plotting... do you finish it all before starting to write?

aguywhotypes said:

To the writers that are all plotters. Do you plot the whole story/novel out before you even begin writing or not?

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I'm still trying to find my method. I started out as a pantser... except, I'd also extensively plot things out in my head, so maybe that's a sort of hybrid approach. I never wrote with no idea where things were headed. But I did have a lot of really cool ideas about scenes and such that I just couldn't connect with each other. So I ended up putting all the writing on hold while I outlined. Having all the plot points written out and ordered helps me better see how things connect (or why they don't) and how to piece it all together.

I've been actively outlining for about a week and a half. That part is going well, but I'm not sure whether it's going to make the writing part any more successful. We'll see, I guess.

Also, another characteristic I'm seeing myself develop is I feel I can never come up with an original overall plot for a story. I have to find it on a forum or in a 'idea' book or wherever. This bothers me, should it? Or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

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Do you mean that you take ideas, wholesale, from other sources.... or do you mean that you see a prompt for something and it gives you an idea? Because I think we mostly all do that in some form or another. Our ideas have to come from somewhere.

I guess I'm in-between for one of my works. I have a general plot, but as I write, the plot keeps changing...
As for my second work, I have no plot, it appears at the same time my MC discovers it.

I had a number of scenarios that I wanted to put into my WIP that went along with the basic concept of the WIP. I did have "fill in" chapters here and there. But for the most part, everything just fell into place. I couldn't write it down fast enough

I've been writing for a few years and my method has changed throughout until I've settled on something that works pretty well (for me). The first few times I sat down to write a book, I tried to pants it; I only got 10k or so in before stalling because I had no idea where to go next. Then I found http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/ and the next book I wrote, I followed every step of the snowflake method. It seemed to take forever, but I'm glad I did it - the method really helped me understand my characters and story world. The next time, I used parts of the snowflake method - focusing on character descriptions, motivations, goals, conflicts, etc - but I didn't do the whole thing. The next book, I followed the method a little less tightly.
Currently, I nail down my main characters with a name, brief description, brief history, motivation, goal, and conflict in bulleted form. Three to five lines of text, max. Then I'll do another paragraph on the world (I write SFF).

By that point, I usually want to start writing so badly I can barely stand it (and while writing about the characters, I've had time to mull the story around in my head a bit more). I sit down and just write - no details (unless they really stand out to me) - I guess it's kind of like a long synopsis. For an 80k book, my "plan" might be 10k. I use telling instead of showing in the synopsis. The long synopsis works for me because 1) I usually can't wait to get the entire plot down on paper because I need to know how the story ends 2) it gives me an opportunity to work out larger story issues/ways character will solve problems/roadblocks/exciting new challenges before I'm in the thick of actually writing the book. Since I started doing this, I haven't had writer's block.

As I write the actual book, I follow the synopsis/outline; however, I'm not chained to it. Details change, but I always know the next stop on the road and the final destination, which is something that keeps me chugging along.

aguywhotypes said:

To the writers that are all plotters. Do you plot the whole story/novel out before you even begin writing or not?

I think I'm afraid that if I would try to plot the whole thing from start to finish before I started to write, I would never write.

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I don't, because of your valid concern, but overall I do a lot of plotting, or at least thinking about the plot. It might not be all sketched out but I have a good idea. At the same time I think it's helpful to have creative flexibility. You may be surprised by where the characters take you!

aguywhotypes said:

I find that I just have an awful time trying to bring the whole thing together. Does this get easier as you get more experience writing? I've only been writing for around 4 months.

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Not necessarily...haha. But in general, I think yes. At least you'll have more experience with how to deal with such problems, even if they still come up.

aguywhotypes said:

Maybe I need to be reading more than writing right now, yes?

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Again, not necessarily. If you want to write, you HAVE to write. You probably have a richer soil of ideas and reading history than you realize, and the only way to tap into that is to write!

aguywhotypes said:

Also, another characteristic I'm seeing myself develop is I feel I can never come up with an original overall plot for a story. I have to find it on a forum or in a 'idea' book or wherever. This bothers me, should it? Or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

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Happily, there is nothing new under the sun, so let go of that unneeded pressure on yourself to be original and simply do what you like. In retrospect, if you think your story is too typical or rehashed, you can change it. It's much harder to change something that only exists in your head. Maybe that's the only place the problem exists anyway.

No.

caw

aguy: I think I'm afraid that if I would try to plot the whole thing from start to finish before I started to write, I would never write.

I find that I just have an awful time trying to bring the whole thing together. Does this get easier as you get more experience writing? I've only been writing for around 4 months.

Maybe I need to be reading more than writing right now, yes?

Also, another characteristic I'm seeing myself develop is I feel I can never come up with an original overall plot for a story. I have to find it on a forum or in a 'idea' book or wherever. This bothers me, should it? Or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

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Aguy, you're new at this, finding your way.

Addressing that first issue issue: My first four novels, I knew the story, start to finish, before I wrote a word. My latest, I had no clue. I wish I could have plotted it all out before writing. That would have made it so easy--having that scaffold to support my writing, a blueprint I could have referred to. Then I could have just written the thing, knowing that I already knew, pretty much, where my story was going.

Alas.

I think it's a learn-as-you-go thing. And your process might change as you go, might change from novel-to-novel, or even as you're writing.

