Hi, Rob.

I'm becoming a little reluctant to mention this author, as I'm in danger of appearing fan-boyish, but David Mitchell appears to fulfil your requirements.

I don't think you are wrong at all, but if you take your suggestion to its extreme, you can end up with really stilted writing. As interesting as Georges Perec (author of the dense, tangential Life: a User's Manual), say, is a writer, I'd really like to read something 'instinctive' by him, rather than something where all the words were doing were colouring in between the lines.

Personally I think a happy medium is the best approach when writing for an audience, half-inspiration and half-hard slog.

Great post. I wholeheartedly agree, I couldn't imagine writing anything without planning it first. Of course the story can change while you're writing it as ideas form and characters surprise, but the overall structure remains the same. Otherwise you can run the risk of just pleasing yourself rather than the reader - and you just can't hold a reader's attention without putting some serious work into planning the story first in my opinion.

I think you're making a fundamental mistake in assuming that a novel which isn't plotted in advance isn't plotted at all; often the writer who plots after the fact, so to speak, rewrites extensively. And years of experience will lead to 'instinctive' choices which come from mastery. Nor is advance plotting any guarantee of good plotting.

It sounds as if you're reading too many writing how-to-write books; or attended one writing course too many. Basic competency in a craft is a requirement, but won't produce great art. And no rules can teach you how to write; at best they can suggest guidlines or approaches - or what others have come to expect.

I'd also like to add something from Charles Baxter, a truly masterful writer:

'Burning Down the House was written very much after the fact. Those essays were first given as lectures to M.F.A. students. They are the products of looking at my work and the work of other writers and devising some way to talk about what I do when I write that will be of some help to other writers. I don't think about structure and form when I write. I don't think, "Now I've got to avoid an epiphany, and I've got to bring in a counterpointed character." Nothing that I've thought abstractly, as far as craft is concerned, is much help in the first drafts. I just try to see the characters, hear them and get them into some kind of interesting trouble. It's only in the revisions and the rewriting that those techniques help. Paul Auster has said that in his first drafts he just feels his way. In many cases, the writer's eye is almost entirely on the character, almost entirely on what that person is moving toward, and he tries to find suitable language and feeling for the story. Writing first drafts is the experience of not knowing how to do something and persisting at it until it begins to feel right.'

Here's the link to the entire interview (and I've got a recent post over at my blog where you can read a few of his short stories online):

http://www.tinhouse.com/mag/back_issues/archive/issues/issue_7/baxter.html

I'm not going to agree or disagree, I'm going to say that to each their own. Each person has a method to their madness that works for them. If I've been told a good story, I don't automatically know if the person winged it or made outlines of their outlines; because it was a good story, period.

Me, I do some winging. I may have the general idea in my head of the arc, but I let my characters dictate a lot, and I do of course (!) write to please myself first and foremost. Why? Because you can't please everyone all the time. Tyring to can ruin a story just as much as anything else.

In the end I say, just tell the story; in whatever way that works for you.

I'm also going to say that being disappointed in an ending doesn't always mean it was bad writing. I've hated endings of books simply because it wasn't what I was cheering for.

I think a writer should be writing to please themselves and not the reader. I know that's not what a publisher wants to hear: a publisher wants to sell books so wants what the reader 'wants'. But down that road lies formula and stagnancy. I know some people like to read that (the continued success of John Grisham, Tom Clancy and Raymond E Feist pays testament to that), but I'm not one of them, neither as a reader or a writer. I'd rather read something truly awful, that at least was attempting to be something more than a figure for an accountant, than a formulaic crowd pleaser any day. Good writing acknowledges a reader--by making plot development as clear as necessary and characters' actions believable within the frame of the novel--but it doesn't pander to them.

As for who's right--the author who plans or the one that dives in headfirst or the one with a mix of both--I'm sure there are equal examples of good and bad in all camps.

Um . . . I didn't plan my first novel at all, and you're publishing it next month.

But I agree - planning helps. I've planned my second, and should finish it in half the time it took to write the first.

I am in full agreement about Stephen King's writing. Having also read On Writing, I was not surprised to learn that the majority of his books are unplotted, it's obvious by their perfunctory endings. 'It' was probably one of his worst in that respect. I don't think he had any real idea what the monster was going to be until he wrote the final chapters as he had failed to interweave the monster's backstory into the storyline.
Conversly, one that he did admit plotting - The Dead Zone - was my absolute favorite.
The difference is unequivocal.
Personally, I cannot complete a story without knowing the ending. The characters need to know what they are heading towards before you let them loose on the blank page.

