When I got into longer form writing after my initial ages of writing short fiction, I initially started off with plotting ahead of time. But I quickly found I’d lost some interest after writing things out.
Maybe the ideas didn’t have enough merit to hold a longer form, or maybe — as I’ve long assumed — the writing out of all that ahead of time felt to part of my brain like the whole of it was done, and so with that story done, my crow-like attraction to the sparkle of newer ideas took hold, so I’d move onto the next story with, and this is the important bit, the impression that I shouldn’t plot ahead of time.
Well, that had only sporadic success. Because I’d get an idea for a What If, for a character, for a setting and some scenes, and the end point of where it all ends up, and if enough of them gelled together into a cohesive and interesting idea, I’d start writing it. And then (and here even the non-writers of you probably know where this is going), it would peter out, or I’d get my character(s) painted into a corner without any way of how to get them out again. So the stories would stall and, no answers making themselves apparent for how to proceed or how far back to cut and change things to avoid that particular dead-end, I’d… yep… move onto another idea.
All of which left a ton of half-written stories in my wake.
Cut to a few days ago, when I was looking for a reference of some writing thing, or story thing, or maybe a writer? (for anyone who knows me, my poor memory precedes me) on YouTube. And of course, the algorithm did its thing, and was suddenly all, “Oh, hey, if you’re interested in writing stuff, how about these million-odd videos on writing stuff?” And amongst them I found an interview series called How I Write, where the host sits down with world-class writers and picks their brain on their approach to writing. Not just the Hows, but more the Whys. It leans away from the physical writing process and more toward their philosophies and approaches to sussing out ideas and the processes they then apply before and while they write.
And there seemed, at least in a few interviews I’ve seen, like more of the writers than not tend to plot out their stories. Adrian Tchaikovsky, who writes some great stuff, just uses a word processor to lay out the beats of what will happen in each chapter. Sometimes, he says, he’ll specify a key info reveal that needs to happen at a particular point that’ll be integral to something else happening farther downstream.
He says that if he doesn’t plot like that, it’s gotten him into trouble before, because he once found himself 3/4 of a way through writing a book and discovering that nothing of any significance had actually happened in the story. Literally, you could remove everything prior to that point without any loss. And that was because he hadn’t planned out enough guidelines to keep him on track.
Andrew Hunter Murray reveals in his own How I Write interview that he actually uses an Excel spreadsheet to plot out his books and update aspects as he goes. It helps him track at a glance what pages a chapter comprises, a summary of what happened, and can show him when and where there’s no stakes raised or progress made where there should have been. Which initially struck me (and the interviewer) as an unusual approach. But I suppose is just a kind of updated version of a cork board with cue cards laid out, which inform more visual learners (and workers-out), like me, what’s happened where and what may need to change. (Fun fact: The excellent Scrivener writing software has a built-in virtual cork board where chapters are summarized and can be colour-coded and moved around to be rearranged — which then automatically moves around the chapters within the body copy of the manuscript — for trying out the best approach to the flow of the work.)
Murray adds that he allows himself to read only one or two books a year on the process of writing — he says it’s otherwise too easy to get caught up in reading other peoples’ approaches to writing, rather than writing yourself, which is of course the best way to help get an idea of your most effective methodologies (I’m guilty on all of the things being advised against there) — and that one of the bits of advice he recently took from an older book called The Writing of Fiction, by Edith Wharton, is to treat the plotting of your fiction as if you’re on a path in the woods. You’re of course welcome to look around at what you discover on the way, and maybe even explore a little of what’s around you, but don’t stray far from the path. And never, as it’s put, leave the path entirely and decide to go have a picnic in the woods.
Lord knows I’ve had plenty of picnics.
But this has all given me what’s probably a much needed revisiting of my method of writing. I love the discovery of something new as I’m writing — trying, as I do, to allow the story to breathe and develop in between the key scenes I had in mind — but there’s still discovery to be had even while sticking to the path of a plot you’ve planned out ahead of time. That seems to be the part I need to focus on: Don’t overthink the story, lest I get bored of it and never actually want to see it fully realized, but have a through-line that I use to keep on track while I go, in order that I don’t get totally lost without a clue for how to move forward any longer.
I do feel like I’ll need to keep the plot path pretty bare bones, both to try to maintain my own interest and not get ahead of myself with exploring the proverbial woods. But also, as Anne Lamot says in both her fantastic book Bird by Bird as well as in her own How I Write interview, “write before you’re ready”. Which will hopefully keep some fun surprises in store for myself as I go, even while the plot path keeps me moving forward and from getting myself trapped anywhere.
I have some new ideas for longer stories — novel-length, maybe? — and I think I’ll try this new (old) approach to them and see how that goes. Hey, if it helps me get through them at all and not leave them half-baked and abandoned, it’s a win.