As for worrying about not knowing the plot straight off, again, you're new at this. Right now, write. If you don't have an idea of a plot, do the 'what if' thing. I remember reading King's ON WRITING, he does that a lot: poses a 'what if' question. Follows that thread. Keeps doing that. You never know where your characters are going to take you.

Right now, I'd suggest you write to write. To get the feel of writing, find your voice. The rest will come, I believe that. Enjoy the process, learn what you can, try not to sweat the ins and outs of it right now.

I get the first scene and the last locked into my head. Then i write. Then i plan. Then i write. Then i plan. and so on.

If i sat and planned everything 1) i'd never get to writing and 2) i'd miss things anyways. Hardest part about being a writer is writing. Sit down and write. Then when you get tired and don't feel you can write anymore... write a bit more!

All of my plot points fit on a yellow sticky, which I keep at the side of my screen. Anymore detail would cramp my writing.

Trying this now. Limiting myself to major plot points and then writing as much as i can with at least some direction. Its my first attempt at a novel so don't know if it will work. Time will tell.

Yes. I mean no.

It varies. I tend to do my writing on a chapter-by-chapter basis, so sometimes I need to work out which character I'm following and what they'll be up to. Sometimes I work out who I'm working with and jump in. I have some idea of overall plot, but I mostly leave that to my subconscious.
So yes, sometimes I write with little or no direction. I can't say if it gets easier because, so far, my approach has changed with every novel I write. With the first in my science fiction series that may one day see the light of day, I knew scenes I wanted to see, but had no end in sight until I got there. With part two, I planned and wrote out the final chapter early on and worked towards it. Now I'm working on three, I'm back to my first approach, but with a possible ending scene in mind.

As to originality... my series started life as one scene and a blatant homage to the Starship Troopers film. It's grown and mutated since then and since dropped the homage intro entirely.

Basically? Just write. Enjoy the ride. I was so proud the first time I hit 50k words I took a picture of it. Still got that somewhere.

There are active threads here on this very same topic. This one, for instance.

To answer the OP's first question, no, I don't plot before I write. How could I? Writing is how I discover the story, and the plot is not apparent until after the story is written. But not every writer works that way, obviously.

Just keep writing. Part of learning to write is learning which method of writing works best for you. And don't worry about coming up with original plots. Think instead about coming up with compelling ones. And recognize that the plot may need to develop as you write.

Depends on the story.

Sometimes I'll have an idea and write one scene before setting it aside and plotting it. Getting the first scene out helps me get the beginning grounded. Other times I won't put a single word on the page until the entire plot is sorted on my head. Occasionally I'll have the plot in my head but when I get to a crucial scene, I realize what I had plotted doesn't work, then I'll set it aside while I sort things out again. It all depends on how the story comes to me.

I never plot on paper, BTW. It's all in my head. And I never pants. I have no idea how pantsers do it.

Sometimes I'll write an outline - a rough this happens, then this happens, then this happens ... With one MS I just wrote one scene and then the next until it was finished. Several times I had to stop and sit on it for a few weeks, though, until the next scene was 'ready'. Oddly, so far it's needed the least amount of revising and editing afterwards.

I absolutely do. Even for short stories. Beginning, middle and end are all decided before I start on page 1.

Now, often, things change in the writing, but the base has to be there before I start or I would never get a word written.

I have a process, a kind of homemade variation on the snowflake method, and it works for me.

For a short story, the outline is usually a few sentences jotted in my writing notebook.

For a novel, the outline lives on a stack of notecards that I can add to, subtract from and re-arrange at suits the story as I write it.

Thus far no. I plot it bits & pieces that get strung together as time goes on. Trying to write it is usually how I decide whether or not it's ready to be written in it's entirety.

Myrealana said:

I absolutely do. Even for short stories. Beginning, middle and end are all decided before I start on page 1.

Now, often, things change in the writing, but the base has to be there before I start or I would never get a word written.

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This. I actually plot out every scene before I start to write. Usually in Excel so I can move them around. Sometimes scenes get scrapped or others added once the writing begins, but for me, planning a book actually fosters my creativity. I think of it more like a road map. Sometimes I find a better route, but the destination is still the same.

I plot everything until I have a chapter-by-chapter synopsis and then write the first draft by hand. That way the main plot points get written in my head beforehand.

It depends on what I'm writing. I've written a short script that wasn't plotted out aside from knowing a quick one sentence summary of what the story was about. But for my full length novels, I have to plot. The genres I love are sci-fi, paranormal, and fantasy. If I didn't organize my worlds and detail out cultures, facts, and history, my head would explode. Plotting allows me to see my plot holes easier and that saves me time when I'm going over a draft. A plot outline also helps with writer's block, at least it does for me.

But even though I am a plotter, nothing is set in stone. For my current method of plotting: I do a rough list of plot points, and I'll add more if the story ideas come before the need to dive into writing hits me. I also group out some of the key bullet points to see how chapters will work. Once the entire rough outline is done, I'll start to write. From that point on, it's a back and forth game between plotting and writing.

Before I start to write, I usually write down a brief outline of my intended plot. As I start to write, however, this tends to change, and I adapt the plot outline accordingly.

I did an absolute buttload of plotting and timeline-writing before I started on my story, but I decided that I was actually doing too much - it had gone from being scripting to being a distraction from the actual work.

What I'm doing is more episodic than anything. I've got the plot worked out until the introduction of the main baddie, and then I have vague ideas about where it can go from there. Once I work my way up to that point, I'll probably do another intensive timeline-writing session to work out that arc with more clarity.