Shh! I have a plan - Kelly McCaughrain

I have recently undergone a religious conversion. Having been an Orthodox Pantser all my life, recently I’ve been having doubts (forgive me, St Kerouac for I have Planned).

When I think about it, was I ever really that committed to Pantsing? If asked, I’d have given the standard answers about why I write by the seat of my pants. Ie:

• Story comes from character
• If I plan it, I’ll lose interest in writing it
• Planning leads to formulaic fiction

In the Plantser Wars, Pantsers have tended to be disparaging about Planners. Stephen King said, “Outlines are the last resort of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters’ theses.” Margaret Atwood said, “I couldn’t write the other way round, with structure first. It would be too much like paint-by-numbers.”

I honestly did believe all the above reasons for my Pantsing. Flying Tips really did feel to me like it was written by my main character, I was just along for the ride. But, as Pantser Pierce Brown says, this kind of writing is great when it works. “I sit down at my computer every day praying for a lightening strike.” The thing about lightening strikes is they’re rare (and actually, never strike the same place twice? Which might explain why I’ve been having a nightmare for the last couple of years trying to recreate that experience.)

Also, I suspect my first book was written that way because I had no idea how to plan a novel when I wrote it. It was only after I finished it that I discovered things like Midpoints and Inciting Incidents. Never heard of them before (despite having studied an undergrad degree in creative writing – universities don’t believe in Planning. They’re firmly on the snooty side of the Plantser Wars and only teach you how to write beautiful sentences and esoteric short stories and experimental prose poems that you can send off to all those publishers just crying out for such things. Oh no, wait…)

Chuck Wendig suggests, “…some writers are natural pantsers, others are pantsers-by-default, pantsers-by-laziness. They do not plan, they do not outline. They don’t because it’s hard. And frustrating. And irritating. That’s why I didn’t used to do it.”

I may have been a Panter-by-default, purely because I didn’t know any other way of doing it.

Somehow I got lucky with Flying Tips. The structure was fine without me thinking much about it. I suspect that all writers do know intuitively how to structure a story, and I’m not saying that it’s something you need to go and learn.

What I am saying is that, if you’re doing it without consciously thinking about it, then it’s like being let loose in a city, in rush hour traffic, blindfolded, having been told to find a Starbucks, as opposed to being given a map and a bus pass.

And make no mistake, you are doing it. 99% of even the most experimental fiction by the snobbiest Pantsers has exactly the same bones as genre fiction. So if you’re going to end up in the same place anyway… why not take the map?

(And anyway, we’re writing for kids, and if there’s one thing we know about kids, it’s that they like structure. They’re psychologically damaged by the lack of it in their lives, so maybe they like a bit of it in their fiction too? You can write scary for kids, but you have to do it within a safe structure.)

I think the fear of Planning is rooted in a fear that the story will become cardboard if you overthink it. I get that, and I’ve avoided planning for that reason. But I've also spent the last few years stumbling around blindfolded, being hit by trucks and expending much time and energy trying to magically stumble onto the right path and the truth is I am tired and bruised.

So I read Into the Woods by John Yorke.

 

 And Lo...

First of all, the book is just a fascinating read. Even if you’ve no intention of planning your novel, you should read it, in the same way that artists study human anatomy with no intention of ever performing surgery. We all know that something in our brains is hardwired to find certain structures satisfying. This book explains why and how those structures work, and it uses a lot of film examples (because everyone is familiar with them) so it’s easy to follow.

I’ve had an idea for a story in the back of my mind for years now. I’d written about 30K words, I knew who the main characters were and, very roughly, what would happen. But I hadn’t launched into it, mainly because I was struggling through something else, and partly because I was just overwhelmed by the idea of putting on the blindfold and heading out there again. 

This is an extremely inefficient way to get around

But as I read Into the Woods, I started thinking about it. And taking notes. In the chapter about plot points, I identified all of mine and wrote them down. When it talked about symmetry and mirroring, I examined my plot and discovered how I could do that. I ended up writing 25 pages of notes on the plot.

As well as clarifying my idea, this also filled in several gaps for me. For example, my story seemed to fit the 5 Act Structure really well, but I’d assumed a particular event would be my Third Turning Point. Having read Into the Woods, I realised it wasn’t, it was my Midpoint. Normally I’d have tried writing it, got to the 60K word mark, decided it didn’t work (I do this a lot) and gone back to the start, over and over, wasting months of my life and getting more and more tired before I stumbled on the right answer.

