So, for this post, we will talk about that planning process, particularly mine, why you should do it and how you should go about it to craft an excellent story!
The Reason You Should Plan
Say you're about to go to college. You're not going to head in without filling in your paperwork, making sure everything is in order and you've got everything packed that you need, right? It's the same when it comes to writing a story. There are various reasons one should plan a story out, and it's important to understand just what those reasons are so that you know what you're dealing with and can accept how vital the planning process is.
The first of these reasons is to create a coherent story. Your entire story should be known, beginning to end. Now, I'm not saying to go into the super nitty-gritty details of every single aspect. That would be impossible to account for, given that a story is a naturally growing thing. However, as a writer, you need to have a base idea of where you want your story to go. Maybe you know the ending, maybe you know the theme, maybe you have an idea for just a single character. Either way, planning is a necessity for creating a cohesive and coherent story.
To give a personal example (and to toot my own horn while I'm at it): my currently running Alola Trilogy. It's about to reach its biggest moments, however, there is no possible way I could have planned everything to reach the point that it did without knowing where everything was going from day one. A house in Chapter 8 of the first book became important in Chapter 4, two books later. A shipment of stolen Z-Crystals became a plot point almost a whole book later. These are things that never would have been possible or even conceived without planning. It shows in the work.
In fact, that's the second reason that planning is so important: it will show if you don't. Believe it or not, but one of my criteria for reading any fanfiction is that I never see the words "I'm writing this as I go along", or any variation thereof. Why is this so? Those words essentially say "Don't expect my story to make sense". A revelation may come along but not be supported by earlier in the story. Or worse, you may openly contradict yourself. What happens without that planning is that your intelligent readers will catch on at some point. They'll notice all too swiftly how your story is directionless, and they'll lose interest because if you don't know where your story is going...why should they care?
This leads to reason number three of the importance in planning your story. That reason is: motivation. That's right. It may seem hard to believe, but by planning your story it gives you an extra source of motivation for continuing and completing said story. I always tell people, when they ask me how I complete stories so quickly (and all of them at 100%), is that it comes down to this. I always say "Find a moment, any moment, that you really want to write. Hold on to it and keep pushing through your story to reach that point. When you reach it, press on to the next point, and on and on." This kind of motivation is literally impossible without planning. If you know where your story is going because you planned it, you can get excited to write it. And if you're excited to write it, your readers will be excited to read it. That is what the power of planning can do.
Now, we arrive at the fourth and final reason that's important (I'm sure there are many more, but this is one of the most important). It now prevents you from changing the story on a whim. Of course, the story is flexible. Maybe the order of events will change. Goodness knows that early in Tropics I had planned for the group to head to Kukui's lab before Iki Town, but I scrapped it and brought them straight to the town. Of course, doing things like that will happen at some point. But it doesn't change the big stuff. And you don't want to change the big stuff. In fact, by planning out, rather than scrapping and changing the major events that occur, you can enhance them. Knowing Lillie's defiance would happen in Chapter 28 of Trials meant that I could set it up with her torn dress in Chapter 2.
However, when you don't plan, it so quickly falls apart because suddenly you feel like you can change the direction of the story and it won't matter. I've read one such fanfiction, where the author only planned in small bursts of 30 chapters...you can tell where the author changed his mind and began writing a completely different story. To any discerning reader, they'll blink and wonder why before abandoning the story, because it hurts your integrity as an author and ultimately ruins any cohesive story or theme you can be telling. You want to avoid that.
So, to sum up the very reasons why you need to plan your story: it will allow you to create a coherent story, it will allow your readers to not pick up on a major flaw and thus stop reading, it will give you extra motivation and it will prevent you from changing, and thus ruining, the story. But with all of that said, let's talk about how you actually plan a story.
How to Plan Your Story
There are many methods to planning stories or aspects of a story, etc. etc. Really, it's as different from one person to the next as it could possibly be. I can't possibly cover every single approach to a story, so instead I'll share a bit of my own planning process to give an insight as to how that goes (note: spoilers for my own stories ahead).
