In 2011, I had a dream. It was such a detailed dream, that I decided to write a story around it. Before NaNoWriMo came around, I did lots of planning. Who are the characters? Why does this item mean so much? What actually happens? Why? Where does the story take place? What's the story behind the story?
On and on I went, until I had filled up about five full pages in my notebook. I even wrote out two full pages of the synopsis.
While none of this is a bad thing, I found out that I didn't know how to plan. I'm usually a pantser, but this year, I wanted to go full on planner.
It didn't work out very well. Once I started the story, I realized that I had planned myself into a box. Since I had a pretty distinct outline, synopsis, time line of events, I couldn't allow myself to write outside of my research.
"This has to happen after that, but I feel like it's too soon."
"I don't really like the way A happened, but B has to happen after it, so I can't change it."
I finished the whole story in about 35k words. I was done, but I was still short 15k. What was I supposed to do? I didn't plan for this.
Now mind you, this was: A, my second NaNoWriMo, and B, the second story I had ever finished. I was a "new" writer, and I didn't know what I was doing. I say "new" because I was starting to write stories about things other than Zelda.
I learned two valuable things from this experience:
1. I am not a planner
2. If I do plan, I must learn to leave holes, or give myself permission to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
Here are some tips for planners who aren't used to planning:
1. Do you know exactly how you want it to go? Well, get rid of the idea that it's going to go that way. Plain and simple. You're dealing with art and creativity, which has about as much of an attention span as a kitten who just ate and woke up from a nap. Shout out to all my cat people.
2. Have a set destination, but make a map. There are many ways to get to one place. Allow your plans to go into different directions than the route you chose. There might be traffic or road work. You never know.
3. "I'll cross the bridge when I get there." That's a good motto for a writer, remember that.
4. Also, here's a tip: go talk to a planner. I'm just trying to teach you how to not plan yourself into a box, they can teach you how to plan effectively, if that's what you want to learn.
Well, I hope you learned something. If not, then I hope you enjoyed learning about my struggle. By the way, I did finish the story with 50k. I just added 15k of back story on one of the characters. It's a good story, it just lacks...a point.
Writing is like math. There is always a set answer (the end of a story). It doesn't matter if you find it with a different method than someone else, it just matters that you get there.
