That’s the WHAT of it, here’s the WHY

I’ve found out that there are a lot of people I know who also like to write and/or want to write. So, I thought I’d post some mistakes that I make, so hopefully you won’t have to make the same ones.

Last night in my writing class, my teacher talked about two different types of writers. On one end of a continuum is "discovery writers," and at the other end is "planners." Discovery writers like to sit down to write, not having thought too much about plot, and see what happens. They like to discover as they go. Planners like to work through characters, plot, setting, figure out the beginning and the end and everything in between, and then start writing. There’s not a right or a wrong way overall, just a right or wrong way for each individual writer.

Stephen King is a discovery writer. He comes up with some good characters, then plops them down in a situation to see what they will do. He enjoys finding out what happens in the story as he writes it. He likes to be surprised as he goes. This obviously works well for him.

Orson Scott Card is a planner. He may work for eight months on a story, then spend one month writing it. Tolkien was also a planner. He spent 15 years writing The Lord of the Rings. This method obviously works well for both of them.

Brandon Sanderson works somewhere in between. He meticulously plans out setting, world building, and plot, but doesn’t plan so much with his characters. He starts without knowing them very well, and likes to see how they grow when they are placed in the situations he has planned out. This obviously works well for him.

If you would have asked me, even many years ago "If you wrote stories, which kind of writer do you think you would be?" I would have answered without hesitation, "A planner." Now that I’ve been writing for a year, I would tell you that one of the big reasons why I’m a planner is that plot is always difficult for me. It takes a lot of thought and consideration to get it just right. I could never do it on the fly.

My teacher, though, told us that to find what works well for us, he recommends we try out both ends of the continuum. I’ve used the planning method tons. It’s always worked for me. I tried thinking if I’ve ever used the discovery method. That’s when I realized that yes, I have ONCE.

Wanna guess which story I used it on? Yep, Ancient Chinese Secret. I knew WHAT went wrong there (see my last post). I think that WHY it went wrong is because I wasn’t using my writing style. I focused too much on plot and not enough on characters because I knew plot was a weak spot for me; I had to put my focus on it.

So, I guess the lesson learned is to figure out where you are in the continuum, and then respect it. Plan if you need to plan. Discover if you need to discover. And maybe try both on for size if you aren’t sure which will work best for you.

One word of caution from my teacher, though. Stay away from the far ends of the continuum, even if you have to work hard to do so. If you are too far on the discovery end, you’ll find yourself starting out a story, then you’ll get a little stuck or start feel like you aren’t loving your story any more. So, you scrap it and start with a new story. Before long, you have a dozen started stories, and nothing ever gets finished. If you are too far on the planning end, you may write and rewrite and rework until you find you’ve spent most of your life working on the same story, never really feeling like it’s good enough for others to read. Both are bad. Be good and stay away from the ends, but stay true to your writing nature.

That’s all for now, folks. I’m sure I’ll make other mistakes before long.