Losing the Plot
Recently I stumbled across an article offering advice about how to go from initial idea to story. This author’s prescription for creating compelling fiction? First, outline. Know your beginning, middle, and end. Create character sketches with a list of physical features and personality traits. Next, map out the story’s events. Think of your story as a race, with your protagonist wanting to get to the finish line. Now choose a setting. Got it? Now you’re ready to write.
While I wholeheartedly disagree with this advice, I understand the desire to plot out a narrative, however loosely, before writing the first draft. Let’s face it — first drafts can be scary; all this meandering, getting lost in a maze of possibilities, images and associations, detouring through what feel like unwieldy episodes and characters. An outline provides a blueprint. It’s safe, known territory. It would seem then that knowing where our narrative is going before we write should produce our best stories.
Not so.
Why? Because writing is largely an unconscious process. We never know what we’re going to say until we start writing. Even if you do have an idea at the outset of where your story is headed, it helps to stay open to what your story is telling you about what it’s trying to become. Maybe a minor character takes on a life of his or her own, spinning the story in a completely unexpected direction. Or you discover after several revisions that you’re really probing your relationship with your mother, not your father. If you coerce your characters into doing things that merely satisfy plot, if you pour your story into a preconceived template, the result is likely to be relatively shallow prose that’s not satisfying to you or your readers.
I’m not saying to abandon structure. Structure is essential. It shapes our prose so that a reader can receive it. But premature focus on it can stifle your voice. It can disturb the intuitive flow, the discovery or sublime truth that both reader and writer seemingly arrive at together. As Robert Frost famously said, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
I suggest that rather than begin with an outline, write exploratory drafts. Dive in. Don’t know where you’re going. Structure is an evolving process. As you dive deeper and deeper into your material, as you inhabit your story and your characters through successive re-envisioning, you begin to see patterns and connections; you see a shape emerge. That’s when structure becomes useful.
Writing is a discovery of what we didn’t know was in us. This freefall approach might feel scary at first, but ultimately your voice will let loose. And your work will be richer and more rewarding. Narrative voice and, by extension, our stories, can only flourish if we stay open and, to a certain degree, lose control.
Nanci has been very blunt and helpful. Initially when I began writing, I always wanted the kind of stories that made people stay up at night. You won’t blame me because I set my standards based on the style and caliber of writers I admired like Forsyth, Dekker,Rivers and Archer. So you see, I was heading for a suicide even before I started living.
Another issue of importance is our personal goals. For example I wanted to write a stunning book by my 16th birthday. In retrospect, I LAUGH at my immaturity.
My advice is first know what messages you want to pass across. Then begin to write as it comes to you, careless in your first and second draft. Gradually your style emerges. Don’t rush. No one can say your message like you.They may have the same message but your style will earn your audience.
Hi, Niyi
Thanks for your thoughts. Wow! Very impressed with your list of favorite authors.
I particularly like what you say about earning your audience. I think that when you write what matters to you, your audience finds you and is grateful.
I wholeheartedly agree. I don’t know how anyone could write such a detailed outline and character sketch, without killing his or her creativity. The only time it would make sense is if a person plans to pitch a series, because s/he wants to demonstrate an idea how the story will progress, and eventually end, but that’s after writing the manuscript for the first book.
Lose control — good advice! Those rare moments of “channeling” are the best. But then, the subsequent revising is also key, and fun, like sculpting in clay.
In my writing, this plot business has been not such a problem, at least at the individual short story level. Mostly, they came fairly organically, through writing as exploration (never “plotting”). Sometimes just time was required before a story could find its way. But then, I was thrilled to experience, as if from nowhere, connections occuring between and among stories, and I began to assemble an interwoven collection that corresponded with my growing study of nonduality as a philosophy. Never had a clue when these stories began that this is where they would take me.
But now… I’m working on two novels and often feeling lost in the morass of infinite possibility. Maybe I’m not cut out for long-form. Or… I’ll slowly feel my way through to the other side, fully experiencing every minute in the dark. Time will tell.
Brent,
Such great insight!
That’s what I love so much about writing or any other creative endeavor. It’s largely a receptive process. I love slipping into that dream space. Sometimes we just have to get out of our own head, stay open and let the story breathe. And trust that the story and its shape will emerge.
I feel “lost in the morass of infinite possibility” (love that!) even when writing short fiction. I’m often flooded by a myriad of associations, memories, images and so forth. Harnessing it all is a huge challenge for me. That’s why I enjoy revision so much. It is, like you say, “sculpting in clay.”
Two novels in progress! Wow! Looking forward to them…
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