This post is dedicated to Lisbeth,
the first person to comment on my blog without being coerced into it.
After last week’s adventures with the terror that is the
Snowflake method, I continued trying to plan the poor story which I subjected
to it. As it turns out, without the goal of writing a blog post about it, I have
zero motivation to do such detailed, formulaic planning. On the other hand, I feel
like I’m doing it wrong if I plan half the novel using the Snowflake method,
and the other half in whatever strange way I see fit. Which has left this story
at great risk of being abandoned altogether. This leads me to the question: Was
it worth sacrificing the idea for research into the Snowflake method?
A lot of people say that if they try to plan a novel, they
exhaust the idea, and never start actually writing it. Which is pretty much the
current problem with my poor, Snowflaked story. Similarly, a few other stories
I’ve planned recently, where I’ve gotten so caught up in the plan, that by the
time I’ve finished it, I have no inclination to write the actual novel. I think
part of the problem here might be that planning stifles characters – if you
plot a character’s every move, they have no space to do anything interesting.
It’s especially true if you start planning before you’ve actually got a good
idea of your novel or characters – they become a vehicle for plot, which is by
far the worst way to destroy a character, in my opinion.
On the other hand, the story I’m having most fun writing at
the moment – something ridiculous about insanely talented Mary Sue teenagers at
a performing arts boarding school – was not only planned before I wrote it, but
the characters were created using a table with insightful headings such as hair
colour, height and skill level. I developed the plot basically by listing all
the things that might happen in the setting, and then ordering them in the most
likely fashion. And it worked. Amazingly well – every time I sit down to write,
I consult this handy-dandy list of plot points, and I know exactly what I’m
doing. And strangely enough, the characters from that terrible table have
personalities, and realistic interactions (and totally unrealistic levels of
talent and angst), and my sister is a ridiculously enthusiastic fan. (On the
other hand, she has always been a sucker for angsting teenage super-talented
pianists.) So the question is: Why did this work, when planning so often has
failed me?
My theory is that it’s because when I plan things, usually,
I start taking the story too seriously. I start trying to close plot holes, and
have a cohesive plot that makes sense, and all those other (very useful) things
which detract from making things gratuitously awesome. Rule of Cool always
wins. In order to write about the performing arts teenagers, I basically decided
they would be ridiculously talented, and then threw every plot point I could at
them. And it was fun. I don’t expect it to be brilliant, because it’s
gratuitous as, but nonetheless, I can’t deny the effectiveness (so long as you’re
not looking to write anything deep and literary) of plotting your story by thinking
of awesome things, and writing about them.
