Degrees of planning

Writers tend to fall into one of two camps.  There are those who plan their books out before they start to write, and those that don't.  They just plunge into the writing and sort any problems that arise on the rewrites.  But really it's not quite so simple.  It's more like a continuum of activities stretching from brief outline to fully-fleshed out before you start.  

My novel Jade was created from a five-line outline and I discovered the story as I wrote.  It works in terms of conflicts and story development, but I wouldn't have the confidence to do the same today.  And it is told in a single viewpoint, which makes things easier.  Now I've moved from the minimal planning end of the spectrum to somewhere around two-thirds along to fully planned.

I work out my plot before I start to write.  With the Panthera books this was essential.  I wanted multiple viewpoints (four in Death Spiral and Death Plain, and five in Death Song).  I wanted each viewpoint character to pick up the narrative thread where the previous one had left it, rather like relay runners accepting the hand-over of the baton.  I felt the only way I could successfully weave the story, and a sub-plot, through the narrative was to plan the changes out in advance.

One way to tackle discovering your plot is to identify key scenes in the story.  Write these on index cards or post-it notes and cover the floor or a wall with them.  I intend to plan my next project out with index cards.  I have an overall story outline but I need to know now much story I have.  And I'm thinking of the market this time.  I think the idea will yield enough material for a trilogy, but I want to be sure before I start writing.  Using index cards will help me to decide the scope of my story.  Their advantage is their flexibility.  Scenes can be eaasily re-arranged this way.

Some people feel reassured checking their story against three-act structure models, or using Larry  Brooks' Story Engineering framework.  My favourite tool for shaping stories is Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey, based on the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell.  When I was planning Death Plain I realised that I didn't have a Supreme Ordeal at the end of the book.  I re-planned the novel before I started to write, and now I know the characters will come together and face danger at the end.

Even though I now produce chapter plans of twenty-plus pages I still have flexibility to change them when I write.  Often I spot missed opportunities for cliffhangers and my chapter plan is littered with scribbled notes about moving information  to the next chapter of that character.  That's another reason why I planned it out ahead.  With interweaving viewpoints, it could be some time before I get back to that character and I need to make sure I've picked up from where I left them.

Every writer plans to a different degree, and part of our learning process as writers is figuring out what degree of detai works for us.  And in the end we need to ignore what other writers do, figure out what works for us, and stick to it.