get there. I've also made long trips with detailed agendas which I may or may not follow. Each way has its own merits and pitfalls.
My point was, with writing or a long trip you need to have a destination in mind, if you don't how do you know you got there? And having way points planned help you mark your progress. That doesn't mean you can't go off on tangents, and readjust way points as you go. Maybe so people can, personally I need some type of framework to work in.
As a first time writer (in any serious form), I've got a 75k+ word novel without an ending sitting in limbo currently. It's a fictionalization of a true story, I've got the bulk of the story written since I knew how it went, however, the real story has no ending currently...and so neither do I. So I'm contemplating how to end it...I'll have to make something up I guess, end it the way I would like it to end rather than how it actually will. Otherwise I'm just waiting for future events to unfold in real-time and hope it makes a good ending...not really what I had in mind when I started. I really enjoy the free-flowing writing form, but if I ever wrote another novel length story I would plot it out, if only in a rough outline, and save myself a lot of headaches.
Discovery writing (aka pantsing) is definitely a thing. It's my preferred way of working, but it does make things crazy at times. I need to at least have some idea of how I want it to end, though when I get there everything may well have changed drastically and it might need to be completely rethought. This is when writing is exciting and when you can reach 'places' you had no idea existed. The problem with taking too much conscious control is you never go off the known ways, and you're not exploring new territory. I try to strike a balance. I plan to some extent, but not too much. Just the major turning points and the climax. But I might only plan it rather vaguely, and I definitely leave room for any new ideas that come up as I'm writing. I find I need to be open to ideas that arise in the process, otherwise I'm overcontrolling everything and nothing unexpected or exciting is going to happen. It needs to be a tightrope walk between the known and the unknown. Too much in the known and it's boring.
Yes, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. But writing, like most things in life, is a work in progress that requires patience, confidence in yourself and a plan. Here's one of mine. Maybe it'll help you get to where you're going. First Reading... try to ignore spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence length and word choice so the story itself becomes the center of your attention. Give yourself feedback as a reader, not as a writer. Second Reading... with the plot and the characters roughly established in your mind, evaluate the arc of the story from its title to the beginning, middle and end. Give yourself feedback as a writer, not as a reader. Third Reading... unleash your ferocious editor by humiliating yourself with cruel remarks about technical things like spelling, grammar and diction and literary things like dramatic suspense, unrealistic dialog and endings that just plain suck! Ask yourself... Was the problem solved by your character(s) or by luck or divine intervention? Did the end reveal how the outward change led to inner closure? Were things resolved because facing this problem changed their life? Did it tie up the loose ends but foreshadow a possible future? Did it match the rest of the story—did guns & gore end with gosh & golly? Did you feel the characters changed from the beginning to the end? Does it satisfy your expectations, give you an emotionally realistic journey? Did the story help you see the world and yourself differently? Did it validate or contradict your view of life and human nature?
While I have mostly pantzed, I keep getting writer's block- and that more often than not means new story ideas for me. I'm currently trying out an outline/"story in brief" hybrid- pantzing my way through it, mostly, but I had a vague idea where I was heading in my current project. Until I decided exactly where the end should be. To borrow the trip analogy, not planning out where you're going can make for a nice trip, unless you end up on a big highway in the middle of rush hour because you didn't know to avoid it. Because you won't be going anywhere for a long time, and you might not have the gas to make it through.
I have found that panting doesn't work for me on a story level. I have found the story grid to provide a good framework for my writing. Save the cat is Lso a useful tool. I try to plot out specific points in both the story and character arcs. The points can be as simple as "the MC'S plan fails" or "MC'S DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL". the pants between those points. This gives me structure for the writing and the freedom to explore along the way.
My recent attempts to write a synopsis has given me another tool for writing a story. I'll still begin with what I call free writing (pantsing) but when I get a rough idea of what my imagination is trying to do, I'll work on a rough synopsis as a guide for crafting what's happening and how my characters feel about and respond to what's happening. Thanks to everyone who got me thinking about a synopsis!
So, yesterday (as of the time I'm writing this) I finished my outline/brief. And looking back on it, I think it's what's gonna work for me. I'm also going to start calling them Novel Briefs, unless and until I find that term already being used for something else. How it's supposed to work: 1: First off, this is going to be more like draft number 0.5. Go ahead and pantz. Written yourself into a corner? Cool, use a deus ex machina to get yourself out of it, you'll fix it later. Use only the amount of detail you need to be able to expand upon later, no more. Just get from A to B to C, so on and so forth until you get to Z. 2: When you're done, you have your starting word count. You have your bones, now you're just upping your word count with more detail and dialog. 3: Some people keep discard documents. Text doesn't take up much room, so instead I suggest iterating the document instead. Make changes, Save As "the document title number whatever", and putting them all in the same folder on a computer. (If you're using a computer. This is probably not as useful for people not using computers) 4: Once the full first draft is done, just start editing like normal. Because of writing at work, my brief is hand written, so I'm gonna have to take some time to type it unless I can get a friend to do it for me. But that just gives me two versions of it, one I can put on a shelf, and one to keep on a computer or flash drive. And I'm probably going to show my first draft to several people before I start editing. My first draft word count goal is 90k, but I expect to have a roughly 100k book, because I know I'm going to get military stuff wrong. I might as well get it right the first time, so those sections can skip the major edits later. But that's not something that'll be applicable to most people.
Hi Guys, My first time on this site. This post by Que resonated with me also. 'Free Writing' is my style of writing. It interests me because there is no right or wrong path to go down when telling your story. When I get in my 'zone' as it were, I can just write & write, the words/story seems, for me anyway, to just flow freely. I get though that this style doesn't work for everyone, especially for those that like to plan the 'course' of the book and map it out before you start. I'm 37k words in to one of my books and enjoying where my mind takes me. Tom