1) The Concept Stage
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| A piece of concept, excised for spoilers |
And concepts are good to have. You want them, so long as they work in the universe. In that early part of the process ideas can range from the easy, to the feasible to the "how the hell am I going to get this to work?!". Usually the easy will be characters, likely. No matter what, though, you'll want to get all of your major ideas on the table. This is not the stage to plan all those little details in the slightest since those will inevitably change at some point.
Instead, focus on getting all your big ideas on the table. Some of those are seen above, or as known in the case of Turbulence, I had all my big things on the table like Team Neo, Travis being a villain, the keystones and Rayquaza would be involved...oh yeah, and the girl named Merle was actually Zoroark and the main villain had lost his daughter. Yeah, I knew that all the way back then.
"But then, what do you do with all these ideas?" You parse them out. The concept stage is easily the stage with the least amount of refinement, but the most amount of refining. You have a bunch of ideas that can help you build your story, and now you need to throw a lot out. I'm sure you've heard the saying "too many cooks spoil the broth", well, too many ideas ruin a story. Before the concept stage, you need to be tossing away those ideas that don't work. Maybe save some for later, in a different story, but otherwise make sure you find the ones that work together and can build into an amazing story. Such as how I threw out the idea of Zinnia returning, deciding she worked better as less of a physical force.
By now, your concept should be pretty small, but have a bunch of solid ideas that can go together. All that's left up to now is the stage of refining. It will also be the hardest part:
2) The Outline Stage
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| The outline stage for early in the Alola Trilogy |
You have your major ideas, but their still relatively formless ideas. They don't have an anchor to bind them to the story and allow them to flow. This is where the outline comes into play. Now, some people will have a different outline from others, no doubt, but what the outline allows you to do is give a loose fitting form to your story.
Before this stage, you have a collection of ideas, but with an outline, you'll start to put them in order, one after the other, and it's a really hard thing to do. You no longer have to just concern yourselves with the ideas themselves, but also where they fit into the plot. Should Event A happen before or after Event C? When should the big revelation of the story take place? Which character is with which character? It suddenly becomes confusing, and a hell of a lot more overwhelming than you thought it would.
So, you need to take it one step at a time. Sometimes you may find a couple minutes for a single dash in place. It's tricky, but just remember that this is a base idea. Early on in the Alola Trilogy's planning process I was going through my outline, I had Team Rocket appearing quite a lot through the story, places they were eventually cut from. You see, the outline is not the be all and end all of the story. It's a jumping off point to formulate all of your ideas into a single line. This allows you to carry the product through from beginning to end and at least helps you know roughly when big events should happen so you, your characters, your story itself, and your readers don't get lost and confused in the mess of it all.
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| Sometimes you need a little more than a base outline; this is for planning tricky things, like tournaments |
Of course, for certain things, the outline stage might be bigger. Say you're holding a tournament, or you need something that requires more extensive planning than just the base outline; this is the moment to plan it. This way there's no confusion or mistakes in the continuity. For the Kalos Team Tournament, as seen above, I had to plan how all the points would be appointed and won all to end with the result that was wanted and to outright know how the events could go without falling apart. This is a vital part, though not more vital than getting everything in order. It just helps you breathe easier in the end.
Once you've got all of that setup and know the general flow of your story, you'll be ready to really dive into the meat and detail of your story.
3) The Summary Stage
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| An example of a first chapter summary |
So, you've found your concepts and now you've put them into a rough flow that the story should be able to take. Now comes the time that details start filtering. Of course, you may already have an idea of some different details, perhaps maybe even have some quotes for your story in your head. However, the summary stage requires you to take that and add detail to your sparse outline.
What I do for this portion in particular is get the rough estimate of what I feel I can put in a chapter and make that a paragraph. For some, especially beginning writers who are unsure what can actually fit, this will seem really hard, in which case, just do your best to summarize what will be to come. You may be thinking that doing a summary is redundant when you already have the outline that is above, but it is truly anything but. And even if it was, redundancy is the very practice that will ensure you don't miss a detail you need.