Thanks for the architecture connection. I couldn't plot my way out of a paper bag, but I always make sure there's room for the bathrooms.

I couldn't have written my novel, Fast Work, without the aid of Bodmyn Corner's A Beginner's Guide to Plotting. I found it so helpful that I sent a copy to Ian McEwan, who has impeccable prose but whose plotting is dire. I mean, come on, who can believe the climax in Saturday? But there you have a major problem - a writer may get the structure of a novel right, but lose the reader if the plot points themselves are unbelievable.

Sally,

'I found it so helpful that I sent a copy to Ian McEwan...'

You did what? You're joking, right?

While I agree that there are flaws in Saturday, I for one would love to be able to write as well as he.

Plot is not everything!

Lee - suggest you buy a copy of Plotting for Beginners pronto...

Heh - joke on me! I got round to googling this Sally Howe.

However, since you never answered my emails about your long-ago free The Red Men offer, I'll wait till you put your books online the way Cory Doctorow and his ilk do before deciding if I ought to invest. We writers often have very limited budgets, you know.

First, I have a question Rob and Emma, namely, what percentage of your submissions would you guess are poorly planned, well planned, or masterfully planned, and how does that aspect of the book track with how good the book is as a whole?

In other words, how often do poorly planned books wind up being good or masterfully planned books wind up being bad? I've gotta hunch how that plays out, but I'll let you answer.

Anyway, I will say that I fully agree with your position in this debate. I say it's a poor, poor writer indeed who imagines that planning needs to be an unimaginative exercise. In fact, I'd say that the creation of one's blueprint just might be THE part of the writing process that offers writers the greatest potential to create something truly original.

Moreover, there's nothing about this part of the process that is any less spontaneous than any other part. Fact is, a genuinely creative mind ought to have the flip switch of his or her imagination turned on at every single moment of the writing process.

Frankly, isn't it rather absurd that many contemporary writers are fond of prattling on and on about the need to heighten consciousness, but then some of these very same folks revel in turning a blind eye to careful planning and plotting--as if the very act of being mindful of their writing will somehow destroy it!

With all due disrespect, what sort of hopelessly prosaic, poverty-stricken mind is so feeble as to imagine that heightened consciousness is impediment to creativity?

As for those who might voice the all-too-obvious excuse, "but, gee, if I set I mold for my story, then I'll have to slavishly follow it in a paint-by-numbers approach." Well, bunk. It's your mold, for God's sake, and since you're the God of your creation, you're free to break your mold any time you like. You absolutely free to re-create and re-imagine the whole of your mold or any part of it at any given moment, just as you're forever free to decide what you'd like to pour into your mold. All you have to do is be spontaneous.

Imagine that.

Fact is, in the end, one way or another your writing will take on some sort of form and structure, and so the fundamental question is, would you rather wind up with conscious product of your mind or an accident thereof?

Or do you imagine that your fingers write your stories, and so your mind and its muse are merely bystanders?

Whichever you choose (and if you're practical, you'll choose planning since it's a whole lot more fast and efficient than discovering your structure after countless drafts), just don't kid yourself that any accidental output is somehow more pure and genuine than your conscious creations.

Can I suggest something different? I think maybe you took King a little too literally (har har). I admit I'm a huge fan of his so I may be giving him too much credit, but I think rather than suggesting that you throw plotting out the window, he was trying to pay tribute to all the surprises that can come along when you're writing something that you haven't outlined down to the word. Generally when I write I have about a page of plotting, which is just a general idea of how and where I want the story to go, what the characters need to do and how they need to change, etc. I don't know what they're going to say to each other every step of the way, and sometimes I invent whole new characters or plot points in the middle of the writing part. This is what makes the writing exciting to me - what my brain can come up with when I'm in the thick of it. I'm not sure I'm a particularly good writer, but I don't think that this part of my process makes my writing poorer.

And since you mentioned screenwriting...the Coen brothers, some of the better screenwriters working today in my view, have explained that they NEVER plan a story before they sit down to write their movies. They said they often deliberately write themselves into a corner and then figure out a way to write themselves out of it. Ordinarily I would say that this could never work, but it leads to some immensely satisfying endings (O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a terrific example, I think).

