Entry for July 19, 2005.

To plan or not to plan; that is the question.

When I wrote my first novel I had a rough idea of who was in it, what would happen and how the story ended. In my inexperience I felt sure this would be enough to carry me 100,000 words to the end. Pure motivation and the natural momentum I built as I wrote drove me to THE END. Actually, as I thought about it, I think I ended up with closer to 125,000 words that first draft. I recall moments of sheer terror as I would sit to write my prescribed 1000 words and just wing it. The process could be described as flying by the seat of your pants and that's exactly how it felt.

While I did work my way to THE END I remember feeling an inner resistance to ever doing it that way again. There were too many moments of aimless writing. Yes, there were moments of pure gold and I did learn a lot about my characters, but there were too many boring bits to cut out by the end of the entire process.

I kept reading how other authors did it. How they managed to get their stories written. Time after time I came across the outline and planning thing. I resisted this. It made me feel that writing was somehow less a mystery to do this. Planning every movement would take the romance out of the process for me. Maybe I read it one too many times. Maybe I just decided that I should be open to trying new things. It could've been for myriad other reasons, but I did finally sit one day and plan my novel.

To be fair I didn't start with the plan. I had an idea. This idea was simple and involved a girl with a situation that became a problem. I found one of those online character charts where you ask yourself 20 questions, it might have been more, about your character. I figured the main character deserved more time and I spent a good one hour on her. I write in a notebook in a cafe and just kept answering the questions. A clear character emerged and her problem crystallised into something I could recreate on the screen as I sat to write.

The other characters needed some time, but not quite as much as the main character. As I wrote these people, every single one of them, the fog cleared and they simply felt real to me. Their personal agendas and motives mixed in and before long I had a story. The plot unfolded as I played with these questions and ideas and people. I had so much more idea what could happen when I finally sat down to write.

Then I figured how many words I intended the novel to be, worked out how many chapters and wrote quick sketches of what could happen in each chapter. Most of this fell together and I found I didn't need to rearrange much. Once I felt happy with this I began writing.

This part went smooth. I never once experienced those moments of terror or even uncertainty. My characters emerged fully blown, real as you people reading this at this moment. I did change things as they became even clearer to me. I moved certain events to different parts of the story. I added and took away. I melded characters and adapted situations.

When I compared the two processes I knew I could never return to the old way of doing things. Every other novel since, I've written using the method outlined above. To go back to the old way is simply inconceivable now. I suppose I could, if I really had to. Just sit and write a novel out of my head. But given a choice, I would always choose this way. The work is done in the planning and playing stage. I sat down each day with a clear idea of where I would go next. The whole experience still felt like a journey of discovery. It's kind of like having a map, but allowing yourself to make detours.

Anyway, this entry is quite late as I've been at my sister-in-law's place tonight for dinner. We ended up staying quite late.