How do YOU plan your stories?

[teamlash]

So I apologise if this is a repeat thread, and/or is in the wrong place.
Yesterday I used Jims' blog to begin planning a book I've wanted to write for years, and his method is like gold dust!

However I do know that there are a hundred ways to write a book, so I wondered which method everybody used

[Kali]

*blink* Plan?

If I do, I tend to do it the day before.  I write for the day, however much I wanted to write, then I stop.  Then whenever I have time (in the shower, before bed, at redlights), I daydream about the story.  I find a scene that I really want to write, something cool or interesting or heartfelt.  I replay the scene in different ways over and over, and then the next day I'm completely psyched to write it.

That's about as close as I get to planning.

[trboturtle]

*blink* Plan?

If I do, I tend to do it the day before.  I write for the day, however much I wanted to write, then I stop.  Then whenever I have time (in the shower, before bed, at redlights), I daydream about the story.  I find a scene that I really want to write, something cool or interesting or heartfelt.  I replay the scene in different ways over and over, and then the next day I'm completely psyched to write it.

That's about as close as I get to planning.

Me too -- I start with an idea and keep whacking away at it until it done....

Craig

[teamlash]

Oh gosh, I wish I could do that!
My brain is about as disorganised as Harrys' lab though, so I have to have an outline.
How do you hold everything together in your head? 

[Dresdenus Prime]

I also used Jims blog to start my story. Most of the time I am just mentally brainstorming away, and I keep a notepad close by. Sometimes the ideas I get are really cool I never forget them, but others that just sort of pop up out of nowhere I write down on the notepad in no particular order.

If you have the beginning on your book then just start typing away. Otherwise just keep taking notes and brainstorming until you feel you have enough of a story skeleton to start writing, and fill in the details later.

I personally use a writing program, which isn't necessary, but it was fairly cheap and it allows me to seperate my chapters and scenes, and has character sheets and notepads and more. It's really helped me organize.

Usually I don't like to write inconsistantly, that is to say write chapter 1 then go to chapter 10 because I know what happens there. I broke that rule a week ago but I had a huge inspiration, plus I was stuck on the next chapter anyways.

Long story short everyone is going to have different ways of doing things. I like to at least have a beginning middle and end before I start writing.

[meg_evonne]

Author Tim Powers suggests you research until you have twenty too-cool-ideas to not use. If you've got a premise worth gold, research with twenty incredible things to use, characters you've developed that you know won't bore you after two years of working with them, minimum? Then I start Jim's big hairy plot arc with color stickies for subplots.

I used to fly with only mental background, but the agony of getting 1/2 way done (or worse yet complete) and realizing that your premise is so over used that not an agent would read past your opening paragraph of your query? Yeah, not going to do that anymore.  Same with the 'voices' of the characters.

Intertwining subplots key as well.

There is a short cut for me, I think, which is working from the villain's POV--so I know intimately what s/he is doing if all went according to plan. Then I add in the protagonist, where the villain is bumped off plan, where the villain bumps the protagonist off plan. I have that pretty well decided now before beginning. I don't crank out chapter by chapter until then,, but I will write out some key scenes in extremelly rough draft to learn/build the characters, the world, the what-ever means test I apply to assure myself that....

Back to beginning, that I've got a premise worth gold--silver won't do, research with twenty incredible things to use--or more, and also characters I've developed that won't bore me after two years--and umpteen drafts.
   

[Anna V]

I think my best story ideas come from my nightmares. Which is just as well, 'cause nightmares are all I have. I've never had a good dream in my life. My nightmares give me some pretty twisted ideas.

Of course, I'm the sort who likes to read books that have good endings, so it wouldn't make sense for me to write a horror book with a horror ending, which is what might happen if I let the nightmare write the whole book, but which is not the sort of book I have the stomach to read. Therefore, the twisted stuff from my nightmares is best placed at the beginning of the book, leaving me to figure out how to get a good ending out of it while awake.

For the organizing my disorganized thoughts, I find the open source writing program Storybook to be of assistance. http://storybook.intertec.ch/joomla/

[teamlash]

I think my best story ideas come from my nightmares. Which is just as well, 'cause nightmares are all I have. I've never had a good dream in my life. My nightmares give me some pretty twisted ideas.

Of course, I'm the sort who likes to read books that have good endings, so it wouldn't make sense for me to write a horror book with a horror ending, which is what might happen if I let the nightmare write the whole book, but which is not the sort of book I have the stomach to read. Therefore, the twisted stuff from my nightmares is best placed at the beginning of the book, leaving me to figure out how to get a good ending out of it while awake.

For the organizing my disorganized thoughts, I find the open source writing program Storybook to be of assistance. http://storybook.intertec.ch/joomla/

Oh you poor thing *hugs* I hope you have good dreams one day.

And yep, I have storybook I love using it to keep my characters in order!

[Anna V]

Experiences also make for good story ideas. Usually, it's the bad experiences that are worth more when articulated in story form. Of course, in many, if not most, cases, you'll want your character to experience worse than you have, for the sake of drama, but you can still wring your experiences for details. Some people who have seen some really, really horrible stuff do the opposite -- that is to say, they tone it down, presumably to make the story more socially acceptable than the reality. I believe Oliver Twist is one example, but usually, it's the other way around.

