Are you a planner?

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Void

Pardon my paradox
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Firstly, apologies if this has already been done- I had a look but couldn't see a similar thread (but then again, I'm not exactly what you could call 'observant')!

How well do you guys plan your writing? Do you have different kinds of plans for different projects that depend on length or complexity of the WIP?

I'm a terrible planner. Generally I get an idea and start writing, which sometimes really works, but has also resulted in a character being trapped in a situation that I can't see a logical solution to. Like the time when I locked my main character in an impenetrable fort for about five months trying to figure out how on earth to get him out in a believable way...

Writer friends are generally horror-struck when I tell them that I don't write any kind of comprehensive plan, it just got me wondering what the rest of you do!
 
It's been done a few times, but that's cool.

I'm a pantster, I just write. For the first time, I'm trying to have a sense of where a section is going before I write, but that's mostly consisting of me editing something else, doing some short stuff for a day or two until I figure out what might be coming next.

I envy the planners, but couldn't be one. I also, sometimes, think there's a danger of getting bogged down in planning and world building and never getting to the writing.
 
I tried planning didn't work. From what I can tell their are the planners like Kevin J Anderson and the discoverers like George R. R. Martin.

I haven't finish my current project yet, but I'm definitely a discoverer just means a lot more editing, heck even tossed out a few chapters. Picked my ending, my start, character's goal and desire and that was about it, off I went.
 
springs said:
It's been done a few times, but that's cool.
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Ack, sorry!


springs said:
I envy the planners, but couldn't be one. I also, sometimes, think there's a danger of getting bogged down in planning and world building and never getting to the writing.
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Exactly this! I love the idea of having a beautiful plan, but whenever I've tried, by the time I come to actually write the thing I end up spending ages describing the world exactly as I've planned it all out- which makes for pretty boring reads.

Devon.Q.Ly: That's good to know! Here I was just thinking that I'm just a disorganised mess.
 
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I do a mixture of planning and discovering. I know what my story’s about and where it needs to go, but I have no idea how it’s going to get there, giving me the ability to remain excited about what I’ll discover next. My best ideas seem to pounce, unexpectedly through my ears and inside my head as I’m writing.
 
Yes, and no.

I plan serious stuff a lot, and comedy not very much.

I'm going to try planning my next comedy and see how that works out.
 
It's essential that you convey to the reader the excitement you have when 'discovering your own stuff' i.e. writing it first time. That's why I feel it's best to get a WIP as good as possible first go.

Justina Robson said an interesting thing on FB yesterday - she observed that the stuff she wrote "in a hurry" i.e. very quick with lots of momentum behind her was often much better than that stuff she agonised over.
 
I'm a beginner so speaking from not much experience here, but my first completed manuscript was in my head for 30+ years before writing it down. I'd read somewhere that writers plan books, so I carefully sketched out a chapter by chapter framework, then I started writing it.

Three chapters in, I threw the plan out of the window as my characters developed their own minds and snatched the pen out of my hands (figuratively speaking - I write on an iPad!).

The next full size novel I started, I thought to myself "no point in wasting time planning when you're not going to stick to it anyway", so I just got started. It took me about eight chapters to write my characters into an un-winnable situation and by then I'd fallen in love with my villain, got fed up of my heroine (who turned out to be a prig) and developed writer's block!

I look forward to hearing what all the 'real writers' do...
 
Well I am not a real writer yet but I don't really plan a lot. I have an idea and then I start writing and see where it takes me. Usually once I begin I get a focus and figure out my ending before I make it there. That being said I wrote a horror-type short this week and did no planning...just sat and wrote it in a couple sittings. When I approached the end, I still had no clue what I was going to do!

But i did have a creepy poem in the story, written by the MC when he was a child...that was kind of strange :)
 
For novels no. You start out more organised than I do.

With my very first novel I started with a doodle of a little dark man that I called Prince Jonathan. Somewhere along the way he became my big blond Prince Angus.

The murder mystery started out with two men getting dressed in a cupboard and went from there.

An urban fantasy came about because Ian Black, a character in my murder mystery rolled up his sleeves, revealing muscular hair forearms, At that moment I knew he needed his own story.

My latest one began because I got the name Cece Garrett on a random renamer she seemed to need a story because it was such a fab name. It was in my mind full of character before I began.

I am just resigned to a lot of deletion and rewriting. (My hubby writes and he was very disturbed when I deleted 30,000 words just to change my little brown falcon into a Great White Falcon but in my view it was worth it).

With my scripts I have to be more precise because they have to be an exact length. However, I still blast through a first draft as I get to know the characters.
 
Kerrybuchanan said:
Three chapters in, I threw the plan out of the window as my characters developed their own minds and snatched the pen out of my hands (figuratively speaking - I write on an iPad!).
Click to expand...

I think this has happened in every novel I've written. I think it's because our subconscious minds do much more work in novels than we realise...
 
Started out as a planner - always believed I was a planner - but actually, I'm turning into a pantser. This has been a gradual discovery and I'm still finding my way in the whole discovery method.

I think I planned because I loved brainstorming. Looking back, what I should have been doing was writing the scenes as they came to me, rather than planning them. As Stephen Palmer says, it's good to capture that initial excitement on page.
 
I think that can work as a planner, (for some), depending how much planning you do. If you sketch out chapters fairly briefly there can still be plenty of room for spontaneity, whilst at the same time being anchored to the thread running through the whole plot, reducing the chances of cocking something up and either have to axe a whole scene/chapter or hugely amend it later on.

That's the approach I try to adopt (I'm rubbish at continuity), with varying degrees of success.
 
I'm a planner, but like a battle plan it all goes out of the window very quickly. I plan each chapter of my serial as I finish the previous one, but the plans end up looking different from the finished product in the end. Characters and events have a way of running their own way as they go. Every time I have an idea for a new chapter I write a brief summary of the idea in the word document where I splurge my world building, character backstory etc and come back to it later or chop and change for the next chapter I start on.
 
Actually, for me, the first draft is my plan. It might be a very short first draft - 25/30 k - but once it's down I can start to build from there. So, I'm a writer-planner. :D
 
The short answer is - it depends! The sci-fi epic that is the main work, literaly years in the making, plans made, thrown out, re-written and re-planned and is 80k words in. Loads of planning, talks, writing, more planning ...
Second project, a few random thoughts, very basic planning which will probably be ignored and i'm off, 800 words in and only the vaguest of plans and i'm researching what i need as i go ;-) ( thanks springs and anna for forcing me to think!)
 
I write from the seat of my pants.

No plans, no thought on where I'm going with it. I just go with how the spirit moves me :p
 
I'm usually not a (conscious) planner, but neither is it the best idea to go by your own backside if you want publishing quality.


But it is the best way to go just to get the process going, not giving a flying donkey about how it sounds, just enjoying the flow. That's why drafts were invented. :D Personally, I don't care about publishing anything I write, and I am perhaps the world's worst editor, so most of my stuff, nearly all in fact, never gets a second draft, and to be honest, I don't care so much.
 
It's really interesting to see how everyone works!

Reading how the majority of you guys tend to jump straight in makes me feel a little less ashamed of my massively uncoordinated approach. I'd not thought of using a first draft as a form of plan before Springs, that sounds like an awesome way to make things flow!
 
I'm a big time planner before I begin writing. I need to know where things are going or I get stuck halfway. That's not to say I don't allow my story to wander off course now and then. It's surprising how many cool, unplanned things turn up as you write!
 
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