Why Plan? (No, I Didn’t Say Outline)

Welcome, plotters. Hello, pantsers! Let the debating begin.

HA! Just kidding, mostly. But plenty of writers see the word plan and immediately think, Kerry’s going to tell me that I need an outline and I HATE outlines. Don’t worry, that’s not what I’m here to sell you on, at least not yet…

But if you’re at all familiar with me, or other Author Accelerator certified coaches, or with Dear Book Coach (the YouTube channel I have with two fellow coaches), you’ll know that I believe in doing some planning before you get started and then maintaining and updating those plans as you draft and revise. 

Plotting vs. Pantsing

I’d venture that there are very few of us that are fully one thing or the other; we probably live within the hump of the bell curve. I fall somewhere on the plotting side of the plotter/pantser debate. 

When I started out drafting my novel, I had an idea and a very, very rough 50,000-foot view of my narrative. I took a class in which the goal was to write six pivotal scenes in your novel. Mission accomplished! With the help of some prompts and thinking about my overall timeline (I wanted to cover the entire arc of my protagonist’s relatively short life), I had six “islands”, key moments in the story arc. Now all I had to do was build a bunch of bridges. Right?

So sweet and so naive was I. It was anything but simple (as surely anyone who designs and builds bridges would tell me). I made index cards and pinned them to the back of my office door. I drew timelines and Ws and plotted things along them. Slowly, painfully, things came together in my head and were then translated out into a Scrivener file. At the end of the year, I printed it out and proudly handed off a brick of paper to my husband.

I had done it. I had cataloged my protagonist’s arc, alright. To the tune of 145-ish thousand words. <insert scream emoji>

Making It Mean Something

Trusted people read it and gave me valuable feedback. I workshopped sections of it and got some excellent constructive criticism. But what no one told me (perhaps they were all too nice) was that I’d written a pretty boring fictional biography. Sure there were some moments that sparkled, that were exciting or sad or funny. However, in between there was a lot of nothing.

I’d fallen into the dreaded trap of writing the “And then this happened…” book. Scenes flowed together in a logical chronological fashion but too many had no ‘there’ there.

It was around this time that I discovered Lisa Cron, Jennie Nash, and Author Accelerator. As I started reading more about how our brains process and engage with story and why that matters, lightbulbs started clicking on all over the place. 

Those scenes that worked really well, that had depth and resonance–that was because they were what was giving the story its deeper meaning. They were scenes that you didn’t just read about my protagonist doing something, but you understand why she did, what drove her to react in a certain way, and what her subsequent actions meant.

With these new understandings in mind, I could start to craft a guide for myself to revise my book and make it far more powerful and meaningful. After all, don’t we all want to evoke a reaction in our readers, whether it’s making them laugh or cry or talk back to the characters? The one thing we DON’T want is for readers to be bored and put the book down.

What Does This Have To Do With Planning? 

A lot! What I came to understand is that had I done some foundational work on my book–not necessarily make an outline but thought more about why I wanted to write the book, what my message, point, or themes were, and who I was hoping to reach with it, I would have been able to be a lot more focused when I was drafting.

Similarly, had I explored who my protagonist was beyond her basic characteristics and elements of her life story, I would have understood which scenes were critical and how even the ones that were more like bridges than islands would pull their weight by moving the narrative forward in a way that would have given the work structure and meaning. I could have saved myself a lot of time, energy, and frustration. I shudder to think of how many more revisions I could have had to work through to finally have something that was firing on all cylinders.

Plans = Flexibility and Freedom

Sometimes when you’re starting out, it can feel daunting to plan. There are so many unknowns and you can feel like you have to have all the answers right away and if you don’t, or if they’re wrong, you’re doomed. 

Fear not! As a seasoned project manager, I can assure you plans change - a lot. I always said that if I ever managed a project that stuck to every date, budget, and process from the starting point, I’d retire. It hasn’t happened yet but every one of those projects has made it across the finish line and yours will too!

From a creative standpoint, I’ve heard people say that planning is stifling the muse. Not so! Having some parameters around a project is actually very liberating because you’ve eliminated lots of unnecessary variables that can clog up your precious brainspace trying to solve for. 

For example, if you know that you want to write a cozy mystery for women aged 35-55 who hate cats and love reggaeton, great! (I know, silly example, but you get the idea.) You’ve now eliminated huge swaths of people who weren’t going to be the ones who’d pick up your book in the first place. Now you can focus on writing for the people that will. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Knowing some of the high-level, basic things about your book will help you to write more efficiently and cleanly from the get-go. 

What About Everything I Don’t Know?

There will be things you don’t know and can’t quite figure out yet, and that’s fine. Knowledge is power, even (perhaps especially) knowledge of the unknown. The point of all the planning you do is to hone your ideas and your story from the start rather than wandering aimlessly in the creative woods and hoping you come out the other side unscathed. 

As I mentioned above, the thinking and writing you do ABOUT your book is not final, any more than a manuscript is until it is delivered to an agent or printer. As you write, you’ll learn things about the book and your characters that will surprise you. There’s the muse at work!

OK, You’ve Convinced Me. How Do I Start?

Excellent! There are a ton of resources out there that can help you start to wrap your brain around your novel. As an Author Accelerator certified coach, I of course lean towards the tools taught and used by my mentor Jennie Nash, and a great place to start is her book, Blueprint for a Book. It is a compact but powerful framework for planning that will ensure that your fundamentals are solid. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I also recommend and use in my coaching Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story and Story Genius. These books dig into the brain science behind story and help a writer explore questions that will give the narrative depth and emotional resonance. 

Two of my fellow certified coaches and I have a YouTube channel, Dear Book Coach, devoted to answering questions from writers. We have several videos that touch on this topic, including Plotter vs. Pantser: Is One Way Better Than The Other, Why Do I Have To Know My Why, and How Do I Find My Starting Point. (Also, submit a question at our website dearbookcoach.com and we’ll tackle it soon!)

Last but not least, I’ve developed a worksheet to help you dig into one of the most critical foundational elements of planning, knowing WHY you want to write your book and what the point, theme, or messages are. It is available free if you sign up for my monthly newsletter. Check it out!