Ahem. Perhaps you’ve noticed that this is post #51. Yes, I am halfway to my goal of 101 posts on Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote My First Book. Exciting, no?
In today’s landmark post I’m giving myself permission to meander a bit and talk about creativity.
A lot of writers shy away from planning because they say it stifles their creativity, kills the juicy momentum and energy they had for the story. To illustrate why I think this is a bunch of BS, I’m going to tell you about something that happened to me the other day.
As I mentioned in my last post, I sat down and used the format for plot planning laid out in The Plot Whisperer (bought it yet? reserved it at your library? Good) to plan Book III: Shattered Dreams, which I intend to write, or at least start, during NaNoWriMo. Now, because I have six major POV characters including the main protagonist, I figured I need to plot out six different sets of turning point scenes. Larc’s climax, for example, won’t necessarily happen during the same event as Stasia’s climax. More importantly, the emotional/developmental impact of events will be different for each POV character, even if they experience the same events.
So I sat down and mapped out the major scenes for each POV character. I didn’t spend quite as much time on each as I did on Stasia and Dynat, but it still took me about three hours. I got sort of fatigued toward the end, but I kept pushing because I wanted to be sure to plan each one out, and I have a limited amount of time before November 1st.
When I finished the last one, I felt drained. The characters, emotions, images, things that are usually swirling around in my mind and body, lighting me on fire, were quiet, subdued, like dying embers.
I went for a walk. Usually walking wakes the fires of my mind to a blaze. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t conjure any of the feelings of my story.
Terror gripped me. Is this what they’ve been warning me about, I wondered, when they say planning stifles creativity? Have I lost the feeling of this story forever?
Maybe I just need some space, I decided, trying not to panic. I have it mapped out. I’ll let it sit for a day or two, till November first if I have to. Maybe drafting will rekindle the spark.
The next day, instead of starting by reviewing my plot plan as I had intended, I picked up The Plot Whisperer again and kept reading, taking notes. Might as well do something if I’m not writing.
Darned if I didn’t have a flash of inspiration that sent me straight back to plot planner, lit the embers in my mind like a summer beach bonfire, and broke my main character’s soul wide open before me.
Creativity stifled by planning? I don’t think so.
Here’s my theory, take it or leave it. Each stage of writing: planning, drafting, rewriting/revising/editing, is hard. It’s mentally fatiguing. When I think about it, I realize that I’ve experienced the same dying of the fire after a long, intense period of drafting as well, and certainly while revising. I think what’s really going on when we say, “my creativity is stifled” isn’t some fickle muse turning her back, it’s actually simple, physical brain fatigue.
Further, I propose that planning tends to be more fatiguing than drafting or revising, because there’s so much more of the story packed into planning than into drafting a scene. And planning might be especially fatiguing for those to whom it does not come naturally, or for those trying plan using a method that doesn’t fit their process. And this is why it seems to drain creativity. Because when you can sit and draft for hours without feeling that drain, but a half hour of planning leaves you feeling empty, how else are you to interpret it?
What about this: instead of shying away from planning out of fear that it will stifle your creativity, what if you dove in head-first–but in very small increments? What if, for example, you spent your requisite time drafting (stopping just before fatigue sets in) and then took ten minutes afterward to summarize what you just drafted? What if switching the type of work you are doing actually reinvigorates you and pushes the fatigue away (maybe you’re tired of planning, so you sit down and draft a scene. Or you can’t draft any more so you go back and read over what you just wrote, doing a touch of revision).
For one thing, this could make your writing time much more efficient. When you hit the wall, instead of stopping, you can continue in a different vein.
Let me be clear that I’m not talking about working on different projects that are at different stages. I’m saying: you can always take the project you are working on and approach it from a planning, drafting, or revising perspective. And feeling free to switch between those modes at will can liquefy your creativity by enabling you to push past fatigue.
Which brings me to the subject of this post, replanning. Any plan you make before you begin to draft should be fluid. You should feel free to return to the plan over and over during the drafting process and update it as you dial down into the details about the story world, characters, and events. In fact, the plan you have on record at the end of the drafting process will probably bear little resemblance to the plan you have at the beginning as the story is revealed to you by your subconscious. But with each book you write, you’ll get a little closer to having an accurate plan. That’s why it’s still valuable to plan before you draft.
Giving yourself permission to switch regularly between drafting and planning in order to alleviate fatigue naturally makes replanning a part of your daily writing practice. By replanning regularly, you ensure that when you finish drafting, you also have a micro-version of the story, a frame to look at in order to see the bones of the story. Having that frame will allow you to see clearly why chapter 31 isn’t working or where you went wrong in your protagonist’s emotional arc. But it does you no good if the plan is the same as it was before you wrote. The plan should always reflect the most current version of your story.
One more thing I’ll mention here: I stated above that you should always be moving between planning, drafting and revising concurrently on the same project. Many writing experts warn, and rightly so, that focusing on revision during drafting can paralyze a writer, because there’s a danger of trying to get every word absolutely perfect before moving on–and therefor never moving on at all, but always reworking chapter one. I don’t personally have this problem. For me, reading over the last scene I wrote before drafting, and making a few changes here and there, helps me orient myself in the story and gets me charged up to keep moving forward with it. However, if this is a problem for you, by all means don’t get caught up in revising while you’re still planning and drafting. If you can, limit the time you spend revising each day.
Well, that’s it for planning; onward to drafting with the next post: Why Count Words?
