Plan more or write more?

[Eli Grey]

Move forward with revising the work you have. And consider what number this is for you. Book 1 or Book 5? How much experience do you have as a writer or a published writer? Is this book a standalone or is it part of a series? And this new idea. How impactful is it on the story itself now and how impactful will it be on the lives of the characters in the future once the book is ended? Is it possible to mention or just hint at this new idea you want to incorporate so you could justify a sequel in which the idea is a major factor?

Think of it like grocery shopping. If you do it on a hungry stomach and toss everything that looks/sounds good while you're making your way down each aisle, there's a good chance you get to checkout and realize you can't afford everything you put in your cart. It's too much and you realize it too late. If your story is complete, then keep it as is. Your attempt to fit your new idea into what's already written could cause you problems down the road. You'll need to explain the new idea and reveal how it impacts the lives of all of your characters. How has the idea helped or hurt your characters so far in their lives? A "major tweak" to the backdrop will bleed into the foreground. It has to. Otherwise, any mention of it will bore, confound, or irritate the reader.

 

[AnRoinnUltra]

Hello @msstice , I meant to post earlier. I've given up on revisions (to answer the question about what I would do) -they were causing me to go into a loop like @Venusian Broon warned about. So if it were me I'd probably try get the story out as is.
That typed I know your workrate is massive, and it's a very different thing you are doing. Is there any way you could slice a section out and do a sort of spin off stand alone story? If that works well (with beta readers or whatever) the it might be a sign to give it wind.
Best of luck with whatever you (probably already have) decided

 

[ANV]

Plan or write
It depends on how you are able to actually create a story.
I have a raw plan, what each character wants, what they avoid, and where I want end up. And I write. After the first draft, I knew better what the story was and I rewrote the parts that were not in line with my understanding of the characters, I have after the whole first draft. So, I am the type, that rewrites a lot, plans less, and brainstorms in every waking moment

After a few rounds of rewrites, give yourself a break, create a distance between you and the story, rewriting, just like worldbuilding, can be a terrible bottomless pit.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

So I have been thinking about a line in Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth's friend Charlotte Lucas says something to the effect that it is best to know as little as possible about the person you are going to marry, before you marry them. Which used to seem to me to be a particularly senseless and illogical thing to say. (Stay with me, I am going to bring this back to the topic, and you'll see why I brought it up in the first place) Although once I thought about Charlotte's particular situation and the time period of the book, it did have a certain logic to it: if you know all your intended's faults you will begin to have doubts, you might lose your nerve and back out, you'll never get another offer, you will be an old maid for the rest of your life, a burden to your family etc. etc.

So it is logical, but perhaps too logical, because it's a terrible way to choose someone who is going to be your partner until death takes you or the world ends (and in those days, in almost all cases, it WAS until death took one of you), and who may turn out to be the exact opposite of the person they appear to be when you first meet them.

But actually, if you take out "person you are going to marry" and put in "your plot and characters" it can be rather good advice. For one thing, writing a book is not a lifetime commitment. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. You don't have to go through parliament to get a divorce from it and permission to write something else; you just put it aside and go on to the next project. However, if you know in advance how much work and trouble writing a particular book is going to be, you might have doubts, wimp out, and never write that book at all. (I will tell you this: if I had known that the little 200 page fantasy novel I was planning to write would turn out to be a trilogy and consume 7 years of my life, I would NEVER have had the courage to undertake it. But I had no clue; I did write it; and I don't regret one minute of those 7 years.)

So that is one way that Charlotte's advice—lousy for choosing a marriage partner—can be sound advice when applied to writing a book.

Another way it may be sound advice is, if you know everything that is going to happen, if you have every last detail planned out in advance, you may be too reluctant to make necessary changes when things aren't working out, because to make those changes would utterly destroy your beautiful plan. It might have been better to leave some gaps that you can fill in later. (Too much advance planning can create an outline full of half-baked ideas. Giving the story—and yourself as a writer—some room to grow, may—as paranoid marvin says—produce much better ideas as you go along.)

So (in conclusion) my own opinion is that it is a delicate balance between knowing (planning) too much, and knowing (planning) too little before you start writing. And it won't be the same for every author or every book.

