Plot Structure -- Are you a gardener or an architect?

[Teresa Edgerton]

When you set out to write a story, do you approach it as an architect or a builder would -- planning everything out in advance, then following your blueprint and building from the foundation up, with perhaps an added beam or brace here and there where the structure seems to need it?

Or are you like a gardener, planting a seed, watering and nourishing it, then allowing it to grow as it will, except for the occasional pruning and dead-heading?

[chopper]

a bit of both: everything starts on a small bit of paper that usually ends up being a map of some description. then other scraps get written down, refined, tossed away, joined together, and placed onto the map. and then i work on a blueprint...

its not very economic.

[Esioul]

Probably a gardener, but a very bad one, whose potatoes get ring rot and whose african violets shrivel up.

[polymorphikos]

Gardener. Although I do spin basic elements together for background and such, then butcher them.

[tonic]

Gardener

I don't have the patience to plan out everything before no matter how good it will come out in the end. Of course there are some things that have to have a history like the main idea of the story. It may have come from nowhere but once it's in your mind you know how it started and the history behind it. Though usually I just write what comes to mind and I try to tie it all together, I probably do a very poor job at it though.

[I, Brian]

You can mix both and create something akin to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

My personal belief is that stronger writing requires that the characters do a lot of the invention and creation themselves - not because you ask them to, but because they demand it of you.

However, looking around at some fiction published these days, there is such a thing as leaving your characters to do too much of the work. Some writers end up seeming to write character for characters sake, and fail to reign in their characters to a clearer overall structure. It ends up as a form of "over-writing", where the failure to cut down on irrelevant scenes and focus important character elements leads to a diluted story.

In the introduction to the unabridged print of "The Stand", Stephen King complains that a story needs substance and uses the example of Hansel of Gretel in his argument. But the story of Hansel and Gretel is ultimately about their getting lost in the forest, meeting adversity, then returning home and settling the root cause there.

Unfortunately, some authors get distracted into writing huge swathes on incidental characters that actually add little - or nothing - to the immediate story.

Robert Jordan might write about the power struggle in the local village - then the next one - then the next one - then the next one... - - - while George R R Martin could brilliantly write scenes from the perspective of the Hansel and Gretel family - their fears and motivations - as well as Hansel and Gretel's dad's best friend Dave...and his wife, the local miller and his dog Sam... - - - while Peter F Hamilton could spend the entire first novel just getting Hansel and Gretel getting kicked out of the house, before meeting the handsome young man in the forest who has spent half the book shagging beautiful rich young women.

Great plot should be intricate and built upon the myriad of actions of the characters themselves, and any book can attempt different levels of plot complexity.

But at the end of the day, a story is not about people doing ordinary things - it's about people facing the extraordinary, with the core of the story being on how they face and overcome (if possible) their adversity. Ideally, main characters should be few so as to keep the story neatly centralised - too many characters endangers a story to poor focus.

Story requires some form of blueprint - a direction in which to channel liquid creativity. But the dynamic of great writing also demands that the characters grow in their own way around the initial blueprint, and add to it.

2 opinion c.

[Princess Ivy]

In my early years of writing i must admit to the gardner approach, not being one to plan things. however i find that sort of thing gets very stale very quickly. The of course i went completely the opposite way and planned every detail to the last T, and lost the flow of the story.
With the book i'm working on at the moment, i'm working on a dual method, planning loosly what will happen, then going back and working the scenes out chapter by chapter as I go. I find the structure of the basic outline really helps. As does planning each scene. but by only doing the scenes one chapter in advance, i'm able to keep things fresh in my head and not lose my place in the story.
I have high hopes for it.

[cleasterwood]

I'm a garden-architect. I start out with an outline but I also allow the story to change itself as it grows. This way it blooms into something on its own but I still know what path it must take to get the 'big picture' to unfold to the right ending. I use index cards with each chapter loosely defined and let the story lead me down the correct path.

[Stargazer1976]

Definately lean heavily toward architect.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Interesting answers, everyone. There are more gardeners here then I thought there would be.

Brian, you make several excellent points (as usual) but don't you think that the pure gardeners who lose focus and go rambling off on tangents might simply be writers who would benefit from learning how and when to prune, rather than changing their style to something more architectural?

Sometimes, you don't know what is going to be VERY important to the story and its resolution until you get to that resolution -- and then there's time enough to cut back most of the wilder growth.

This can be very hard to do, of course, because some of the more unruly shoots may be beautiful and interesting in themselves, while contributing nothing to the overall story. If one is going to BE a gardener, one had better learn how to be ruthless enough when wielding the shears.

[PenDragon]

I'm a gardener.

I plot mainly through characters but also have a meta-plot. The fictional world is the garden, the meta-plot the compost and I plant character seeds in that.

My meta-plots are always very broad or basic, like my current meta-plot a world
immeresed in constant local war, readies itself for global war, as a civillisation destroying cataclysym is about to strike.

Once I've created my characters I just see how they react when the Meta-plot knocks at their door.

Actually I think I'm an organic gardener

[Teresa Edgerton]

You sound like my kind of writer/gardener, PenDragon.

(Not to mention, I like your metaphor of planting the character seeds.)

[I, Brian]

Definitely good points raised (and you're quite right about the pruning, Kelpie ).

Seems like a lot of people accept that their characters will grow beyond original beginnings - I presume this is a sign of experience with writing, rather than a planned conscious approach?

[Circus Cranium]

Last month I interviewed author Jeff Strand, and this is a quote from that. Cracked me up.


("I am a cruel, heartless dictator who rules his stories with an iron fist. I don’t buy the idea that “My characters tell me what to do!” If your characters are telling you what to do, then your computer is possessed. Exorcise it immediately.")

[aurelio]

Hee he, Jeff Strand must be of the architect variety.

I always start off as an architect, and that pretty much holds, but their are definitely unexpected things that grow within the work as I write.

I guess I'm more like... a chia pet.