 

My characters also became clearer. I knew how I wanted one of them to emerge at the end of the novel, but that meant she had to be the opposite of that in the beginning. I could have written most of the book without realising this and had to start again.

I took my notes off to a hotel in Galway for a few days. I brought Into the Woods, my notes, all the research I’d done (I spent a month just reading about the subject matter), and an old roll of wallpaper and a pack of index cards. Three days later I emerged with 5 acts, laid out in order, each act containing its own mini-inciting incident, crisis and climax. 

Et Voila!

I’ve identified all the ways the characters/themes/scenes mirror/foreshadow/highlight each other. I know what the purpose of each event is in relation to the whole novel. I’ve made sure the character arcs are complete and keep pace with each other. I know that the ending answers the questions posed in the beginning. I know which questions to ask in the beginning. I know which themes to emphasise and where to emphasise them and I’ve identified which threads/characters didn’t go anywhere and now I won’t waste weeks writing them.

And I still feel enthusiastic about writing this book. In fact, I feel more enthusiastic because I don’t have that sense of dread and ‘what if I’m about to waste a year of my life’ going in. I’ve never felt so confident and excited about beginning a book.

Pantsers like to say that Planners write plot-based novels as opposed to character-based ones and that they’re too reliant on plot rather than emotional development or actual writing. I actually think it’s the opposite.

I think I’ve always avoided planning because I’m not that interested in plot. I hate trying to develop plot, I find it really hard. The idea of writing a whole plot in advance is scary. So I’ve always launched into character and let the plot unfold in its own torturously bumpy way.

But having created a plot plan in advance (and had the help of a guide to do it) has taken all the pain out of that process and I feel like I’m now going to be able to really enjoy the writing and the characters because I don’t have to think about plot. For the first time in a long time I feel really excited about getting to write something, and that feels incredible and long overdue.

The emotional arc of your characters is as subject to structure as anything else. The reason a character’s emotional journey feels believable, feels ‘right’ to us, is because it follows that structure. The reason we find certain structures satisfying comes from psychology. Structure doesn’t constrain the character’s emotional journey, it’s a product of our innate knowledge of how believable human beings react to things.

I am absolutely not saying that I’m married to this plot plan or that you can’t break the rules when you start writing. And I didn’t start making the plan until I had the characters' voices established and I’d written the opening and knew roughly where they wanted to go. Character will always be more important to me than plot, but I doubt any Planner writes their plot plan before they create their characters.

Probably everyone's somewhere on the Plantsing spectrum. Apparently a lot of committed Pantsers are also Pants-on-fire-sers. 

 

Vonnegut claimed he wrote his books in one-off sessions, but his son says that he’s found loads of planning notes and drafts among his papers. Kerouac’s stream of drug-induced consciousness actually took him nine years from conception to actually sitting down to write.

Plans for The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Plans for a short story by Jennifer Egan

Norman Mailer's Character Timeline

Faulkner's outline for his Pulitzer Prize winning story 'A Fable' on his office wall

Joseph Heller's Catch 22

and of course, JK's Order of the Phoenix

See, they're all doing it.

I guess everyone has to just do what works for them. But it’s crazy to say you’re a Pantser just because you’ve never actually looked into story structure, and vice versa. Stephen King compared Planners to “bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters’ theses.” Well, the thing is, I’m really good at academic writing. I wish I were writing a masters’ thesis. Because that’s a process I’ve always been able to handle. But I went into fiction writing thinking it must be very different. ‘Real’ writers never make notes or graphs, surely. That’s for our sworn enemies, the mathematicians. Real writers turn up in a floaty nightie, light a candle, sacrifice a small animal and let the muses come. 

Remember to also be pretty and use a typewriter

But why shouldn’t I use a process that I know works for me? (And what’s wrong with academic writing anyway? The best non-fiction writing is as much about structure and storytelling as fiction is).

So my crisis of faith has led me here, to a point where I have a plot plan ready to go and I’ll be starting to write over Christmas (taking occasional breaks to evangelise all my writing friends). I’m hoping it’ll save me time, energy and tears. 

Of course, this is all theoretical and a big experiment so far and I won’t know if it works until I actually write the book, but I’ll keep you updated on my progress (I think you could hardly avoid hearing about my progress, soz).

Wow, this was a long post. Would love to hear your thoughts. Sorry I’ve rambled on! I didn’t plan to.

Kelly McCaughrain is the author of the Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year,

Flying Tips for Flightless Birds. 

She is the Children's Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland #CWFNI

She also blogs at The Blank Page

@KMcCaughrain