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| Not my post-it notes. |
I have always been a pantser, someone who writes by discovery rather than by planning. I can’t count how many times I’ve started a draft with nothing but the merest scrap of an idea, with my only plan being that I would try to flesh it out as I go. A lot of chaff comes out of this method, at least for me, and a lot of staring at the computer screen wondering what in the world is going to happen in the next scene. But it’s fun, too. The story can surprise you; it will seize you by the lapels and fling you across the world into a different direction than you had ever expected to go. I love that.
But I think I might love planning more.
I’ve mentioned a few times around these parts that I have been doing a lot of research lately. Researching has always appealed to me in a strictly theoretical sense. It’s when it comes to the follow-through, the actual act of picking up the book and reading it, that I fall short. (It’s the note-taking, you see, because it makes the whole process very slow. But everything I do is slow anymore, so it doesn’t bother me now.) I’ve gotten over that, somehow, or else I’ve finally found an idea that requires research on a topic that actually interests me. In other words, I’ve been researching a ton.
And the wonderful thing about research is that the smallest nugget of information will spark off so many ideas. I’ll be reading a long and it’s like a lightbulb goes on in my head — I can see where that piece of information I just read, if shaped a certain way, could fit into the narrative that I’m planning out. All of a sudden, things make sense when I look at them. I’ve had to start a separate branch of notes just for scene ideas that I’ve had, because there’s so much that I want to try to fit in. I know not only who several of the major players are, but also what they’re aiming for and how they’ll go about achieving it — because it’s all planned out. I don’t have to wonder what in the world I’m going to come up with for complications because they’re practically oozing out of the worldbuilding and onto the stage in my mind.
Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that planning could do that?
(image adapted from an original by xavi talleda)
