The process of writing is, on one hand, an art (as opposed to, on the other, the technical aspects of putting words and symbols into a discernible pattern following strict grammar and punctuation rules), so setting out hard and fast principles for the creative side is challenging. However, there comes a time as a story takes on life that something like a plan or outline needs to be formulated. Because outline sounds like something a high school teacher would require, I am going to call it a story plan.
An early argument made in this blog was that a writer should begin with the end in mind. When, in a writer's head, there is enough ideas to spark awareness that a story is brewing, it was suggested that the writer needs to decide how he or she wants the reader to respond to the finished work.
Thus, identifying the desired reader response became the first step in transforming a cloud of characters, settings, lines, or scenes into a finished work of fiction or poem.
Once the desired reader response is identified, the next step is to decide how that happens. What needs to happen to the characters and their world in order to create the response that is hoped for? In most cases, changes in the reader will reflect changes in the story or in parts of a story.
Keeping the desired reader response in mind—whatever that might be: change how they view their world, change their mood, change their thoughts about a topic—a writer needs to plan the story. Where does the story begin? How will it be told? What happens along the way?
Something in the story needs to change. There needs to be movement of some kind. Either one or more of the characters needs to change or the world in which they exist needs to change. Or both.
The character does something that changes the world. The world does something that changes the character. The reader, then, changes in response to what they see happening in the story.
The writer needs to have a good idea what is going to happen before he or she begins lining up carefully selected words in a particular order. The story plan needs to come first, and it needs to guide writers as they select scenes and compose dialog.
The plan needs to be a rudder that keeps the story moving through the sea of possibilities until it caries the reader to the writer's intended destination.
I picked the word "rudder" carefully.
Any voyage can be better with surprising side-tracks, but too many of them distracts the reader from the main point. Eventually, the intended destination gets lost amidst the side-trips, and when it is finally reached, the reader is left with a "is this it?" feeling. Thus,
side-tracking needs to be controlled carefully, and it is made better if glimpses of the final destination can be seen from each course departure. The plan helps make this possible.
Another purpose of a good story plan is to inform the writing process such that the writer knows when to stop. Writers can ask themselves what it will take to lead the reader to the desired response. When that happens, they can stop writing. Writers can use their story plans to assure that the ending is clear, and when reached, the story will have accomplished all the things the writers wanted to do.
While a single work can have more than one desired outcome, it will be important to use the plan to see that each of the desired outcomes are achieved.
In fact, the more desired outcomes, the more important the plan becomes. Noting in the plan how each of the scenes or events (or moments of dialog, even) or each line in a poem contributes to one or more desired outcomes both assures that everything the writer wants to accomplish is accomplished and justifies the inclusion of each component of the story or poem.
Story plans can take many different forms. The outline is not a bad idea, but it is not the only idea. Alternately, a timeline can be used, or simply a sequence of events. A scene list or story-board is also a good idea.
How you plan your work is not nearly as important as that you actually plan out the list of steps needed to lead the reader to the desired reader response.
Where it is a good idea for the entire story to be guided by a plan,
each scene, too, can be guided by the points in the overall plans, and brief notes about what a scene needs to do can help develop each scenes. For instance, in a story that includes as a part, a girls transformation from self-conscious to self-confident, a scene might be needed in which she (after a long process in other scenes) comes to view herself as worthy of attention from the man in whom she has found interest. The
scene plan for that might be as simply as this:
What: Ginger decides she will let Karl make the first move and not act desperate for his acceptance.
How: Brief conversation with Stephanie
And the scene that accomplishes that could be as simple as this:
Stephanie and Ginger sat in the parlor as the last of the afternoon rays angled through the sheer lace curtains. Ginger had made it clear, at last, how interested she was in Karl and had shared some of her wishes and hopes with her best friend. The iced tea was gone, and only the drops of condensation on the outside of the glass remained.
"Look, Ginger…" Stephanie turned to her friend and smiled. "If you are sure about this, you should tell him how you feel."
Ginger lifted her eyes and looked back at Stephanie. She took a deep breath and settled back into her chair. "No. He should tell me how he feels."
The plan guides the scene. Once the needs of the scene are met, the writer can move on to other aspects of the scene or move on to another scene that needs to do something else.
Scene plans can be complex in relations to plot arcs and character arcs. But since they are guided by the overall writing plan, not every needed objective of the scene needs to be detailed in a scene plan. It is a good idea, though to, whether written down or understood from the bigger picture, go into a scene with specific accomplishments in mind. The opening scene in a section might need to do a host of things, such as:
- Establish that two days have passed.
- Geoff is upset and confused by his boss's decision.
- Geoff decides to take some time off and get his head straight.
- However, he finds out that Ralph has obligated him to escort Ralph's sister to the art gallery opening, where he fears running into Candice, Geoff's ex-girlfriend
So, the actual plan might say only:
Wednesday: Time off vs Ralph's sister to gallery opening
All of the rest of the things needed in the opening are guided by the previous and following scene notes, and are not written down.
The point is to, within the bigger story plan, develop enough details to serve as a rudder and to keep the writer on the right course.
With any story plan, (or scene plan) the goal is to give direction to the story. At a glance or with a scroll, writers can see how their character is changing. They can see how the world is changing. They can quickly tally up the events of the story and see if they add up to the desired reader response.
A story plan, however, can be fluid to some degree. The beginning and end may be less flexible, but, since the invention of word processing, it is very easy to go back a few pages and add a paragraph or a scene or a chapter or a section! So, if the story needs, at the 80% position, something to have happened at the 20% position, writers can go back, alter the plan, and add in the missing part.
For instance, a scene toward the end of the story might require a character to know some odd fact about…say, chemistry. If his or her knowledge of chemistry is never previously mentioned, it would be awkward for the knowledge to suddenly exist just at the right time. Going back and putting in a scene where the character is studying for an exam or tutoring a high-school student… something like that would lay the groundwork for readers believing the scene later on.
If the story is planned out well enough in advance, the need for that scene would be noticed early in the process. The moment when the story plan called for a knowledge of chemistry just before the climax, the writer could go back to an earlier part of the story plan and add the prerequisite scene on the front end.
In one of my published short stories, I wrote a scene that I meant to be the hook for a story. I showed the "hook" to a friend and he asked me how the character came to be in such a situation. I told him what I had thought of as a back-story. He said, "Wow, you should just write
that and use your hook as the ending." So I did.
The whole story plan drove the main character to that paragraph. I jotted down a few benchmark points in the characters life, thought of a couple of cool scenes, and put them into the plan, then started typing. I had a weekend alone, so I started typing on Friday night. The story, given the plan, wrote itself in a single two and a half day sitting, and by the end of the weekend, even taking time for chores, church, and going to the store, it was done. I edited it for typos, and it was ready to be submitted. The plan drove the story and the finished work did exactly what I hoped it would do.
I also have drafts in my idea folder of stories I just started writing that meandered for fifty pages and did nothing. They were not journeys in any way, but only test-drives around the block and back to where they started.
Planning a poem is different, but a similar process needs to occur. The poem will lead a reader through ideas differently, but all the same, the reader is moved along. Planning each nudge and push along the way gives the poem its own rudder, and given the economy of words, keeps the course tight and straight.
There is usually a lot of time required in creating a poem or work of fiction, so making sure that it does what it sets out to do seems like a good idea.
Investing time into planning on the front end can help assure that the final product accomplishes the writer's wished-for goals. However it is formulated, having a plan at the beginning of the writing process is an extremely important step toward creating an effective, finished work.