Katharine, I don't remember King recommending not planning (thought I can't be sure), I just remember him saying that was his method. I think he's an amazing instinctive scene-setter and prose writer but I think his plots are often weak. And it made me annoyed with him when I realised he hadn't really tried to fix that; he just accepted that the story went where it went. It seemed so indulgent.

And I'm sure you're right about the Coen Brothers, but I feel exactly the same about them: I love their scene setting and style and dialogue, but their plots often disappoint me. That's just my personal taste. And I know I'm in the real minority here, but O Brother Where Art Thou? left me totally cold (and I'll watch George Clooney in anything).

Katherine, per your post, it's seems to me that you're drifting back to the fallacy that a lack of planning somehow makes a writer more spontaneous and the process more "exciting." That's fine as far as it goes, but it just doesn't go very far.

Mind you, I certainly wouldn’t try to deny your feelings, but at the same time, the absolutely undeniable fact is that at every moment of the writing process (whether in the course of making a plan, executing a plan, or breaking the very same plan) you have the opportunity to decide about what you're going to do next, and moreover, you’re perfectly free to do whatever you'd like, and therefore, you can follow your mold or break it, that is, if you have a mold to break.

If you DON’T have a such a mold because you never created one in the first place, then this necessarily means that you have given yourself fewer options, and to me, that's a far less exciting prospect indeed. I would hasten add that even sans any mold, when your work is finished, it will have taken some form and shape or another, and thus you will have created a de facto blueprint.

So, this being the case, again, the question is, how consciously did you create that blueprint?

Now, of course, I realize there's a counter-argument to all of this, one which basically says, "Yeah, yeah, yeah--I know, I know all this--and yet, I still don't want to create any mold, even if I know that I'm perfectly free to break it, because the mere existence of such a blueprint somehow psychically restricts me, and so I'd rather write in a vacuum."

That's valid, but only if you personally happen to have a relatively restrictive mind, one that's not truly free to roam and therefore break your very own rules. I mean, by definition, a truly free mind is one without restrictions, and therefore, such a mind not only grants itself the exciting possibility of breaking rules at every turn, it likewise grants itself the freedom to adhere to any rules at any time. Whatever works.

And believe it or not, planning does work.

But, hey, we're all different. Less organization can work. Hell, even disorganization can work, especially if one intends to create a disorganized work of art. However, don’t assume that just because a writer creates a blueprint then he or she will necessarily feel encumbered by it. In fact, you might even consider the possibility that planning actually enhances a writer’s freedom so as to liberate them from the shackles of chaos and henceforth say exactly what it is they want to say, which would seem to be the point of expressing one’s sell.

Still, there’s no denying that not everybody thinks this way, and I’ve certainly met plenty of writers who are so anal that they simply will not give themselves the freedom to create either with or without a blueprint. Personally, I think that’s unhealthy and unnecessarily restrictive, but what can I say? I've always been more of a both/and person in general, whereas I realize that many folks have either/or natures.

In any case, whatever one’s predilection, I completely reject the notion that we can ever create in a vacuum. Granted, we can pretend to--if we're so inclined--but no matter what, we're always creating from within the given context of our lives and all of the stuff that’s going on in our surrounding environment (however much of it we're conscious of), and whether we like it or not, this in itself is quite a blueprint. And so, again, my simple bias is that it's preferable to be as fully conscious of this context as we move forward freely (well, okay, as freely as possible) and consciously and "spontaneously" to create each next moment of our writing, or for that matter, each moment of our lives.

I know I’ve said this before, but I just find it ironic that more than a few folks who pretend to be so utterly "pro-consciousness" seem to take every available opportunity to justify, if not willfully revel in, turning a blind eye to what they're doing and/or the way that they're doing it.

On the other hand, hey, whatever works. Seriously. I honestly have no desire to tell someone the way they ought to do things. I’m just joining in the fun debate. And, to be sure, many folks have successfully created great works of art by completely “winging it” (heck, I’d even advocate that every artist try this, at least as an exercise, if only to discover that really, we're always 'winging it' at every moment--some just a more consciously than others). However, it’s also entirely possible that such great works could've been even greater if the omniscient creator further heightened his or her consciousness, whereas I doubt that many artists would claim that their work would've benefited "if only I closed my mind a little more."

