There’s a lot of emphasis these days on prewriting—that is, all the stuff you need to do before you sit down and actually start Chapter One. It is a comforting thing for many writers, because it gives people a plausible method to follow. Do this, decide that, collect those, organize it all in the right order. It makes getting started on a novel sound seductively straightforward.
The exact elements and the order they go in depends on who wrote the article on prewriting. Many of them ask the writer to start with a character or characters, then do a brief plot summary, then research, make some decisions about things like setting and theme, and then write a full-scale outline. A few go into even more detail, asking you to break the outline down into chapters and scenes, with lists of locations and characters and timelines and viewpoints for each one, all to be done before you ever start writing.
It’s all very methodical, and it looks and sounds great. I sometimes think that writing the middle-grade Star Wars novelizations was like having someone else do all the prewriting for me—writing from a script meant I had all the dialog and at least a sketchy description of the key parts of the action all laid out scene by scene. It definitely made certain parts of the writing process a lot easier…but it also made other parts more difficult.
Fortunately, most of the prewriting advice I’ve seen pays at least lip service to the notion that everyone needs a different level of detail in the amount of prewriting they do. Some writers are good with “I think I want to write a murder mystery” or “…a story about somebody who is homesick.” Others need ten volumes of notes about everything from language and history to characters and plot (yes, I’m looking at you, J. R. R. Tolkein).
What most of the advice I’ve seen isn’t clear on is that 1) while writers do need a lot of the same elements in their finished stories, they don’t all need to make the same decisions in the same order before the story starts, and 2) any decisions made during prewriting can be altered during the writing process (“The writer should always reserve the right to have a better idea.”—Lois Bujold)
#1 is somewhat covered by the sheer number of different recommendations for how to go about prewriting that you can find on the internet. One says to start with the main character’s personality profile, including that character’s goal; another says to start with a one-sentence “premise” that covers the situation, main character, character’s goal, villain, and central plot problem/stakes. (In one sentence that would fit on Twitter…) Another wants you to start with the worldbuilding; another with the plot.
How different methods arrive at an eventual comprehensive outline varies. Some methods focus on developing one story element by zooming deeper and deeper into characterization (or plot, or the history of the world, or the thematic connections, or…), sort of like zooming in on a fractal design. Others branch out or skip around—now that you have the main character, what does the world (or plot, or backstory) look like? Some have sharply defined phases: first, a two-paragraph plot outline; second, main character and villain personality profiles; third, research; fourth, expanded plot outline; etc. Others integrate research with plot and character development.
Anybody who actually searches on “how to prewrite a novel” will find a multitude of methods, and if they are not a pure pantser, and are very stubborn, there’s a good chance that somewhere in the 300,000-plus hits, they’ll find a method that works for them. The problems come when people fixate on a specific plausible-looking method that really doesn’t fit the way their mind works, and forget about point #2 from about three paragraphs back.
As a general rule of thumb, I personally find that the more elaborate and specific a prewriting method is, the less likely I am to find it worth following. I often get a good idea or two from looking at them—some way of looking at timelines, or subplots, or characters, that I hadn’t thought about before—but I never seem to be able to follow a complicated method all the way through to its end.
This is, in my view, a good thing. At some point, one has to quit planning and go sit down and write.
Furthermore, writing is, in some ways, like riding a bicycle—a lot of things don’t work right/aren’t clear until one is moving forward. Events and twists that seemed like a good idea in a twenty-page scene-by-scene outline turn out not to work at all when one actually goes to write them. You don’t know how to fix a scene or an event until you have written the whole thing wrong, which is frustrating, but if you had stopped to wait for “the right idea,” it would have been months (if ever) before you got it working. Looking at the wrong-not-working scene you wrote is often what triggers your backbrain so you can see exactly what needs to be done (it’s still a pain to rewrite it, but it’s better than agonizing for six months on top of the rewrite).
For my money, the real point of prewriting is to get the writer excited about writing the story. It is up to each writer to figure out whether that takes one sentence or 300 pages. It’s also up to each writer to decide how much or how little they’re going to use their outline/notes later. Some writers never look at their prewriting again, once they’ve plunged into Chapter One; for others, the prewriting becomes a constantly updated way of tracking where and in what order key bits of characterization or plot development happened. As long as what you do works for you, you don’t have to tell anyone else that you didn’t stick to their method.
I have to do some prewriting for anything other than a short-short, and often even for those. Otherwise I look at a blank screen and there is no story. On the other hand, if I try to prewrite too much detail, I get bogged down and grind to a halt. And on the third hand, I still have only an approximate idea of how much prewriting is the right amount.
One thing I am certain of: I Must Have Names. I cannot use placeholder names, and I cannot change a character’s name. At most I can sometimes (rarely) drop a minor character and slot in a new one. Because when I write, Names are Magic.
“Furthermore, writing is, in some ways, like riding a bicycle – a lot of things don’t work right/aren’t clear until one is moving forward.”
This! In my case I do a huge amount of “midwriting” after I start. I have to outline or sketch out chapters (and often scenes) before I can write them, and I have to move closer to the chapter or scene before I can usefully outline or sketch it out.
I do have to dissent from the idea of prewriting as a way to get excited about a story. I find it a necessary thing that often, annoyingly, doesn’t work as well as I’d like it to. There are times when I wish to be a pure pantser who can just let the first-draft prose flow out (and if it’s crud, I can fix it in the rewrite). There are also times when I wish I could follow a prewriting plan into such fine details that it produces a zeroth draft for me to work on. And the “names file” part of prewriting is something I always find to be a Critical! Need to have! Reference!
Composing first-draft prose is not something I get for free. And that’s annoying.
I can outline without name but not write
I need names for my outlines, if the outline is to progress beyond being a self-generated writing-prompt.
