What do you guys/gals do when you're writing a story? Where do you spend the bulk of your prewriting on, (if you have any)? Making worlds, understanding characters, or maybe writing out a timeline of events? Perhaps something entirely different? What have you tried, and what did or would you think works best?

I then spend the biggest section of my pre-writing and planning time on characterization, because I am piss-poor at it.

As far as plot-or-characters goes, I find the plot and characters are intertwined; advancing one will necessarily change the other. I think of it like a pair of coupled differential equations: each is a function of its own past, AND THE OTHER'S PAST!

That is, what happens next (plot) depends on what already happened, and how that effected the characters, and vice-versa. Right?

I just write--perhpas the plot is buried in the back of my mind and as the characters tell me their story it is dug up.

But I don't think it out ahead of time---if I do I don't write the story because its already been told, even if it is just in my head.

So, I do a lot of pre-thinking. I first have an idea of where the story is going, what it is that I want to tell. I create my main characters by giving them a rather complete life story. Then I begin to tell the story in the scenes that unfold.

It is good to ask and then see the many techniques people use. Reading about the methods of famous writes reveals a variety of procedures as well. Perhaps we try one way, then find a better way and move on to the next way of putting a story together.

That loose system worked fairly well for a while, but now somewhere around the 13000 word mark I’ve sort of stalled. I’m starting to think I might be one of those people who need a more solid outline of what’s going to occur between that start and finish. It’s not that some good stuff hasn’t just show up as I wondered around, but without a clearer picture of the plot I’m not sure I’m using it to it’s full advantage and I don’t want to get so bogged down that I don’t finish the novel. But I also don’t want to stifle beneficial spontaneity by over planning.

So now I’m torn between taking what I have and A) just pushing on and hope everything straightens up or B) stepping back and plotting everything in much more detail (like a chapter by chapter breakdown of what needs to happen, which should be able incorporate what I’ve already written for the most part).

One could say I’m at a bit of an impasse about the dig vs. plan approaches

Of course, either way means a rewrite... Oh well, at least it means I'll finish it eventually.

I'm still interested in what you others do though. Do you plan out just the major events? Does anybody actually plan out every major and minor event, down to the littlest detail?

When the plot and story develops along with the characters, I find that a lot of the time, when I go back several chapters, the story there doesn't hold water because of what I've discovered about the world and characters later on. So, I get a better grasp of the world... but I then have to go back and rewrite everything from that new vantage point.

Chapter one: Bilbo has his 111 birthday party, leaves
Chapter two: Gandalf talks to Frodo about Ring

Then, within the chapter, I give myself some elbow space to play with things. So long as nothing I do changes how the story is going to end, I am fine. I can introduce characters if I feel that will benefit my story. I can decide that it would be interesting if another character were present, unseen, while Gandalf and Frodo are talking (this one is actually not very good, as it changes the rest of the books, but I hope you kind of get the idea). I do this carefully, however, always considering the implications and ripples my little changes will cause.

Basicaly, I tend to write like this: General idea. Characters and Situation. Explore characters and Situation. Build as you go, and take notes of what you build. Then, the story will lead you to the end.

But the taking notes part is very important. That way, you won't have to change things from the begining. You'll build as you got on the bases you already have.

Having said that, of course, sometimes you may need to go back and change something. But, if this becomes a routine, then you're doing something wrong, IMO.

Notes about what will happen I keep only when the situation is confusing, with many characters and plots that I have to keep track of. If the story is about one character or a united group, then, this is not needed.

One came to me in a flash of inspiration. I knew the whole story from start to finish, wrote detailed notes on character background, and just cranked it out. That was unusual.

Another story was inspired by a commercial. 1 scene suggested itself, then a character, then more scenes based on that character, and I ended up writing an outline for an entire novel-length story, and I just can't seem to get going on it. It never feels quite right, so I've left it on the back burner to stew for a while.

More recently, I just started writing a scene one day. I didn't know who my main character was, or anything about his background. I didn't know wher the story was going. I just kept saying to myself "What would make this story interesting?" I have a vague idea of where I'm going, and that's it, and I'm deliberately NOT planning out any more than I have to to finish the chapter I'm on. And I'm having more fun writing this story than any other.

Unfortunately, my characters keep changing, I have to move things along unexpectedly, and rewrite some parts to accomodate for that, but it's much more fun for me than agonizing over what I'm writing because I can't seem to make it fit into the big picture I have in my head.

So as far as digging vs. planning, I like the digging better.

1. One day, as I was walking home from classes, I wondered what would have happened if a particular fairy tale ended differently. It was a dumb thought, but then I kept wondering about it. In what sort of world would that have been the outcome to the story? (Answered myself: future distopia) Why would the main character choose this? Would he/ she be right? What would happen next? And then, as I was having this conversation with myself, a world emerged independent of the fairy-tale itself, complete with politics, characters, biology, etc.