I’m also familiar with the Cohen boys and have read interviews about their penchant for writing themselves into corners, but I’d like to point out that (IMHO) in their greatest work, “No Country for Old Men,” it was Cormac McCarthy who wrote them into and out of any corners. Plus, it’s worth noting that you can just as easily write yourself into a corner when working on your blueprint as you can when you’re executing your story.

At any rate, there’s no doubt that the world has enjoyed its fair share of great “spontaneous compositions.” Pianist Keith Jarret comes to mind, but then, even he says that his “improvised” creations require that his mind imagine a blueprint of four full pages of music ahead of where his fingers currently reside on the keyboard Still, let’s not forget that more than a few great works of art have had a blueprint, from the pyramids of Egypt and the Taj Mahal to Shakespeare’s plays to, well, even Picasso’s and Pollock’s paintings—and don’t kid yourself about those latter two—both of them definitely had plans before they’re feathers ever struck the canvas to ‘wing it!’

Author David Isaak, in his Amazon review of The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction says: 'Some people scoff at the idea--which Koch supports--that stories are discovered during the writing process. Writers from William Faulkner to Stephen King to Martin Amis (and I bet you've never seen those three in a sentence together before) all claim exactly that--stories are discovered, not planned out like the construction of a cabinet.

I'll point David towards this discussion. I'm sure he'll have something to say.

Hmm... As if you can't "discover" a story in the course of planning and executing it (and/or possibly violating your plan along the way)?

But hey, I'm not about to question that the specific writers you mention have enjoyed tremendous success with their grope-in-the-dark approach, and while I could reasonably speculate that they would have been that much better off if they had discovered what they were doing a bit sooner in the process, I'll readily concede that this might not always be the case, and the proof is in the pudding.

And most folks do seem to find their puddin' quite yummy. If I were to contend otherwise, or to suggest that their stories would be yummier if they only followed my logic, it would be nothing more than idle conjecture.

Thing is, there really is no right or wrong answer to this question, but there are always results at the end of our endeavors, and writing strategies (or lack thereof) do have consequences, whatever approach we might take or forsake.

And so, if these blokes deliver the goods, that's the most important thing, isn't it?

However, going back to Rob's original observation, if and when writers fail to deliver the goods, then readers have every right to be annoyed at whatever it is that they deem to have been the cause of the problem. And what I heard Rob saying is that, at least in a number of instances, Mr. King never really did "discover" his story. Thus, in effect he blindly led his readers to the ledge of a dramatic cliff, which turns out to be not so dramatic after all, and so then he proceeds to rather limpidly roll them down the hill with him into a chasm of anticlimactic emptiness (or at least dissatisfaction).

Now, if (prior to publication and maybe even prior to "starting" his book), Mr. King had opened his eyes and was more conscious of what he was about to write, well... Well, I dunno.... That might be the biggest horror story of all!

Okay, cheap shot--I know, he's soooo successful, and I do mean so-so. But seriously, even if you happen to be a King fan,aren't his stories more than just a bit repetitive? And might that be exactly why he chooses wing it, because, in fact, it more or less allows him to paint-by-numbers? In other words, isn't it awfully convenient of him to close his eyes to the planning ahead with his books, because otherwise he might be forced to recognize that he's mostly doing the same thing over and over and over?

Then again, "over and over" has been quite a successful blueprint for him, eh?

Perhaps I'm just being petty here, but it seems to me that while Mr. King might fancy himself to be an adventurous explorer who forever "discovers" his new stories, personally, I think it's safe to say that (at least for observant readers) the blueprint for King's next story is easily "discovered" in the form of his last book, and then the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before... ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

I wrote the Koch review cited above. I understand that about two-thirds of writers plan/outline, and another third don't.

Some of us who don't plan do so not out of pigheadedness, but rather because we CAN'T plan until we know the voice of the book and the characters have been revealed on the page. I can often detect when a book has been carefully planned because the characters are pushed around for the convenience of the writer rather than emerging as living people.

I haven't found that this results in weak endings. By the time you are halfway through the first draft, the ending is usually pretty clear, so it is generally the most "planned" part of the book. (At the urge of blowing my own horn, you're welcome to pick up my novel "Shock and Awe"; it was written without planning, and I'm often complemented on the plotting and the big, multistage ending.)