Not just character names, either. I also need names for things – planets, countries, towns, cities, farms & plantations, shops, inns, taverns & restaurants, malls and department stores on alien planets…
The other thing, at least with some writers (well…me), is that what pre-writing is necessary can vary. Sometimes I sketch out the history of the world. Sometimes I make a map. Sometimes I just start writing once I’ve got the main characters and the conflict/problem. The one I’m revising now I pulled out a whole “grimoire” worth of spells I worked up about twenty years ago. Depends on what story I want to tell.
Prewriting does not compute for me at all. When I get the urge to sit down and write, some words will fall off my fingers onto the screen, and at some indeterminate point I will have enough to know whether I am writing a short story, novel, or even a poem. If a story, the writing itself tells what the setting is, and the characters will (hopefully) let me know what the theme and plot are going to be.
I once sat down and typed “This is folly”, which raised a slew of questions. Answering those questions (who said this? why? about what?), and filling in the needed material to get to that scene, led to my first novel. (Those three words packed a surprising amount of information in them regarding time and place and mood. From the phrasing, it most likely wasn’t someone from 20th-century New Jersey.) I didn’t think in terms of questions—I just followed the words where they led.
As I’ve said before, if I know what’s going to happen, writing turns into mere typing – and I’m a lousy typist.
The guide says, “Start with this,” and the Muse laughs. In my own history alone:
A Diabolical Bargain started with a scene near the beginning of the finished work.
Madeleine and the Mists started with a scene in the middle of the finished work.
Dragonslayer started with a scene near the end of the finished work.
The Lion and the Library started with the king’s decree — not even the scene in which it’s promulgated, I had to work that out, just the decree.
The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn started with the backstory. (And I knew it would be backstory even as I began it.
The Witch-Child and the Scarlet Fleet started with the notion that pirates in a fantasy world don’t have to live near the trade routes.
Through A Mirror, Darkly started with the notion that the superhero comics alternate universe with mirror morality would not work. (Yes, I know you want your team to fight their evil equivalents. It still would not work.)
“Furthermore, writing is, in some ways, like riding a bicycle—a lot of things don’t work right/aren’t clear until one is moving forward.”
Oh. Oh, yes, this. This is now my new metaphor for why I can’t work out a plot ahead of time, no matter how comforting it would be to have that gap between M and Q filled in before I start writing.
I was going to say I don’t do any prewriting, but I suppose random noodling for ages until I clear enough space in the schedule to start work on the new thing counts. I can legitimately say I don’t typically do any organized prewriting….
I like the bicycle metaphor. Perhaps because I realize more and more that the outline is as much a work in progress as the text of the story.
The outline as it stands when I start to write will include some of the stuff we’re talking about above: character names, notes about key scenes, necessary background elements, and the like. But most of that gets filled in (or filled out) as the writing progresses.
When I get to scene X, let’s say, I need to create the secondary character who appears for the first time there. I may have some things about that character already noted, but now I have to develop at least the minimum necessary to put them on the page: name, appearance, role, style of speech, and so on. As I devise those things, I add them to the character description in the outline (or, more accurately, the background notes), so I can remember them later on. The outline thus gradually becomes the “bible” for the story, as well as a repository for those side notes that may or may not come in useful later. (“Hmm, this might be a good place to use that idea about the MC’s abduction that I discarded earlier…”)
Or, at least, that’s one of the 300,000-plus methods that seems to work for me.
Rick
An outline just means your first draft is REALLY ROUGH
Precisely! I have said that, depite the much-touted distinction, there is no real difference between Planners and pantsers. It’s simply that the Pantsers’ “outlines” are just highly detailed.
I’ll buy that if the Pantser’s first draft/”highly detailed outline” has scaffolding artifacts – placeholder names, parenthetical comments for future revisions, or stretches of synopsis-style writing. If it quacks like a finished story, even if a horribly written one, then I’ll balk.
People that assume anyone who doesn’t outline can’t produce a good first draft are doing seriously condescending stereotyping, much of the time.
I never outline myself, but I do “prewrite” more than anyone I know. It’s just that it’s more I write unattached snippets and brainstorm worldbuilding until a critical mass of things which clearly belong together get named a story. Since my writing and prewriting process aren’t much different until the homestretch, I don’t much vibe with either a planner or a pantser label and never really have, even when I had a distinct prewriting phase.
I wrote 40K words of a NaNoWriMo with *no* pre-planning. I like the stuff that’s on the page fairly well, but I can’t go anywhere with it. The main character’s backstory–which is really needed now!–is not only a mystery to me, but it’s a mystery I suspect *has no solution* that fits what’s written. Oops. Going to take a lot of tearing out and writing new material to fix that one, if I ever do.
There are key questions that, the further I write past the point where I needed to know them, the worse things are for me. (It happens when running roleplaying games, too.) Unfortunately I’m not reliable on noticing when I’m overrunning such a question, as opposed to the million other questions that actually can wait.
Why was Jennifer living with Iris? Was she Iris’ apprentice? How did that happen, if so? She doesn’t like Iris and I’m pretty sure Iris (who disappears at the end of scene 1 and has to be searched for) didn’t like her much either. Jennifer has book learning but it’s not clear she knows any magic at all, which is pretty odd for an apprentice unless there’s some initiation she hasn’t reached yet. Jennifer is also extremely solitary: she has no friends to turn to when things go bad, and has to slowly make some. That says to me either she’s been under near house arrest or she hasn’t been with Iris long, but then where was she?
My husband says that Jennifer is the daughter of one of Iris’ rivals and Iris has memory-wiped her. I don’t think this is the case, but damned if I know what actually *is* the case. You can imagine that this doesn’t work well going forward.