Fresh
off the back of a successful workshop session on Planning Your Novel at Derby Quad, I thought it’d be useful to turn it into a blog post, as part of my
occasional series on the writing process. This particular session was great
fun, taking the form of a Q&A with the estimable Alex Davis. The workshop wasn’t
just about typical writing advice, but specifically about the methods I’ve
devised to aid my planning, with the overall theme of: everyone’s different!
Find a method that works to you even if it seems weird…
Q. Were you always an author who planned your
stories, or did you ever try the ‘pantster’ approach of just getting stuck in?
A.
I was a total pantser, and still am a bit. My first novel had the briefest imaginable
outline, although I was 100% set on the mid-point and the ending – it took a
lot of working out to get there. It also took me 2 years to complete…
The
reasons I started taking planning more seriously were (a) I began writing on a
contract, and therefore had a deadline to hit, and (b) I started adding more
crime/mystery elements, which really needed more structured planning.
Q. What difference did you notice to your process
when you had a more solid plan for the book?
Although
I still prefer writing the book sequentially, having a detail plan means that
if I get stuck on a section, I can skip ahead to another bit, because I know at
least roughly what needs to happen in any given scene. It doesn’t make me a
better writer or anything, but it does make me more productive when I can just
get on with stuff and not spend ages procrastinating, or trying to remember why
I wrote that random scene, etc.
Q. What is the very earliest stage of your
planning process?
A.
Premise – or concept, then premise, but the two are basically intertwined. From
the premise comes the question ‘is there a story there?’ If yes, I flesh it out
into at least a paragraph, and write some character notes, then bounce that
idea off someone – usually my agent. Usually I just know if the book will work
or not, but If he thinks it’s got legs, I can start work on it properly with
confidence. All of this is usually handwritten. I write things down all the
time in notepads, and sometimes when I read those notes back some ideas leap
out and take on a life of their own.
This
leads to brainstorming, which usually takes the form of a mind-map on a big
flipchart page (or several! The mind-map for Iscariot Sanction spilled off the
flipchart and ended up being transferred to a roll of wallpaper…)
Q. How does your planning process tend
to progress? What steps do you always take before you start writing?
A.
I’ve found a groove finally, which I’ve used on my last three books. This goes:
- Premise
- Elevator
Pitch – or, the story in a nutshell.
- Flipchart
1: Mind Map. (See my earlier blog on flipchart planning!)
- Flipchart
2: The plot. Every scene gets a thought bubble, and these get linked with
arrows and character notes, and scribbled out and changed several times until
only my dog can understand it. From this is born:
- Synopsis
(usually 2 pages) and character notes (usually a short paragraph each)
- Long
synopsis with full chapter breakdown (not for dissemination). Some writers like
to plot a ‘beat sheet’ first, but personally I find that a bit too formulaic –
like, ‘this character moment has to occur exactly 75% through the novel’ etc.
Gets used in screenwriting a lot.
If
any sections are particularly tricky, like a whodunit where you have to track
every character’s movements simultaneously, I do a third flipchart, which is
the detail map of one or more chapters. Some more technologically minded folk
use a spreadsheet for this.
I
then set up a fresh manuscript – my favourite part. It’s like sleeping in clean
sheets… Into this I paste each chapter header onto a different page. I bullet
point these sections, adding detail if necessary – which characters are
present? Whose POV is it? What clue do they need to find to get to the next
chapter? How do they find that clue?
I
start writing under the chapter descriptions, crossing off each point as I
cover it. As I write, any additions I make (usually lots), or things I change
or delete, get added into those chapter descriptions, so that when I start the
chapter, it’s the most up-to-date version of the plan. If I do decide to change
anything during writing, I go back and add comments to myself to change it in
editing. I NEVER tinker with earlier chapters until editing begins – always forward,
never backwards.
Q. Some people find that planning and
plotting in detail can take the ‘fun’ out of the writing – do you ever feel
that?
A.
I can understand that, and it can be the case. For me, planning a story is
working out what story you’re going to tell. The first draft is then telling
that story to yourself. The second draft is finding the best way to share it
with the reader.