I agree that Mr King frequently has weak third acts, but I seriously doubt that this is the result of writing without a detailed plan. Grand Master mystery writers Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake are among those who 'jump right in,' and their books are as tight as whatever you care to name.

I take your point, David, about drama dragging the protagonists around. I hate that and I see it everywhere. My method is usually to plot backwards from the ending I want, and then forwards once for each character, checking and revising as I go, that at no time is someone serving the plot at the expense of their own best interests or inclinations. Particularly on TV, I can't bear the way in which the need for suspense or tension overrides everything else, ensuring that people always blunder into rooms at the worst possible moment and no one ever takes bad news without causing a scene.

Rob, this is a fascinating debate and i felt I just had to join in. Although, being an historical novelist, I am a bit of a cheat in that the plot is done for me. However, I don't think that's my only reason for believing that the be all and end all of a good novel is its characters. With my students, I often cite the example of 'The Da Vinci Code' - it's a cracking idea, and cleverly plotted but alas, as mr. Brown can't create believable characters who make you care about them, it's a dull book. I'm currently gazing at Naomi Alderman's 'Disobedience' - a thinly plotted romance on one level, but one of the best novels I've read in recent years because its narrator and her friends and relations are irresistible - funny, tragic, hapless, plausible - utterly human. A writer who can create characters that rich shows a compassion for the human condition which is, to my mind, the bedrock of fiction, what it's really about. We write - and read - to make sense of the world. Novels are commentaries on life, and life isn't terribly strong on plot. Clearly one must plan - your analogy with architecture is a good one here (though why do architects building public buildings always seem to forget the public drives cars?) - but the plan has to be flexible so that when the wonderful point comes where your characters rise up and say, 'actually, i'm not going to do that, i'm going to do this', you can go with them. As anyone who's looked at my webpage recently will know, this is exactly what happened while I was writing 'Needle' - I wrote what I thought would be the end, then realised that actually, it wasn't. What I had written wasn't true to the characters as they'd developed over the three years I'd been getting to know them. 'Needle' has been as well received as it has, I think, not because of its plot but because of its characters. Good characters tell good stories. Novelists are just their hosts - the ventriloquists if you like. There, that's me done - the News Quiz beckons.
PS: David Mitchell, of course, is ace at both - plot and character - the clever s**d.

that his mind imagine a blueprint

Zos-you mention this more than once, a blueprint in the mind.

I believe (though of course I can only speak for myself) that many of us out there debating this, might be getting caught up in semantics. (Stating the obvious?) ;-)

I say this because in my case, you're right. Even if I don't write out an outline, a pre-planning of the novel, it has been forming in my head generally, before my fingers hit the keyboard (or the pen hits the paper), and in fact, what many call an outline is likely what others call a first draft.

Perhaps in such discussions we get too caught up in terms, and see the terms themselves as rigid. No doubt some outline to the nth degree beforehand, and others don't--and well, it's all a matter of degrees, isn't it?

In any case, thinking on this discussion, I realized I may outline more than I knew, because I don't sit to write until there is a fairly decent picture in my head. Where I do the most winging, I think, is when the things between a-b pop up that I hadn't seen yet. Occasionally I don't know the real ending until I *start* writing, or I may not know a specific event that pops up until I start writing.

Sometimes it depends which book I'm in. My first, I knew that story, yes I did, and you're absolutely correct that this isn't limiting at all, because it still took on its own life within the idea, and I had great fun writing it. The second was not as clear to me at first, but it became clearer as I went along.

I feel it may depend a great deal on the type of story one is writing, also. A very detailed, say, crime thriller--I'm certain if I wrote such novels I'd want to write a few things out before attempting the actual story while I was researching.I might want to write out the bones of the plot to make certain I don't leave holes and get the details all wrong.

But to conclude this ramble of mine--you're right. Having a blueprint does not mean you can't break your own rules if something better comes along during the process, as it were.

We just do it in different degrees, all of us.

Sarah said: but the plan has to be flexible so that when the wonderful point comes where your characters rise up and say, 'actually, i'm not going to do that, i'm going to do this', you can go with them.

Yes! Thank you for that. This happened to me in my second book. My characters decided one thing, and I tried to argue for various different reasons--when normally I don't.

They won.

To bring this back to Stephen King, I think that's what he was truly getting at in his book on writing. He states more than once, be true to the characters. At least, that's what I took from it most of all.

