Planning your Story VS Winging It

Creating a fictional setting is quite a rigorous task if you want to do it right. Is the story you’re writing set on modern day Earth, or a world of your own creation? What are each of the characters doing, and why are they doing it? What about the events which happen? Do they have realistic consequences going forward? And were those events sufficiently foreshadowed so that your readers feel like they were an organic part of the plot, and not just the hand of the author producing it out of nowhere?

Writing fiction isn’t hard by default, but it is if you want to write good fiction. A story needs a certain measure of consistency and logical consequences to successfully engage its readers. That is a lot of information that you need to consider and keep track of, and it’s what intimidates a lot of new writers when they get started. Assuming that this doesn’t put you off writing your story, how do you go about it? There are two extremes when it comes to writing fiction. There are those who plan things out ahead of time, as well as those who leap right into it and wing it. But which is better? Are either of them better? And are there any other options?

Planning your Story

While almost every author goes into writing their story with some idea of what they want to write, this approach leaves nothing to chance. You sit down and work out at least every major plot point and character, so that actually writing the story is just largely putting what you’ve already worked out into the structure of the type of storytelling you’re using (prose, screenplay etc). It’s certainly a type of approach which has some famous successes. One of the things which makes the Lord of the Rings so effective as a story, is that Middle-Earth is a setting which has been meticulously planned and explored. The entire trilogy is a small glimpse into a world which has a history stretching back thousands and thousands of years, along with different cultures, races and historical events all planned out.

Of course, this is an extreme example. Few authors have put in the planning that Tolkien did. But planning out your story before writing it takes a lot of the pressure out of the process. You’re getting a lot of the work out of the way early, as a properly planned out story can often be ready for an audience with fewer revisions. The planning can also be quite a fun experience. World-building and planning character arcs can be really engaging to figure out. And that’s even more true when you just need to decide upon the facts without smoothly putting it into words. Then, when it is time to put it into words, you can do so without figuring it out as you go.

That being said, while you get a lot of the ‘work’ out of the way before you start properly writing, there is still the same amount of work. You’re simply getting it done earlier. Not to mention that we need to examine one of the most common motivations for this approach to writing. Quite often, authors will take this approach because they want to be as prepared as possible before they begin writing. The danger that comes with this approach is that it is deceptively easy to never end up writing your story because you’re constantly changing your plan because you want it to be ‘perfect’. I have an Urban Fantasy story I should have finished a year ago for this very reason. So, if you want to take the ‘planning it all out’ approach, make sure to hold yourself to the fact that you need to start actually writing it at some point.

Winging It

At the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the authors who leap into the fray with only the barest idea of how they’re going to reach the ending they want, assuming they know what the ending is going to be at all. This was how I first got into writing, so I understand the appeal of this approach very well. It becomes an exciting adventure of figuring out the story as you write it. Not that the fun of it is the sole benefit of this approach. Creativity and inspiration are unpredictable things, which can strike differently under different circumstances. You’d be surprised how you can sometimes come up with ideas (or spot problems) while writing that don’t pop up when you’re putting together a plan.

Not that this is the only way you benefit from a different perspective. When you’re actually writing your story, you can get a better idea of how your audience will react to it. Because of this, you’ll likely have to make changes even if you meticulously planned things as much as you could. Which means that these changes will be much easier to make if you don’t have to check through an entirely pre-established plan to figure out all the knock-on changes this will cause.

However, as we’ve already established, neither method will significantly change the amount of work you need to do, simply shift it around. By leaping straight into writing, you don’t spend time putting together a plan, but you’re likely to spend more time rewriting. It’s all well and good if you spot a problem early into a draft, but spotting it later will result in more changes you’ll need to make in the next draft. Not to mention that the ‘adventure’ of writing blind can be thrilling to some people, but intimidating to others. That dauntingly blank first page can seem more intimidating if you’re not entirely sure what you’re going to do with it.

What Works Best for You

If you’re the type of person who gets annoyed when an article doesn’t come down firmly on one side or another, you may not like how this one is going to end. Because, ultimately, there is no universally ‘correct’ way to write. Some people need to have everything planned out to write with confidence, while others gain motivation from just seeing where things go. And there’s no rule that you have to stick to one of these two extremes. No one is stopping you from putting together a basic plan of what you want to do, and then let your creativity fill in the gaps as you write.

Write the story you want. After all, no one else will.