The
problem is, if you put too much detail into the plan, so there’s nothing left
to work out as you write, you sort of tell yourself spoilers, and it can make
you lose enthusiasm for the work. Once a story is on paper and out of your
head, your brain starts looking for new shiny ideas instead. This is probably
why GRRM hasn’t – and perhaps won’t – finish A Song of Ice and Fire. He’s sat
down with the TV execs and gone through his story in detail. He’s told the
story in full, and now he’s lost forward momentum on the actual hard graft of
writing the thing. That’s where a good work ethic comes in, because some days
you just need to grind out those words!
Q. Does the plan ever change as you go
along, or do you tend to deviate much?
A.
Every damn time. And that’s a good thing. I saw a thing on social media recently
that put the different types of ‘planner’ into a D&D alignment chart. I am
a ‘lawful pantser’, which I suppose means that, no matter how meticulous the
plan, I always leave myself enough rope to hang myself.
Q. What do you do if the story does
suddenly starts going in another direction from the plan?
A.
This happens a lot, and you have to have honest conversations with yourself. If
this really a ‘better’ idea, or just a ‘new’ idea that’s turned your head. If
it’s genuinely better, then maybe look ahead to the next big milestone and work
out the butterfly effect: if you change this thing here, can you still pull the
story back on track, or do you have to alter everything? If it’s the latter,
then maybe you aren’t telling the same story any more, and that can be a real
problem, especially if you’ve sold the book and the editor is expecting one
thing but you want to deliver another.
My
rule of thumb is to look at the ‘beat sheet’ – even if you don’t strictly
follow the formula, every story supposedly has 15-18 traditional beats, and
it’s worth knowing what those beats are in your own story. If a change ends up
altering 5 or 6 of those beats, that’s a huge change to the synopsis, and it
might be a good idea to really stop and think before diving in.
Q. What advice would you give to an
author who’d never tried to plan anything out before in detail?
A.
Don’t feel like you have to. I think if I wrote a less complex book, I’d do
less planning – the level of my chapter breakdown method for Destiny’s Call,
for example (YA fantasy) was about a quarter as detailed as The Red Tower (Sherlock
Holmes pastiche). Do what works for you. I wrote my first published book with
barely anything except some incoherent notes in a pad. The second book had a
synopsis but not much more. It’s doable, you just might find you’re not as
efficient without a plan.
Q. Do you tend to think in terms of
three-act structure when you are planning?
I
really prefer the four-act structure. The Lazarus Gate is the most obvious
example, where the mid-point of the book is really the point where everything
changes. The hero has to come to terms with this new situation before they can
find a solution. I think I always start with three acts when I’m writing that
initial synopsis, but it always comes back to four… The main difference is that
after the mid-point twist, you don’t just continue the rising tension, but have
to come up with a whole new set of obstacles because the twists was such a
game-changer.
Q. Does the plan help where it comes to
things like writing synopses and ‘pitches’?
A.
I always start with those things, because for me the plan has to be born from
the pitch, which has to be born from the premise. BUT there’s a hidden second
stage of pitching if you’re selling a completed manuscript (rather than selling
on spec).
The
pitch and synopsis that I bounce off my agent usually gives rise to lots of
ideas, which then go into a plan. Sometimes the synopsis will change a few
times as a result.
When
the book is finished, there will almost certainly be differences between the
manuscript and the pitch. So, I retro-fit the pitch and short synopsis to
accurately reflect the content.
This
is where the chapter breakdown really comes into its own – because I’ve updated
the chapter plan as I’ve gone along, I can simply condense each chapter into a
sentence or two, making it as pithy and exciting as possible, and BOOM: instant
synopsis that’s fit for the publisher’s eyes!
Q. Do you feel like you can change the
plan once the publisher has agreed it with you?
A.
If they’ve specifically signed off on a detail plan – often the case with
licensed fiction – then any changes to plan really should be run by the editor
first. Normally though, a publisher will sign off on a synopsis that doesn’t
include every little detail, so there’s some freedom. If you go really off-piste,
like kill the protagonist when the plan said they were going to ride off into
the sunset happily, or you decide they wake up and it’s all a dream, the editor
will probably have something to say. They’re paying for it, after all – they
should know broadly what their money is buying.
That’s it –
hopefully you find some useful bits in there. Remember, this is just my own
planning journey and everyone is different!
What you have here is a classic skirmish game, marrying
all the elements of customisable group-building and dynamic actions that
(hopefully) you’ve come to expect from my games, with the strong sense of
narrative and progression that Modiphius pride themselves on. There’s even a
solo and co-op mode!