What else should I plan?
I have started writing a novel. I've done some character questionnaires for my main characters, and I've outlined the plot. I want to do this planning to keep my story from fizzling out, but I don't want to plan too much so that it takes the fun out of actually writing it. Is there anything else I should plan to manage this?
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People clearly differ in the amount and type of planning they do. But I think it is important to bear in mind that in the end a novel is an expression of a vision. Its function is to create a vivid and compelling experience for the reader and while aspects of that experience can be distilled and described in abstract terms, the experience itself needs to come across to the reader as something real and substantial, something with texture, something felt and touched and lived.
To get into the state where you can write such a thing, you need to have a vision in your head of the experience you want to create, with all the vividness and substance that you want to convey to the reader. There will be much art and craft involved in making it as real to them as it is to you, but there is no way you can possibly make it more real to them than it is to you.
Your planning, therefore, can only work as an aid to imagination, as a tool for making the vision you are building as concrete and real as you need it to be in order to write. If you are there, then it is time to write. If you are not there yet, perhaps more planning will get you there. But perhaps more planning will keep you from doing the hard work of imagination that is needed to flesh out your vision. Only you can figure that out.
For other writers, though, writing is the only way to get there. The plotter vs. pantser dichotomy, insofar as it make any sense at all, is not, I believe, so much about working out plot as it is about gaining a clarity of vision. Some (it seems) can't write till they have it. Other can only get it by writing.
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Some advice I got when outlining my current project is that, in addition to outlining the plot and the characters, I can outline the plot hooks that tie each major section of the story together. This way, when I started writing, I knew which pieces of foreshadowing I needed to add and how each moving piece of the story fit together. So far, it has been very helpful.
Here are some of the questions I asked myself about each major plot point in my story:
- What is at stake during this chapter?
- What do the main characters win or accomplish?
- What do the main characters lose, forcing them to continue their adventure or return to this plot point later?
- What do the main characters learn?
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