Spontaneous Plot

Many writers like to focus on the creation of plot. Planning it out, brainstorming, prewriting, all the other terms you can think of. I, however, have found planning to be mostly a waste of time.

When starting out, I begin by visualizing a scene. This tends to happen while out walking, and just generally thinking. From this scene, I look at the character(s), the emotions and tone, possible plots leading to and from this scene, and I expand.

Writing for me is a mostly spontaneous act. I see the entire act as having islands and bridges. Islands are the parts I have seen before starting the novel or story. Bridges is leading the story to these islands. Some islands we will not get to, because the story shapes itself differently, and some islands were not seen until we began construction.

It has to be organic, and grow from itself. Planning, I found, constraints thought and forces you to allow only the ideas that had been planned. Yet, while going by this organic style, it requires new thoughts to be generated, and allows a large amount of breathing room for you to create.

Stephen King’s “On Writing,” is a great book on how to write. I normally don’t like Stephen King books, only finding about two enjoyable, but his advice is very useful. His writing style, in terms of story, is that we have a fossil with dirt around it. We start with the dirt and rock, and as we write we are excavating and getting closer to the beauty underneath.

I tried planning, and could never get a novel done. I didn’t like writing by a plan, and hated feeling constrained and led around by ideas that could have been better. Organically though, thinking day to day, not only helped me create my first two novels, but also helped me continue generating ideas. You train yourself to think more as well, which helps from becoming dry and used up.