I keep running across people who think that there is One Right Way to write a story, and who tie themselves in knots trying to force themselves to write “the right way” when it doesn’t suit their particular mental processes. Somewhere, somehow, they’ve gotten convinced (usually because some authority figure like an editor or highly respected author or influential teacher told them) that the only way to come up with a Really Good Book/Short-Story is to do X.
Usually, “X” is something like “start with your characters” or “do a scene-by-scene plot outline before you do anything else” or “lay out the entire background in grim detail before you even start thinking about plot or characters,” but it can be just about anything, so long as the author is convinced that it’s necessary to do whatever-it-is in order to produce a “good book.”
The effect can be an awful lot like tying both hands behind your back and then trying to swim the English Channel, especially if the particular X happens to be contrary to the author’s way of working. Even if X is something that works for a particular writer most of the time, it can cause problems if the writer is suddenly faced with a story that needs some other process, because when people think that they must work in a particular way, they’re likely to find themselves in a mental straightjacket that can be very difficult to get out of.
Writing a story is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Some people start by doing all the edges. Some people put together all the sky first. Some people like to do the trees and houses. Some people look for easy bits and pieces all through. One of my sisters used to drive everybody else in the family crazy, because she’d start at one edge of the puzzle and work her way methodically across to the other edge, and nobody does a jigsaw puzzle like that!
But it doesn’t matter what order you put the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together in. What matters is that they are all in the right places when you are finished. And it doesn’t matter whether you start at the end of the story, or the beginning; with the plot or the characters or the setting; whether you skip around and write scenes out of order or whether you begin at the beginning and work straight through to the end.
What matters is that when you are finished, you have a good story, however you managed to get there.
I completely agree. It really annoys me when people are like, “You have to do it like this…”
Oh, hear, hear!
I think I mentioned in some previous comment (or maybe not, I’m not very good at keeping track of my babblings 🙂 ), that writing is EXACTLY like a puzzle for me – I just get little pieces here and there, at random it seems, and my job is to try to figure out how they fit together – if they do. 🙂 It’s what it is, but it is the ONLY way for me, if I want my writing to be even half-decent – which obviously I do.
(It’s not very practical, though – if you’re lacking an important piece of information – for example, you know what your characters are doing, you know how come they are doing it – but you still don’t know for what purpose they are doing it… Sigh. I might find out. In a year or two… )
This is great advice, and I loved the examples about the jigsaw puzzle. I think it would drive me nuts to watch someone doing a puzzle using your sister’s method — I *have* to do the edges first — but if it works for her and she enjoys it, that’s what counts, right? 🙂
There’s obviously a lot of money to be made in the business of telling people how to write. They’ve certainly made plenty from me! I used to feel mildly bad that my processes weren’t at all how the books said to go about writing, but eventually, I concluded that these books are about what works for the people who write them, not the One True Way of Writing. If I can pick out something useful, great. If not, then I’ve just spent time reading yet another how-I-wrote-my-book campfire story. 🙂
I always, always outline. It would drive me crazy not to. If a bit of dialogue or description comes to me while I’m still outlining, I get it down on paper before I lose it, but then go back to putting my framework together. Maybe one day I won’t spend so much time with “pre-writing” and peripheral writing, but that’s what works for now.
CJC – There are only two things you have to do in writing: 1) You have to write, and 2) You have to make it work on the page. All the rest of the “rules” are, in the words of the inimitable Captain Jack Sparrow, more like guidelines. 🙂
LRK – When you’re missing a necessary piece, plot-noodling with other people frequently helps. It’s a matter of developing what you have until it hits critical mass. Alternatively, you may be a bits-and-pieces writer of the sort who stacks up a mountain of disconnected scenes and then organizes them into something. Everybody’s working process is different.
Dana – I love reading how-to-write books, but it’s more of a hobby than anything else. The only one I’ve ever felt as if I learned much of anything besides terminology from was Ursula le Guin’s Steering the Craft. I, too, always outline…but I never manage to actually follow the outline. Things just work differently for different people.
I never follow an outline either! I usually outline in thirds, actually. I figure out what happens in the first third, and when I’m halfway through writing that, I outline the next third. That way I know the general direction I’m going in, but I have time to work in all the `surprises’ I discover along the way. 🙂
I really like your jigsaw puzzle theme; it’s a great description. I have basically no idea how I write, I once did just a bit of reasarch to make sure I had got some thing in order with my outline, currently I am just writing. Dialogue bits burst up unexpectedly (to me):) that give me a vague idea of where I’m going. Great post…
When i write i don’t think of a plot (usually) i just write and in the end there’s a plot.
Dazzleheart – That works fine for some people – like the ones who do jigsaw puzzles by picking up any old piece and fitting together bits that look right until at the end there’s the picture. Others of us need to approach plot a bit more systematically. As long as what you’re doing works for you, I’d say don’t mess with it, but if and when it stops working, it can be good to know that there are other approaches.
Thanks for the advice.