Per S. Roit...

Well, to some degree this is all about semantics, or maybe it's all about degrees, or maybe it's all about both, that is, it's about the extent to which our semantics can betray us because we, or they, fail to fully reflect or reveal the varying degrees of this whole situation.

To whit, we can use lots of different words to describe the varying realities that stand behind the varying writing processes we each deploy, and yet, in the end we still might fail to describe what's "really" happening. This debate is probably a good example of that inasmuch as I suspect that the words we've been using give the impression that there's a bigger gulf separating the "for/against" factions than exists in actuality. Mind you, I'm not saying that there aren't some real differences, and these bear consideration. That said, to some extent, this discussion probably is a "false dichotomy," or at least a degree thereof, as Rob indicated in his initial post on this subject.

So, it's worth considering some of the "extent" to which we're probably all on the same page, at least to some degree. For example, I would venture to say that all writers "to some degree" at least have some sort blueprint at the back of their minds before they click away at their keyboards. Now, before you self-styled free spirits recoil at the thought, bear in mind, the word blueprint itself is but one word we use to express the idea of a pattern, which perhaps is a better word if we're seeking to establish what we all might have in common in the writing process. After all, few would disagree that we all have patterns coursing through our veins, quite literally in fact (i.e., everything from our arteries to our neural networks follow very systematic patterns). We all experience and absorb vast biorhythms and patterns of life all about us, whether natural or manmade, and of course, this include the vast storehouse of plots and story-lines and character types that we've embedded into the very fibers of our consciousness (or subconsciousness) as abstracted from all of the books we've read, all of the movies we've seen, and of course, all of the real-life stories that we've personally experienced.

Thus, to some degree, every writer faces a blank page with pre-existing patterns in mind, and thus we're all, at least to some extent, a bit pre-formed, if you will. Sure, any writer can invoke the God Circe and pretend to have forgotten everything he or she has ever experienced or read, but just the same, I'm inclined to think that those very same forgotten memories and their related patterns are there all the time... latent, waiting, lurking, and ultimately, they'll leak into the story in one form or another.

We don't create something from nothing, you know.

This being the case, again, I'm simply of a mind that it's better to be fully of a mind about these things, and thus, I tend to think that consciously formalizing the form of your story (whether in the form of an outline, extended treatment, or whatever other rubrics or organizational devices one might choose to use) is generally a more effective and efficient practice.

At the same time, I completely agree that you should never be a slave to those devices, and in fact, you not only need to be flexible enough to rebel against them, like Saturn eating his own children, I say you ought to willfully attempt to subvert your creations. If they're good enough and strong enough, they'll survive.

No need to be timid.

We certainly ought to be brave enough to test whatever we have in mind for our story, no matter when or how it happens to come to our minds. In other words, just because we've developed an extensive plot outline doesn't mean that we ought to treat it as inviolate. Meanwhile, if we're in the middle of writing a story and we're suddenly struck with an ingenious idea plucked out of thin air, we certainly should allow ourselves to "go with" the flow of the muse, but by the same token, we shouldn't be so caught under the spell of the muse that we don't allow ourselves to challenge her and the supposed flash of brilliance that she's just given us.

In other words, absolute artistic freedom seems like a good idea to me. But, alas, with that freedom comes the eventual responsibility to commit ourselves to one thing or another, that is, if we're ever going to finish our projects. To that end, again, I think it's generally more practical to take responsibility for our story upfront. I mean, at the most elemental level, couldn't all writing simply be defined as "organized thinking," or perhaps, "patterned thinking?" In which case, I'm for conscious thinking, and pre-planning to the max, fully realizing that no matter how much I plan and no matter how conscious I attempt to be in my writing, I'm perfectly confident that I'll remain unconscious of infinitely more than I can imagine.

As for those writers who don't plan ahead yet wind up with dense and wonderfully layered plots, characters, etc. anyway, I say good for them if they can swing it. I suspect they're the beneficiaries of having very carefully observed patterns in stories and in people's characters in general and throughout their lives before they ever sat down and set about writing their own stories, or at least any good ones. In other words, it's ingrained in them.

To that end, I think most folks here would agree that experienced writers, who've followed so many different patterns over the years, generally require less pre-planning than inexperienced writers.