For example, if you've ever spent even one night outdoors (not recreational camping, but because you had to), in a car, or in a shelter or storage locker, it will be easier to write about a homeless character and add the details that bring the story to life than if the closest you've ever come to even associating with known homeless people was when they begged you for money. However, as it would be foolish to destroy one's financial position for the purpose of gaining inspiration, one might also obtain second hand experience by volunteering at a shelter, drop-in center, or soup kitchen and talking to the homeless and/or the hungry.

[Lanodantheon]

I have an 40/hr a week day job and before that was a full-time student, so I plan my stories a little bit at a time. That is, I will start, "Idea sheets" which are just open office or other word documents that I just add to a little bit each day. Maybe it'll turn into the story bible or maybe it will be just a bunch of thoughts but it's something.

I also (one time at least) make character sheets for characters using FATE system-like Aspects and put them all on a spreadsheet, lined up neatly so that in a cast of characters I get very little overlap and/or characters confused with one another.

Currently I use the most recent version of Final Draft to outline the entire story on notecard view when I sit down and do it for the long haul.

For the actual order of events I use any word program that has the ability to make numbered, ordered lists. I will make lists of arcs, sequences, scenes or even just beats I want in the story. You know, sometimes I want to plan a story around a foot & Motorcycle chase sequence involving a battle tank with a very friendly sounding speaking voice through an idyllic American suburb under a massive dome and sometimes I'll plan a story just so I can have a Red-Haired Irish Catholic Anemic Vampire wrestle some wolf Faerie to the ground in his bloodied (Big Mean and Scary) form saying, "DOn't worry mate, I Got this B&@*!"

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Author Tim Powers suggests you research until you have twenty too-cool-ideas to not use. If you've got a premise worth gold, research with twenty incredible things to use, characters you've developed that you know won't bore you after two years of working with them, minimum? Then I start Jim's big hairy plot arc with color stickies for subplots.

Tim Powers is out on one end of the range of processes, I think; I've read him talking about his process in Locus, and IIRC he plans a story down to exactly who says what in which conversation before writing it.

It's probably worth noting that Steven Brust writes entirely as he goes along, with no advance planning at all, and relies on his subconscious to resolve things for him.  (Even things he threw in specifically to test its facilility for doing that, like the goat in Cowboy Feng's.)  When he gets stuck he just writes the characters meandering about moaning about being stuck.

Both of these extremes appear to have led to successful and critically acclaimed writing.

I used to fly with only mental background, but the agony of getting 1/2 way done (or worse yet complete) and realizing that your premise is so over used that not an agent would read past your opening paragraph of your query? Yeah, not going to do that anymore.  Same with the 'voices' of the characters.

I use a single notes file, which tends to start off with a couple of key points per chapter and to expand to five or six before I get the chapter written.  Withe the Book I Want To Be Writing Now, the setting is large enough that I am using more background notes files as well.

There is a short cut for me, I think, which is working from the villain's POV--so I know intimately what s/he is doing if all went according to plan. Then I add in the protagonist, where the villain is bumped off plan, where the villain bumps the protagonist off plan.

Cool.

I think I tend to be bound so tightly to the POV of the person/people from whom I am writing that I can't do that; if I am plausibly to do someone only just noticing what's happened and not knowing what the villain is up to it's easier to get into that headspace if I do not myself at that point know the precise details of what the villain is up to.

[Nickeris86]

Oh gosh, I wish I could do that!
My brain is about as disorganised as Harrys' lab though, so I have to have an outline.
How do you hold everything together in your head? 

i don't use mine for anything else so i store random ideas in it.

[Kali]

Hold all *what* together?   Suggesting that I have something to hold together is the equivalent of suggesting I have a plan.  Or a plot.  I rarely do.

I start out with a cool idea, go to another cool idea, and another cool idea, and so on.  Somewhere along the line I start to try to tie my cool ideas together.  This is usually where things derail and get difficult, then I have to go back and plant seeds or kill entire scenes.  Then I keep going to the next cool idea.  Then I decide I should probably think up an ending somewhere around here.  Then I make up an ending, and realize I have to go back and plant more seeds and rework scenes.  Then I write the ending.  Then I go back and really polish to try and make all the seed-planting and scene-changing as invisible as possible.

I'm not saying it's the easy way.  I'm not saying it's the hard way.  I'm just saying, that's how I work.

[Alilisa]

I take a tape recorder with me, when something comes to me, I just tape it and then go from there, that way I never lose any ideas I may come up with.

[1eyedjack]

Pondering, a tremendous amount of pondering.  I like to think of it like assembling a bicycle in my brain.  It only works if you put it together one way, and I can put it down and come back to it later in my head.  I'll write down names and locations, subplot points, as well as different scenes but most of that is simply bullet points that I use as prompting while I play things out in my head.  I like to put characters in scenes that may or may not be canonical, but still reveal something about them if only to me.  I guess I could say that I like to build characters and let the characters build the story for me but that isn't entirely true.  However, I do like to get an iron tight grip on characters before I ever knuckle down on the story.  Tabletop games and my theatrical background are to blame for that, but it works for me so hey, no worries. 

It isn't a matter of a brain being disorganized.  It is about focusing on a scene and logical progression.  Believe me I'm not organized about it in my head but I play a scene back over and over and over until I know it backwards and forwards.  From there, I know what the next move is and I organize accordingly based on what is boring or not.  Then I go and see if I can find the right words to express it.