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For my senior project in college, I did all the world-building, character development, and plot outlining for a high fantasy novel. I figured once I graduated, I’d just write the darn thing and get it published. Once I sat down to do so, however, I couldn’t muster much interest in the tale anymore.
“Why would I want to write this book?” I asked myself. “I already know the ending.” I shelved that project and moved on.
Thus began my time as a discovery writer, a.k.a. a “pantser,” so called because the writer goes forward by the seat of her pants. This is a process that seems to work for some writers — and it worked just dandy for my first published novel. That may or may not have been a fluke. I’m not sure.
Some time later, however, pantsing stopped working for me. I floundered and flailed. I procrastinated in the form of research. I had written myself into a dead end and didn’t know how to rescue myself.
Fortunately, I found salvation in the form of story structure. There are loads of good books with different approaches to the topic, as you’ll see by doing an internet search and reading reviews. I’m not here advocating any particular method, but I am here to proclaim that I’m a convert to pre-plotting. I was blind, but now I see, brothers and sisters.
I’ve read complaints about pre-plotting/outlining/whatever you want to call it. Discovery writers fear that “following rules and formulas” and otherwise imposing structure on your story will take the “art” out of the process.
I have news for you: art is formulaic. Composition and structure are inherently involved in its creation. I’ll concede that for abstract painters, that structure may be only faintly present. But for other artists — especially those whose art unfolds in time rather than in space — structure is key to success.
What kind of art unfolds in time?
Writing. Film. Theater. Music. Works that a consumer starts at the beginning and (hopefully) follows through to the end — as opposed to a painting, which you can (sort of) take in all at once. I’ll enumerate some points.
1) Think of a pop song — The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” for example. Verse, verse, bridge, chorus, verse, chorus. That’s part of the structure, another part being the key and chords involved. Formulaic? Yes. Does the structure allow for enormous creativity and variety? Yes. Because guess what? Songwriters from Henry Rollins to June Carter to Michael Jackson have used that same formula with widely differing — but brilliant — results.
2) You want to go highbrow? Consider sonata-allegro form, used by composers from Mozart to Vaughan Williams. Exposition-development-recapitulation-coda. It’s a formula. It produced this and this.
Structure is key to success — if you define “success” as “people enjoying your work.”
3) When a book or movie is criticized as “formulaic,” I believe what the critic is REALLY saying is that he did not fall into the story. He did not empathize with any of the characters. When a consumer can’t identify with the story in some way, the infrastructure of the story is all she can see.
Both the most popular movies and books of all time and the most critically acclaimed books and movies of all time strictly follow the rules of structure — they are formulaic.
But the magic is this: you don’t see the formula when you are absorbed in the artwork (unless you’re looking for it). Instead, you see the characters coming to life before you in a world that makes you forget your own. And the formula is one of the crucial factors that helps keep the story transparent for you.
4) Really, really good writers can create successful novels without pre-plotting. They have an instinctive sense of structure and can insert the proper plot points as they go, purely by feel. They do this in the way that an experienced, talented jazz artist improvises — they know the underlying structure so well that they can make fabulous music spontaneously. But structure is still there, trust me — or the piece wouldn’t work. So, unless you’re Stephen King or Miles Davis, consider studying the fundamentals of structure and using them to improve your art.
5) Discovery writers fear that outlining will diminish the joy of getting to know your characters and their stories. I empathize. This was my exact experience with that book I started as a college senior.
I’ve discovered this, however: there is plenty of discovery and magic to be had when fleshing out a pre-plotted novel. It just requires a slight shift of mindset. I actually think I could go back to that early project and make it work for me once again.
It’s okay to know WHAT the ending will be. The fun is seeing HOW the characters get there.
Pick up any romance novel. You KNOW that the hero and the heroine are going to end up together. The pleasure is in seeing them overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of their togetherness.
Don’t like romance? Fine. You know how a suspense novel will end, too — the hero defeats the bad guy. No matter what the genre, the fun, the escape, the addiction — both for the reader and for the writer — are in the how.