The Planning Thread

[annieofwessex]

Fellow minions of darkness: for those of us who like to keep our pants on and in tune with gravity when writing, this is the thread for you.
Share ideas, frustrations, and advice on how to get through the part of writing almost as awful as revision: planning. How to do it in a short amount of time, how to do it efficiently, how to do it without doing it at all, how to do it without murdering someone, how to summon zombies to do it for you, etc.
Good luck to all of us when planning- we're going to need it, considering zombies are lacking in the 'braiiiinnnnnnnnnssssssssssssssss' department.

[marielaurent2223]

Are we supposed to talk about what were planning when December comes. Or can we talk about planning now since its one of the last two days of this month i am confused.

[annieofwessex]

@ Marie; Generally, I think it would be best to keep planning questions/concerns for your GothNoWriYe novels/novellas in this thread, but if you have any questions about planning or plotting in general, they can go here, too. I just wanted a thread for people who need a little extra help when writing their outline, which is immensely helpful when doing a WriMo/WriYe.

[marielaurent2223]

Thanks for the explaining it to me Annie that is really helpful. And it helped me out with knowing what to do now. When i ask the a question about planning or sharing a planning idea for help in this thread.

[annieofwessex]

@ Marie, You're very welcome! Glad the thread will /eventually/ be of some use.

[annieofwessex]

To start us off on our planning escapades, here is a little note on how I plan, using one of my WriYe ideas. When I plan, I like to start off small; that way I don't stifle my creativity, but have a basic idea of what's going on. Once you have a backbone, you can start researching and getting more ideas, which you can add to your outline. After you have your idea down, you'll start getting inspiration for scenes in your novel, and it will snowball into a story. But every snowball has to be thrown before it can accumulate more snow and get bigger.
So, let's get started! Below is a sample outline, which you can copy into a word document. Erase my answers and fill them with your own. I'll explain what needs to go where in parentheses. Remember, this outline is just for beginning a story; I'll post later on how to fatten it up even more. If you don't want to use my exact outline, just keep the five Ws in mind (what, when, where, why, how).
~~~
What's your main story idea (try to condense your main plot outline here. Don't think of subplots just yet.): Girl works at insane asylum that's haunted/ twisted.
Who is your main character? (Try to focus more on what kind of person they are than what they look like.): Girl is very curious and takes her responsibilities seriously. She can be melodramatic and petty. Is also paranoid and a hypochondriac. Jumps to conclusions and is irrational most of the time.
Where and when does your story take place? (Where does your story take place, mainly. If you don't have specific dates/places, just give ideas of what you want the place to be like and WHY.): Somewhere between 1795-1860, either in US or UK or some place similar. Regular people are wary of 'insane' people, who are treated bad. Main building is the asylum, which is in an isolated area. It's cold, damp, wet, and dismal most of the time. Not a lot of sun. The town is far away. The asylum is big and draughty. There are gardens in the back, and five or six fences meant to keep the patients in and other people out. The asylum itself isn't creepy except for the {insert cardinal direction here} Wing.
What's the conflict? (What's going on? What's the story about?) Patients are disappearing under mysterious circumstances, and some bodies (not all) are found at later dates. Weird things start happening.
What does the main character want to accomplish? (What is your main character's relationship to the conflict?): Girl wants to figure out what's going on and, if possible, stop it.
Why do they want to accomplish this? (Why does your character care about the conflict?): Girl doesn't want anyone else to die, she doesn't want to lose her job, she's scared. She wants to know what's going on so she can protect herself.
How will character try to solve conflict? (What's your character gonna do about it?): Girl will snoop around and investigate, putting herself in danger.
~~~
So, I hope this helps for some of you. Later I'll go into depth on each of these subjects, and we'll start thickening the plot.

[canardly]

That's some good planning advice.

I think I'll start planning my stories now, that way when December rolls around I'll be ready to go with no set backs. Nano is going to fly by, I just (nan)know it.

[marielaurent2223]

I like this advice Annie. I am wondering if there is information on Loupe Garous by any chance. Since i am planning on writing a loupe garou novel and a folklore novel for next year for the first two months.

[annieofwessex]

@ canardly; Thanks! Best of luck with planning while doing NaNo. I don't know about you, but it's not proving nearly as easy as I thought. Luckily my vocabulary doesn't include the word 'surrender'. (I love the nan-know part!)