2. I allowed the idea to stew for several days, and then I sat down and wrote a simply awful short story about it. It required a lot of backfill at the beginning, and it was overly senitmental, but then, I was young.

3. I had a couple of friends read this story, one of which gave me some great advice on how to write a story. At this same time I was reading lots of bad writing and slowly coming to an awareness of how stories work. The basic consensus was that I had something good in there, but I was doing by best to hide it by incompetent writing.

4. I had a random thought to write the thing as a novel. This scared me, but I tried it. I obviously had not learned my lesson, because I began it several times trying to do all the backstory at once, beginning at the birth of the main character and putting some magic-esque things into it even though I was aiming at science fiction. Each attempt failed after about 15 pages, so not too much harm was done.

5. I invented a character who was originally supposed to be minor, supporting. He intrigued me, so I started the story from his point of view. The more I wrote of him, the more he became vibrant and intriguing. I dropped his mother as a viewpoint character: she was interesting too, but she was altogether too messed up to have a clear perspective on things. This start powered my novel, and, while it is still heavily flawed and only 150 pages along, I'm still trekking with it. And I still like it.

6. Some of the characters I expected to be good have shown flaws, surprising to even myself. I like these flaws, I think they add to the story, so I leave them until they decide to fix themselves.

I guess my view on characters is that they function as a part of the story that is most self-reliant. They are the story much of the time. As such, a writer is foolish to make them do anything contrary to their character. The writer has to be aware of the personas he/she has created and make sure they live up to themselves. Simply deciding that Bob is now going to fall madly in love with Susan is terribly callous and will only lead to mediocre or painfully bad writing. But if it seems logical that Bob would be attracted to Susan, go ahead.

Often it will be in the course of the story, as characters learn things and become things, that they will start to "make their own choices." I don't really think that is what is happening, though. You as a writer have created a character who is so realistic, hopefully, that eventually choices become somewhat inevitable, however unpredictable. Ender simply couldn't have decided to not destroy the buggers. Sam wouldn't have let Frodo go off alone, and if Frodo did manage to give his gardener the slip, Sam would probably have followed him or had a nervous breakdown or some such variant.

We know this; Tolkien knew this. Your readers will be aware of these things too, and so you must be careful to let your characters be alive without taking over the story. I guess my earlier comment had to do with that--you must be so careful with your story that minor characters don't grow all over it like cancer. Only encourage growth where it is beneficial to the life of the story.

I have that problem too (which is what I think was giving me trouble when I posted on this topic earlier). So I go back and fix up the earlier parts so it all works together. Which is great, since I think every revision I’ve done like that makes the story and writing stronger. But it makes it harder to move forward if you are always backtracking. It’s sort of for that reason that I wonder if more planning at the start would cut down on the backtracking. Then again, if you haven’t had that time to get a “better grasp of the world” maybe a plot planned out right at the start wouldn’t hold up well in the long run and you would then have to spend a lot of time revising the plan as well. The actual writing process seems to bring out a lot of important relationships and ideas.

Crude outlines (as discussed by Brinestone and others). That might just be the best of both worlds… at least for the way my mind works.

to all others--I don't write hard sci-fi, and I rarely write sci-fi any more at all, so I imagine I would probably think about the world more if I was doing that--however, I'd never write HARD sci-fi anyway and not thinking about the world at all would still be very tempting . . . If I get too caught up in all the details of the world and universe I never write the story. If I plan out all the chapters, or even just the main events, I feel like I've already told the story anyway, so why should I try again? I guess you all just have more patience than I do.

I'm halfway through my story and I've realized that my character (with good reason) is to the point where he wants nothing more than to die, he's emotionally scarred and if they had the tests he'd probably be pronounced clinically depressed. So I'm taking a dramatic turn; I'm changing the point of view, killing the main character, and rewriting the second half of my outline. The point of this is that I now have a better story. The point of the outline is to give the story a unified direction so you don't have to cut out massive quantities of information (perhaps this is why in "On Writing" King also suggests cutting out 1/4 of your words, because his stories don't have a unified direction at first?). Rewriting an outline shouldn't be taken lightly but if it is nescessary for the story to procede nicely it should be done.

I also think up huge amounts of backstory, most of it will never leave my head, but it's there in case I ever need it. It also helps to prevent your story from leaking. I give the story a direction with a definite ending, but I'm not afraid to change it, that's what makes the story a story, it matures. Oh yeah, and rewrites help to make you story more concise too.

The Great Uberslacker

Forgive me if I babbled, I'm only thinking halfway coherently tonight.