However, I'm also guessing that in the case of MOST writers who've just winged it and still wound up with perfect stories anyway, they probably achieved their super slick veneer by rewriting draft after draft after oh-so-painful draft. Personally, I'd rather minimize the pain. And what I've found is that the more thinking and planning and creating I do on the front end, the less I'll have to do on the back end in the form of edits and rewrites.

I'm just surprised that simple logic and everyday experience doesn't bear this out for more writers. Then again, I'm not so surprised, because I realize that there plenty of different folks out there with plenty of different strokes.

Oh, I do want to point out that not only should we be willing to subvert our own creations, but we need to be willing to allow our own creations to subvert us. You what I mean--those times when our characters seem to "take over" and "write themselves," appearing to dictate their behavior to us rather than vice versa.

I find this a truly fascinating debate.

As a writer I have tried both methods of attacking the blank page; on one hand simply diving in and forging ahead, on the other outlining my story in varying degrees of detail first. Now, I think, I’ve found my own method, and like Zos mentions above, I find that a fairly detailed outline allows me to write more confidently, with much less reworking later. This outline should in no way be a strict mandate, though, and evolves as the story is written. For me I simply find the skeleton of the story is essential to stop me wandering off and getting lost. I also find I’m much more prolific when I sit down at my computer if I have an idea about what I want to write that day.

As an editor and publisher, on the other hand, I see as many different takes on this as I do authors. One author I know outlines in such intense detail that the outline essentially becomes the first draft of the book, as he works his way through it afterwards, turning it into prose. For me I think this is the nub of the debate, and the outline is often driven by the same creative impulse as the first draft of an author who sits down to write without planning first. For many people, the outline *is* the first draft, in a sense, and instead of intensive reworking of the actual ms they effectively rework their outline into prose. I don’t think it’s as clear cut as saying that someone who works out an intricate plot in detail is ignoring their characters on the page, for often the starting point for an outline *is* the characters. I think it’s just the same process, worked out differently.

At the end of the day, whether you start out your story as an outline or a sketchy first draft, I believe the process is the same – you’re downloading your ideas and impressions of the characters onto a page for reworking later.

blimey, Rob, do you feel like the Archbishop of Canterbury yet? Have you looked at the Guardian book blog this morning?

Oh don't draw me into that one, Sarah! But as I've said already, I'm not sure it's a real dichotomy we're discussing here; nevertheless it's a highly illuminating argument. (But seriously, how dare the Archbishop preach his loathsome sermon of tolerance and open debate where Sun journalists can hear him. Doesn't he realise that bigoted fear and ignorant fury are Democracy's best weapons? If we all start thinking, then the terrorists have won.)

And as for Hannah Davies on the Guardian blog, I think she makes a good point. She mentions Faulkner and for my money he can serve as a touchstone. If you celebrate his genius, then pre-planning may seem to you an attempt to shackle greatness. If you find him unbearable, and more like a mad poet than a professional storyteller, then perhaps a bit of up-front structure in your writing might not go amiss. And I shudder at Hannah Davies's suggestion that what the UK book market needs is more Dionysian freedom. We can barely persuade people to read books as it is, without dialling up the post-modernism until only English graduates read novels. People always seem to forget that most modern novels aren't literary fiction; the majority of readers like genre fiction and aren't panting at the thought of experimental narratives. Most people like stories, not 'writing'. That should be born in mind when discussing spontaneity and structure. It's possible that what readers want is more craftsmanship in their books, not more unpredictability.

Per the Guardian, the problem with most modern fiction isn't that it's mostly not spontaneous but that it's mostly unoriginal formulaic tripe that has nothing to say.

Again, there's simply nothing about the act of planning that dooms someone to be unoriginal or lack spontaneity.

Yes, planning does imply that you're establishing some sort of mold, but alas, where did that mold come from? Well, if it came from a pre-existing mold which you're now simply duplicating, then yes, you're not being original, at least with respect to that mold. To which I say, don't do that.

But, even then, one still has to admit that there's the very real possibility that you might pour original material into your unoriginal mold. Now, I'm not advising that you should pour new wine into old wineskins, but you certainly can do it.

Meanwhile, don't kid yourself that just because you're winging it, what will come out of you will be spontaneous. Actually, if you're not conscious about what you're doing at any moment, there's a pretty good chance that your mind will bubble up with stuff you already know--that it'll simply repeat old patterns and thus produce contrived twaddle.