@marie; Since loup garous are 'werewolves' (the French equivalent, anyway), they should fit into the 'Were-animals' thread under References and Discussions. I'm sure that it'll be easier to ask genre-specific questions there If you go ahead and ask the question again in the other thread, I'll be sure to get back to you I just want to keep the thread as clean and organized as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience!

[marielaurent2223]

That's ok Annie, sorry i asked it here anyways thanks for your help.

[annieofwessex]

Here's another tip I'd like to share, after having run into it while writing my NaNo novel.
Unlike last year's NaNo, I planned my story cover to cover; I even had some dialogue planned out in my head. I started writing this year, and only 7 days in my characters decide to off the plot. Apparently, my wonderfully planned outline is now sleeping with the fishes, at least in the romance department. My MC Howell ditched my L.I Rhiannon for a minor character named Cobweb, which is basically arsenic to the weeks I spent plotting the gosh darn story!
My point is, a plan is just a map, and sometimes they don't work. Sometimes your characters decide to take the long way or the scenic route; like real people, they fall in love with who they love, not who you want them to. You have to keep it in mind that though you are 'God' in your world, "free will" and "personal opinion" exist. You can't just force two characters together if they have nothing in common (Rhiannon and Howell are polar opposites). The same goes for forcing characters that don't fit into a plot, or even for something as trivial as a character's name. While it is good to have a general idea of where you are going when on a journey, you don't have to plan where every McDonalds is along the way. But you should mark where every rest stop is, because if I've learned one thing from my family's haphazard road trips, it's that you do NOT want to spend a car ride with siblings who need to use the restroom (ah, metaphors, how I love you).
I hope this proves helpful in some way or another.

[wolfyone]

Good advice Anne, Planning I guess is helpful up to a point, but I find that even if I think I know where I'm going with something, my characters often do unexpected things that change the story considerably. I think It's helpful to have a general destination in mind, and maybe some of the sites you want to visit along the way, but you're right, you can't really map out every detail. It takes the spontaneity away, forces characters to do things that don't feel right in the end and makes you miss out on lively happenings that the characters will provide you with.

[annieofwessex]

@ wolfyone I completely agree. There's no right or wrong way to write (for all intensive purposes) which means that, unlike in other subjects, you have to experiment and find out what's good for you personally. What works for me might not work for you, and visa versa. Besides, if you dam up the river of your creativity, nothing will flow. The story will become stagnant and readers can feel that (sorry to bring it up, but Twilight, anyone?) All we can do as writers is give advice and support to each other, which all of us on GothNoWriMo and GothNoWriYe have mastered. I just want to take the time to point that out, because it makes all the difference.
~
As December draws nearer, I wanted to touch on one more aspect of planning that I think IS very important: characters. Even if you don't plan your story one bit, I am a firm believer that you should know your characters at least a little. I don't mean their blood type or who their great X25 grandfather is (unless that's relevant to the story); I mean basics. Full name, age, birth date, major character strengths, major character flaws, habits to be brought out in the story, hair colour, eye colour, build, etc. I can't tell you how many times I have read published books where the author changes a supporting character's name half way through the book. While an editor is there for a reason, most of the editing should be done by you. To save yourself from the tragedy of picking up a published copy of your novel and finding such discrepancies, I highly recommend you write some character profiles for all major characters, and a basic profile for supporting ones. There are hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) of these templates to be downloaded all across the web. For a basic one, see this link: www.creative-writing-now.com/support-files/character_outline_from_creative_writing_now.pdf . For a very extensive (like 26 pages in a word document extensive) one that you can do in your web browser and save for later, see here: pompfiction.com/links/character-profile-form/ . Remember, you don't have to fill out everything. I hope this helps! See you all in 15 days!

[wolfyone]

Again, Good advice. It's only too easy to forget details about a character as you go along if you don't have something to refer to. Another minefield is timeline. It's important when telling a story that goes back in time to explain backstory that your ages and dates match. You don't want an 18 year old character talking about something that happened 15 years ago in the third grade, unless he was another Einstein and he skipped into 3rd grade when he was 3! Again, the kind of thing you can catch if you do a character outline.

[marielaurent2223]

I like the advice and the character profiles that could help describe my characters it really helps my novels out when i write them.