Second-pass planning

 For years, when I was writing full novels, I was a serious planner.  Before I even put pen to paper on the book's words I would write a detailed chapter plan.  My plans would run to around 45 pages, and each chapter would have a few paragraphs detailing the main action of the chapter.  It would often take me up to two months to produce an outline.

Once I'd created it the bare bones of my story had been discovered.  The writing was always relatively easy after that.  I could review my outline to check that there were enough tests for my characters, and that my supreme ordeal was big enough, and in the right place.

Often I'd find that it wasn't. I'd review the outline and realise that the big conflict which should've formed the biggest, definitive test of the novel was twelve chapters from the end.  That is far too early, so I'd have to go back and take a second pass at planning the ending.

Another thing I did on the earlier novels was fail to end them decisively.  People just got to where they wanted to be without any trouble, and the story fizzled out.

When I started writing the series of novellas I'm part-way through now I'd been reading Syd Field's Screenplay.  His three-act structure with plot points and a midpoint is wonderfully simple, and I was tempted to try it for my novella planning.  This time I was only writing 35,000 words per book, so I thought this briefer way of planning might work.

I created a blank three-act template on my computer, then filled in each section with brief details of the story.  The whole outline fitted onto two sheets of paper when it was typed up.  Quite a contrast from my 45 page detailed plans!

One reason I did have detailed plans for my novels was because I often had five viewpoint characters in the book.  The plan forced me to work out who did what where.  As several of those characters were often in the same scene, the plan helped me to work out where to change viewpoints.  I liken it to passing the baton in a relay race.  You need to know who carries the narrative at what time.

But the novellas are told from a single first person viewpoint, making their structure much simpler.  That was what tempted me to use the looser planning structure.  It worked great right up to act three, when I realised, that, yet again, my ending was weak.

So yesterday I sat down and wrote a second version of the ending.  Instead of sending the characters to safety aboard a starship. now I have one of them trapped on a space station which is under attack.

The second pass plan allowed me to throw in more tests for my characters, and now it feels like a proper ending.  They've earned their successes.

And the bonus is that the extra content will extend my word count to give me exactly the length of story I want.  It's a win all round.