I wrote confidently earlier in the year that I was certain that because I’d carefully plotted and planned my third book then it made the process smoother and had created a better book.
How wrong I was.
Because I’d known exactly who the murderer was, I’d basically telegraphed it really early on and my editor pointed out that it was really obvious.
Whoops. Not what you want in a book that relies on mystery and suspense.
So I went into a corner, cried a bit over my own foolishness and avoided looking at her detailed comments for about a month. (There were other personal reasons for not getting back to the report sooner as well, not just sulking.)
Then I brushed myself off and went back to look at what she’d actually said. We went back and forth a bit and she suggested several ways to fix what felt like an insurmountable problem.
I felt very frustrated. After all, I’d had a plan. I’d followed that plan to the letter. But therein lay my mistake. I’d over-planned.
I didn’t really know that such a thing exists but I’m convinced now that it does. I’d put so many restrictions on myself that I’d stifled the creativity. In other books that I’d not planned, things had taken twists and turns that I never expected and it had made for a better book. For example, in one book, I wrote myself into a corner and couldn’t work out where to go next. So I made the phone ring. Who was on the other end of it? It turned out to be someone quite important to the plot, who so far wasn’t in the book. Bonus for me.
I recently read James Scott Bell’s book ‘Write your novel from the middle’. In it he creates three characters – Pam Pantser, Paul Planner and Tammy Tweener. You can probably tell everything about them from that description; Pam doesn’t plan and gets into all sorts of trouble and Paul plans too much and his books never really take off. I’d never considered Tammy, but I think this is the way to go. She outlines a little bit, but then lets the story live a little and take twists and turns along the way. Obviously you still need to control that a bit and James shows you how.
Remember the phrase ‘you can have too much of a good thing’? I think that definitely applies here. Some planning is necessary to help you get from beginning to end, but creativity needs to flourish. It’s like having a road map, but being able to divert if there’s a traffic jam up ahead.
Clearly the message is to allow yourself to go with the flow a little. You never know when the inspiration for a twist might come.
Over to you: are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you write the story, or do your characters take the lead? How much planning is too much?