Write and Wrong
I find it amazing, the different ways people go about creative writing.
Some people need to plan everything, knowing what will be in each individual chapter before they even start writing. These people also tend to have lots of back story for the characters and the worlds (in the case of speculative fiction, which is what I am mainly concerned with). There probably aren't many that go to the extent that Tolkien did, but stil...
I'm the opposite, really. Or at least as close as you can get to the oppposite. If I plan to much I just get bored with the entire thing. If I know the ending and exactly how everyone gets there then why the hell would I want to go through the whole long process of doing the writing?
I generally have a bit of an idea where I'm going. I know some point along the way that my characters are going to hit.
*These two character need to meet at some stage and have a certain conversation.
*There will be a battle at this location that will send Character A off in a different direction.
*Character A and Character B are going to fall in love.
I know stuff like that, but have no idea how I'll actually get to that point until I 'm starting to get close. I do the writing to find out.
When I was at Conflux (sci-fi convention held recently in Canberra) I went to a panel given by... Well, I can't remember his name, but he wrote a fantasy book called Across the Face of the Word. Seeing he came from a map making background, he started his story with a map. How crazy is that? He explained at one point how he'd drawn this mountain range (absolutely wonderful maps) and then set about inventing a pantheon of gods to name some of the peaks after. What I want to know is, how does he know that that mountain range, and that pantheon of gods, are going to suit his story once he gets there? Is he automatically going to twist his story to suit the maps? Or would he be willing to change the maps? Seeing I know (from the way he was talking) that there's no way he'd change the maps (he did spend a good number of years making them, after all) I can guess what the answer would be. Sara Douglas starts stories the same way, apparently. Crazy, I tell you. I used to do it when I was about 10 years old, because, if nothing else, it is a great way of procrastinating. Now days, if I have a map at all, I find out what it's like as the characters move about the world.
Same thing with characters and history of the world. How can I possibly know what I'm going to need until it comes up in the story? A battle on this plain 500 years ago? But I want one of the characters to have fought in that battle... The world and the history should be there to suit the story, not the other way around.
Sure, with those who plan, they will know more about how their story and geography and history all fit together than I know about mine because they've planned the story. But most of the history will be about the details of the story and are not really needed at the beginning...
By the same token, it seems that it does help if I know something about the future in my story at some point. With the story I just finished (well, a few months ago now) I was well and truely stuck. Sat in the same place, about 1/3 of the way in, for a long time. Then, suddenly, I worked out exactly how the good guys were going to win at the very end of the book. I'd had a general idea previously but... Once I had it worked out in my head I wrote lots, though it really had no immediate relevance to the bit I was stuck on. I wrote 110k words in two months. It was a great ending (well, I thought it was then and I still do now) and I wanted to get there to see how it all happened.
So some people plan... Me, I wander along until a scene or an idea or a... something... grabs me and says, "Come look at me." I don't think I could do it any other way. (Possibly gets back to that lazy thing as much as the boredom. Planning and writing? Twice as much work.)
I'm sure someone could come along and tell me why planning is very important. and the thing is... they'll be right. Writing would be a lot easier if there was a right way to do things, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun-- it would just be designing another bridge or writing another computer program-- and if I wanted to be doing one of those things, I'd be doing it.
Some people need to plan everything, knowing what will be in each individual chapter before they even start writing. These people also tend to have lots of back story for the characters and the worlds (in the case of speculative fiction, which is what I am mainly concerned with). There probably aren't many that go to the extent that Tolkien did, but stil...
I'm the opposite, really. Or at least as close as you can get to the oppposite. If I plan to much I just get bored with the entire thing. If I know the ending and exactly how everyone gets there then why the hell would I want to go through the whole long process of doing the writing?
I generally have a bit of an idea where I'm going. I know some point along the way that my characters are going to hit.
*These two character need to meet at some stage and have a certain conversation.
*There will be a battle at this location that will send Character A off in a different direction.
*Character A and Character B are going to fall in love.
I know stuff like that, but have no idea how I'll actually get to that point until I 'm starting to get close. I do the writing to find out.
When I was at Conflux (sci-fi convention held recently in Canberra) I went to a panel given by... Well, I can't remember his name, but he wrote a fantasy book called Across the Face of the Word. Seeing he came from a map making background, he started his story with a map. How crazy is that? He explained at one point how he'd drawn this mountain range (absolutely wonderful maps) and then set about inventing a pantheon of gods to name some of the peaks after. What I want to know is, how does he know that that mountain range, and that pantheon of gods, are going to suit his story once he gets there? Is he automatically going to twist his story to suit the maps? Or would he be willing to change the maps? Seeing I know (from the way he was talking) that there's no way he'd change the maps (he did spend a good number of years making them, after all) I can guess what the answer would be. Sara Douglas starts stories the same way, apparently. Crazy, I tell you. I used to do it when I was about 10 years old, because, if nothing else, it is a great way of procrastinating. Now days, if I have a map at all, I find out what it's like as the characters move about the world.
Same thing with characters and history of the world. How can I possibly know what I'm going to need until it comes up in the story? A battle on this plain 500 years ago? But I want one of the characters to have fought in that battle... The world and the history should be there to suit the story, not the other way around.
Sure, with those who plan, they will know more about how their story and geography and history all fit together than I know about mine because they've planned the story. But most of the history will be about the details of the story and are not really needed at the beginning...
By the same token, it seems that it does help if I know something about the future in my story at some point. With the story I just finished (well, a few months ago now) I was well and truely stuck. Sat in the same place, about 1/3 of the way in, for a long time. Then, suddenly, I worked out exactly how the good guys were going to win at the very end of the book. I'd had a general idea previously but... Once I had it worked out in my head I wrote lots, though it really had no immediate relevance to the bit I was stuck on. I wrote 110k words in two months. It was a great ending (well, I thought it was then and I still do now) and I wanted to get there to see how it all happened.
So some people plan... Me, I wander along until a scene or an idea or a... something... grabs me and says, "Come look at me." I don't think I could do it any other way. (Possibly gets back to that lazy thing as much as the boredom. Planning and writing? Twice as much work.)
I'm sure someone could come along and tell me why planning is very important. and the thing is... they'll be right. Writing would be a lot easier if there was a right way to do things, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun-- it would just be designing another bridge or writing another computer program-- and if I wanted to be doing one of those things, I'd be doing it.
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