I mean, think about it--how easy is for anybody to break old habits? Not very. It usually takes a highly conscious effort, if not an heroic act of willpower, to establish a truly new patterns for one's self. Minus such consciousness, we're likely to blindly drift where we, or others, have gone before us, even if we blindly proclaim that the end product is "original" and all the while maintaining that the related process was supposedly "spontaneous."

It might look that way, but only because we weren't looking. Of course, that should come as no surprise if you start out the whole process by saying to yourself, "No, don't look! Just keep going. " That is, if, a priori, we told ourselves that looking was somehow a dirty, naughty and forbidden thing.

Now, maybe I'm saying all of this because I was hit by a car when I was five years old. Yep, I was struck while "spontaneously" crossing the street. Since that time, I've been much better about following advice to "look both ways" before crossing.

In any case, I suspect that much of the tired ole nonsense spouted in the Guardian goes to the sort of mythology we've built up for ourselves, and especially writers, most of which doesn't stand up to historical fact, namely, the myth of the sloppy, disheveled artist, forever spontaneous and going where no man has gone before, as opposed to the unoriginal robotic bean counters that make up the rest of the population--the sad lot who blindly follow their well-worn paths.

Of course, there are plenty of other myths out there, and there's no need to trace them all, save to say that whichever myth you follow, and whichever writing process you adhere to, in the end (hopefully) you will have created something worthwhile. Of course, who's to judge that? Well, anybody who sees it, and to that end, I think most of us would agree that the more conscious someone is, the better they'll be able to judge the merits of your creation.

And if that's the case, it just seems to me that it would behoove the creator/writer to bring such maximum consciousness into his or her creating at ALL stages of the writing process, including at the starting gate, as opposed to willfully repressing one's full consciousness from the outset all in the name of "spontaneity?"

I dunno. Somehow people just don't seem to get the idea that even in the course of preparing an outline, you are, or should be, spontaneous. Again, where is that outline coming from? If, indeed, it's a repetition of the last outline you made, or it comes from somebody else's outline from some other story, then yeah, that's neither spontaneous nor original. Instead, you roll up you're mental sleeves and summon up all sorts of original thoughts, perhaps using some simple questions to drive your originality, such as saying to yourself, okay, how can I start this thing in an original way? What am I trying to say that's really new--that people haven't heard before, or not quite in this way? What sensibility am I trying to create in some new way? What new observations am I trying to share? What experiences, ideas, or shards of inspiration have come my way that somehow need to work themselves into this story? What dark caves of life do I what to explore, and why are they so dark, at least to me?

I could go on and on, and it should be noted, that at least as I see it (and as I try to practice it), the writing process is not something that you do exclusively before you sit in front of a blank page. It's something you do as you're in the shower, lying in bed, walking down the street, and so. That is, you allow yourself to do it anywhere and everywhere.

No, check that--you SHOULD be doing it anywhere (alas--true spontaneity!), because writing ought to come from the whole of you and the whole of your consciousness, as opposed to emanating from some relatively limited persona that you've concocted for yourself that sits in front of computer, and then, and only then, finally, can lay claim to being a writer, and a spontaneous one at that.

I've read most of these posts, although some points are getting a little repetitive, and I'm still in the To-Each-Their-Own category. I don’t accept that plotting makes for a good novel and lack of plotting results in rubbish. Rather than slavishly following someone else’s dictates – however experienced they may be – we each need to discover our own method whether that’s completely winging it or plotting in minute detail or any point in between.

To me, starting a novel is like setting off on a journey. I know where I'm starting from and who will accompany me and I know where the journey will end. I don’t, at this point, know which specific route I will take to get there, although I'm aware of some locations where I have to clock in before moving on to the next section of the track.

I'm just putting this forward as my own preferred method, not saying that other methods are wrong. I do think it’s very unwise for writers to try and force themselves into a different way of working because someone has told them they're doing it wrong – and this despite being told my own novel is unpublishable because I didn’t plot it properly. I have wasted the last few months trying to plot a new novel ‘correctly’, and as a result I feel like a bumbling amateur (and, yes, maybe I am one), my writing muscles have withered and died, I hate the main character, and I feel thoroughly miserable.

Thanks for starting this discussion, Rob. It’s just helped me realise I need to get back to my own method, rough as it is.

Dee