In my late teens, I was the captain of my high school’s improv troupe. Although I excelled at extemporaneous rhyming, I was not by any means the best performer in the troupe. I had other talents that made me well-suited to the role.
I can think on my feet and have an instinct for storytelling, so I could quickly judge when a scene had come to a satisfying narrative conclusion. I knew when it was time to stop my fellow performers and move on to the next game.
I’m also good at thinking ahead and planning, both of which are necessary for managing a group of people…especially hyperactive teens craving the spotlight.
I’ve left behind my days of “Yes, and?” But the skills I relied on then still help me in my careers as a teacher and writer. (What is teaching high school if not improvising and managing groups of hyperactive teens?)
Just like teaching, and improv, writing a novel is a tightrope walk between improvisation and careful planning.
I never used to plan out the stories I wrote.
I’d just make them up as I went along. I could kind of get away with this in the one act plays I wrote because drafting those had a lot in common with improvising a sketch. When it came to my novels, I became hopelessly lost while trying to tease a narrative out of 300-plus pages of disconnected scenes.
Then, I read some brilliant books that helped me think about narrative (and planning) in a totally different way:
· Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
Each of these books helped me learn some invaluable lessons about how stories work, but I ended up going too far the other way on the Pantser-Plotter Spectrum. I became irrationally convinced that if I could just hammer out the big picture issues in my outlines, before I drafted my stories, I would save myself tons of time and heartache later when it came time to revise. I became totally paralyzed in the planning stages of my books. Writing became more stressful than fun.
As with most things in life, what I needed was a little moderation. A bit of forward thinking and planning can help me write a stronger draft and reduce some revision headaches. But sometimes the only way I’m going to figure out that tricky roadblock in my story is to sit down and improvise it on the page, without caring how “bad” it is.
I think the “right” balance between improvisation and planning is a little different for everyone. I personally find that I need to go back and forth between planning and drafting in order to have continuous forward momentum on my projects.
There are some fundamental planning questions I still think about
These are questions I think about before I start writing, and also revisit while I’m drafting and revising. I’ll be sharing these questions with you over the course of the next nine months.
Welcome to the Build-a-Book Workshop
For the next nine months, your weekly Wednesday e-mail from me will contain a short lesson and exercise designed to help you strengthen the foundation of your book. That’s basically the length of this school year! By the time the pools reopen, and the kiddos are off for summer break, you’ll have learned:
· What kind of book you want to write
· How to build your hero
· How to drive your story forward with conflict
· How to create a page-turning plot
· How to get your draft onto the page
· Where to get feedback for your draft
The best part is, you don’t have to do anything other than subscribe to Truant Pen so that every lesson from now until June is delivered straight to your inbox.
I can’t wait to find out what you’ll build!