Recently in my Second Life writing group, we were discussing outlining. The many opinions ranged from outlining to a great degree to simply starting with a very basic idea and seeing what happens while writing. I tend to fall in the middle, where I have an idea of where I want the story to end up at, and I plan way points where I want the story to go along the way. As I write, I use the outline as a map, but I don’t follow it strictly, I let changes happen naturally.
In my story I write for P.G. Holyfield’s “Stories of the Children”, I had a basic idea of the two main characters, and the main climax of the story, but I made up everything else up as I went along. I used all the random things I wrote in one section to affect the later story, but had not planned these things beforehand. A random detail became an important plot point.
In an upcoming project for NaNoWriMo, I’ve put a history of a character down, and I want to plan out a facility so I don’t have to make up a complex area on the fly. I have a good idea of the situation the character will face, but I haven’t planned out any specifics, I want things to happen organically. In the story mentioned in the previous paragraph, I’m really happy with the plot. I need to edit for character details, but I feel the plot is really solid, and I didn’t plan more than the barest details.
All this has me thinking about outlining, what is good to do, and what is just extra and worthless predictions of where the story might go. I’m beginning to think that planning for a character is a lot more important than planning for the plot. Having conversed with Michael A. Stackpole in Second Life, and listening to his podcasts and reading his Secrets newsletter, I’ve come to the idea that planning out a characters past and how you want that character to change over the course of the story is the most important. Then as the story is being written, you have a base to work from without railroading the plot. When a situation surfaces, you can reference the character’s past and see how they would react based on that, and on how they might be changing and growing.
For instance, if I have a character who grew up on the rough streets, he might be quick to action and adjusting on the fly, where as a character who spent most of his life in books might stop to think first and be slower at adjusting to new information. When a big robot trundles around the corner unexpectedly, both of these characters will react differently. The first might cut and run, while the second might try to determine what the robot does instead of making safety a priority. Also, a character who loves vehicles might be focused on the treads and mobility of the robot, while the guy who works on electronics might be fascinated by the sensor nodes.
While writing, if you make a change that effects previous bits in the story, you don’t edit until the first draft is done. Otherwise, when that detail changes a second time, you don’t have to edit the earlier story bits yet again. You just make a note and fix it all later at once. In a similar way, isn’t plotting out every detail of the story the same? In my first NaNoWriMo story, the main character Marchovie had no magical skill and I didn’t think he ever would. In chapter one, for his birthday, a city official gave Marchovie a book on learning magic! If I had planned every detail on what and how things would happen, I’d have done a whole lot of extra work for nothing.
I think it is important to have a basic idea of at least the beginning or the end of a story, but unless you simply can’t make it up as you go, the middle bits should come naturally as you write. If you’ve got a good solid handle on who the characters are, and what motivates them, their reactions to situations shouldn’t be hard to find. An event occours, your character reacts, then you ask what happens next, and move on. It makes sense to me, and I think I’ll be using this method quite a bit in the future.
