There are a lot of jobs in the world, but for the majority of them, you know what you’re in for. You’re making something, or moving it around, or keeping track of it, or trading it. Even upper-level managers have a pretty fair idea what their job is. Writers, on the other hand, are always moving into the unknown.

I think this is why so many people are so devoted to various forms of pre-writing: they’re trying to make the trip knowable, or at least predictable.

It would be lovely if any of the techniques worked reliably. Not just because it would make the journey a lot easier and less stressful, though that would certainly be nice. Not even because it would make things move faster and more reliably, though that would be even nicer. But because, if you really could make a clear plan for moving into unknown territory, it would be a lot easier to a) sell the story to an editor and b) explain what I do to all the people with regular jobs that I meet every day.

I was thinking about this the last few days, in particular, because during my drive to Chicago last weekend, someone on the radio made the comment that you can’t play golf if you don’t know where the hole is. He was using it as a metaphor for setting goals, and it’s a good metaphor for that. It just doesn’t apply as strictly to writing as it does to other things, even though to some folks it looks as if it ought to.

Let’s start with something easy: My goal is to write a short story. Three to five thousand words, science fiction. That’s nice and clear, and doesn’t even get too specific about characters or plot. Yet I have, several times, sat down to write a short story and ended up with an 80,000 word novel. (The Harp of Imach Thyssel was the first time it happened.) I am not alone in this, either; I have a number of writer friends who routinely end up with novels instead of the shorter fiction they’d intended to write.

As soon as you throw in characters and plot and backstory, it gets even harder to end up where you think you were going. Oh, it may look good on paper, before anything actually gets written, but things nearly always start to drift the farther into the story one gets. Because one doesn’t actually know that the route one has charted through the vast empty unknown part of the map will get anywhere, let alone getting to the exact place it’s supposed to go. Add in process differences – there are folks who really need to know where they’re going, and others for whom having even an inkling of what the destination is like kills all desire to make the trip – and “know where the hole is before you try to play” starts looking positively problematic.

It’s a bit of a conundrum, really. On the one hand, explorers need to be prepared – it is much better to bring sunscreen and bug spray and an elephant gun and antivenin and extra rations, and not need them, than it is to need one of them desperately and not have it. (Especially the elephant gun and the antivenin.) On the other hand, explorers who are too sure that they know what to expect are prone to receiving nasty, sometimes fatal, surprises. Planning is often useful, but as the saying goes, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and other sorts of plans are just as fragile.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. There isn’t even a this-mostly-works recommendation that one can point a beginning writer at. About all one can do is try different things and see whether they’re helpful or not.

This is especially frustrating because the plots and structures and characters and above all process that’s hiding out there in the unknown keeps changing, so what worked for the last book, or the last three or five or seven books, will suddenly not work at all on the current one. The careful planner will find that the only way to get words down is to fly by the seat of her pants; the careless pantser discovers that the latest book requires reams of charts and maps and planning before he can get started. Or it may be less extreme: the writer who has never bothered with character sketches will find them a necessity; the other one who’s always used detailed maps has characters head straight for the blank area; the one who normally writes every morning before breakfast can’t put a word on paper til after lunch.

If you are going to move out into the unknown, you want to be as prepared as possible, but still hang loose so you can be flexible when that totally unexpected thing happens and everything changes (whether the unexpected thing happens to your characters, or to you). You may wind up at a different destination, or you may get where you intended to go, but by a different route. The trip may be completely different from what you expected, or it may have only one or two surprises (there will always be some), but as long as you don’t get too hung up on getting every detail nailed down in advance and then sticking to it, it’s bound to be an interesting journey.

10 Comments
  1. Yet another eminently timely post, as I am struggling with process (along with many other things) in getting the new novel(s) started.

    Relax, enjoy the journey, and make sure there’s some extra cash in the wallet for emergencies. Right. *nods firmly*

  2. Writers are creative types, but I’ve always said that we still need something methodical about us – that way when the process changes, we can go with it. It’s flexibility plus structure that ultimately leaves a writer well-balanced. (In my opinion).

  3. My first novel crept up on me in disguise, pretending to be a novelette, nothing more.

    • The one I’m working on now did that too. I mostly write short vignette sort of things, so I was very surprised when this one demanded expansion into a novel.

      • Plus, now it’s insisting on a sequel…

  4. I went at Pride’s Children backward – I knew where I wanted to end up, and all the plotting backtracked from there to fill the prerequisites and requirements and motivations – because the premise I hoped to prove is only reached by knowing where ALL the stepping stones are in the path across the river. Miss one, be unwilling to suspend disbelief for it, and the whole lovely house of cards falls apart because of the implausibility and impossibility of the END.

    It has been fun meeting all those intermediate points – and a lot of work. Oh, and in the process, a novel intended not to top 100k words is going to be a trilogy of volumes longer than that. That’s the price you pay for that plausibility. We writers do things like that – I’m NOT the only one.

    • My first drafts always looked like extra-verbose outlines — 20,000 word outlines. I would then have to go back and flesh out the skeletons, put in all the connective tissue, and sometimes take advantage of a brainstorm. Some of ’em sold, some didn’t.

    • It’s fun when you have to work out from the middle.

      • I never tried working out from the middle I not infrequently figured out the ending before anything else. I would then start from the beginning, and hope they’d eventually find each other.

        Brenda Clough compared the process, long ago on rec.arts.sf.composition, to the boa constrictor in the zoo, who every year must be taken out to be measured. Two valiant keepers run in and grab the head and the tail, and then everyone goes in and grabs the rest of the boa and brings it outside.

        Charles Addams did a cartoon of a dozen or so keepers doing just that, and a photographer recording the boa’s birthday for posterity, and the manager consoling a thirteenth keeper, “There, there, Hawkins, with normal growth you’ll be in there next year.”