 

[Oligonicella]

I started writing fables (all quite short) around my imagined god pantheon and the world. Those naturally sifted themselves into "Ages of" and that started my world's time line. As the sifting moved the fables around, a history exerted itself and thereafter guided where others might go in the anthology.

Then one of my groups in the fables suddenly developed a guiding story line and time collisions really became important because their stories make up the DTA books, not fables. Every significant character needed an arc and because of their life spans they all needed to integrate over time and of course, fit the world of the fables. A few of the fables became incidents in the novels, just two ways of telling it and one character who is central to several fables has become a central character in the smaller series occurring long after the first. As elements of that series spawned fables, you can see they're all intertwined.

I have no choice but to keep things in a framework.

 

[dgackst]

I write more than I plan. I've tried planning stories out thoroughly before but every single time I'd get to a point in the story where I'll go 'well that just doesn't work' and my plan is shot. This probably could have been solved by really, thoroughly reviewing my plan before hand, but I've found I don't work well that way.

What I've found works best for me is identifying the main character's motive, what the end of the story will be, and what person(s) or object(s) are trying to prevent that main character from reaching the desired end. With that loose outline it allows me to launch into what I enjoy the most---writing the story. The scenes develop as they come. Sometimes I'll get enough foresight to write a few scenes ahead, but usually I'll write in sequential order.

I'm sure many others write using a similar method to what I described above. Finding out what method works best is all of rewarding, frustrating, and validating.

 

[Guanazee]

Is this your first novel?
The details you want to change/add, to me, sound like minor revisions. I'd probably just put a comment in the manuscript for where and what you want to add, then continue on to re-reading/editing the whole thing in preparation for a critique partner or beta-reader (I prefer critiques/workshopping with other writers as part of my writing process). You could be falling into the trap of "cool, new idea" that you think will make your story stronger but could feel like too much or unnecessary to readers if your existing plot and arc aren't going to be affected much. Then again, the new ideas could be just the ticket for your story. This is where additional people to sound your ideas off of in context of your actual writing is helpful.

 

[msstice]

To follow up: Since July 2023 I've dropped an arc (moved it to the next book) and revised most of the middle. Dropping the arc let me focus more on the main plot and make a richer middle than before.

I did end up picking the write more branch and that was good. The current thing that is working for me is to periodically make a short precis of the plot as it stands now so I can take a step back and see if something is structurally off. Where things looked off, I could make them better by moving some events around in the timeline.

I'm definitely a discovery writer: I tend to make lots of changes as the story fleshes out and I begin to see patterns in the characters and the story.

 

[Oligonicella]

Is this your first novel?
I'd probably just put a comment in the manuscript for where and what you want to add, then continue on to re-reading/editing the whole thing in preparation for a critique partner or beta-reader (I prefer critiques/workshopping with other writers as part of my writing process).

To elaborate on that, I use a word-processor which allows text color. Black is obvious. Blue is for short comments to myself that are notes on setting or dialog gist. Some may not make it through to ms. Red is for things I don't think 'feel right' about either their place in the story or a niggling suspicion they may collide with whatever arcs apply. Those definitely command my primary attention and, until my now being down to two books left, have occasionally jumped ship to another in the series.

 

[Mans]

Usually, drawing up a plan is the basis of a story, but I unusually begin to write and then the plan comes itself! LOL

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

I plan as I write. I'm a complete, unapologetic pantser. The closest I ever get to 'planning' things out is when I'm working on a retelling and I'm brainstorming possibilities in either my writing journal or notes file for the story, but there is no hard-and-fast planning when I get started writing and every bit of planning that happens next happens as I write and discover where the story needs/wants to go. I'm sure it likely makes things slower in many ways, but it's what works for me as I've found if I try to go the plotter route my brain just locks up and I get precisely nowhere. I'm also constantly going back to earlier sections and revising as I go so, by the time I get to the end, my first draft is also my only draft and just needs that final edit from a fresh pair of eyes to give it that last bit of polishing up.

 

[bretbernhoft]

I'd like to think that I do a little dance with both planning and writing at the same time. In other words, it is a delicate balance between the two. And the outcomes are usually of a higher quality.

 

[Righmath]

Timelines and maps! That should help you