In fact, that's exactly what the function of the summary is. Need a specific detail that you absolutely know must be part of the story? It goes in the summary. Want to put a quote in where you feel it fits best? Summary. Want to make sure you've defined every aspect of a complicated lore and where it's doled out in the story? You guessed it: summary. This is the device that takes your outline, which probably seems like a mess and jumble, and puts it into a readable format like a story itself, just with giant paragraphs.
The simplest way to achieve this is to take your outline and start going down it. Take a cluster of dashes for your outline and turn them into a paragraph that flows and reads like it's a mini-story of its own. This will be the easiest for ensuring you hit every point. Even cross them off as you go down the list. This way, if in this stage, you change some of the order around, you'll ensure you don't miss something. Granting, you may also decide that something originally in your outline is no longer feasible in the story. And that's okay. You'll likely find many little ideas scrapped and added before the road of planning, let alone writing, is done. Also, don't be alarmed if there are parts you won't be summarizing heavily. I had a section for writing a League in the Alola Trilogy that was literally just "Ash battles this guy. He wins." That was for a whole chapter.
With the summary, you should feel pretty confident about moving forward with your story. In fact, you're just about ready to start writing! Now there's starting on that first chapter, and for that there's...
4) The Chapter Notes Stage
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| A chapter outline, including a section that needs more elaboration: a battle |
Starting the first chapter is daunting for anything. How do you begin? How much information is there? Can I really do this? On and on, in a spiral. However! Look, you've got your summary with all those wonderful details. Now you just need to find a way to make it a chapter. Usually, I'll start off delineating every single section of the summary into a chapter, and while it's not perfect, it allows me the chance to at least organize each chapter before I write it.
The Chapter Notes goes into further detail than before. It's pretty much like the outline phase, only it's individual moments for each chapter itself. This helps you decide not only the flow of the chapter itself but also some of the more vague ideas that wouldn't be included anywhere else. It might be a particular conversation or a transitional thing. For me, I also add line breaks so I know where to add them into the story itself.
Not everyone will use this the way I do, of course, but I find it allows me to have a greater sense of control over the chapter itself, as you can see above, even if that end result ultimately changes. Especially when you're entering a "multi-chapter arc", this can truly serve you well because it allows you to hit on all of the little details and how they flow each chapter through that arc. If something doesn't fit in a particular chapter, it can be shifted into the next, or be moved elsewhere. With the chapter notes, it really helps you to master the flow and ensure that there are no breaks through the story, and especially important parts of the story.
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| Example of a battle flow |
This flow also helps tremendously helps if you're writing a battle of some sort. Naturally, I write more Pokémon battles than anything these days, so for me, it ensures my battles aren't repetitive too much, don't last too long, and that a Pokémon that's knocked to the ground isn't standing up again in the next sentence. There's a flow that's established with it and ensures I'm happy with the general outline of the battle before I even dive into writing it. Not all writers will use this process, but I like to because it also helps me pick up my speed in writing them and allows me to pour the emotions in.
With all of this, you will at long last be ready to embark upon that first chapter! It will seem daunting, but you've fully planned and prepared for this moment, and will have the motivation to see the story through until the very end!
Conclusion
Planning is a very important process to the telling of a story. Without planning your story will not be coherent, will change plots and tone suddenly, become noticeable to your readers and may lead to a lack of motivation. With it, you can avoid all of those things and become an expert writer in no time! The planning process itself may be long, going from a bunch of ideas into a general outline, then a summary and finally notes to help on the flow of a chapter, but once you've done it, you'll be ready for an expert story crafting, hopefully. With all this, you should be set to go!
I hope to release one more seminar this month, this time focusing on tone and establishing it, but if not, we'll get there eventually. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and please support me on my Patreon!
Dare to Be Silly,
Epicocity
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