This is a question for those of us who work on long projects - novels, longer short stories, collections of short stories, collections of stories, longer collaborative projects, plays - anything that you forsee is going to take numerous drafts and many many hours before it is finished.

In preparation for a workshop I'm teaching, I have a few questions for you about your experience of preparing to get started.

1. How much do you need to know about the story before you get started?
2. What preparations do you make before you get started - in terms of making notes, doing character sketches - plot outlines etc
3. How do you know if a story has got legs? Or if an idea is for a novel, or for a short story?

Thanks

J

Great questions!

1. How much do you need to know about the story before you get started?
Pretty much everything - (see below).

2. What preparations do you make before you get started - in terms of making notes, doing character sketches - plot outlines etc
The works! Character sketches (though, actually, not hugely detailed in some cases), a full plot outline/stepsheet which runs to about 4-6 pages, and odd bits of dialogue/ideas/scenes as they come to me. For this novel, it's taken months - literally -to get this together. For a long time I had an outline, but after a certain point I knew it wasn't working, and I had to wait for ages until the right sequence 'came' to me. I guess this is what this stage of the writing is about - collecting, gathering and receiving. I can't force it.

3. How do you know if a story has got legs? Or if an idea is for a novel, or for a short story?
Three components:
a) a strong, workable foundation - a plot and characters that feel right and real
b) a sense of the unusual - eccentric/odd happenings or characters
c) a sense of excitement/energy about it which sticks around
Susiex

Everyone's different, but below is what usually happens for me.

1. How much do you need to know about the story before you get started?

For me it helps to have a beginning, a middle and an end - the end is probably the most important of the three. If I have a middle and an end I can work backwards to a beginning.
I don't need much to get started - maybe just a couple of lines, a premiss, or a couple of characters - just so long as I feel inspired to write it.

2. What preparations do you make before you get started - in terms of making notes, doing character sketches - plot outlines etc

I do that as I go along - the characters develop depending on what situations they are placed in, so it's difficult to sketch them out beforehand. As for planning, I usually put up a line or two of story outline as an intro. to each chapter, or simply a chapter heading, as it comes to me and flit between chapters writing it like a patchwork of scenes, which all come together by the end of the first draft. If I need to research something then I do it as and when needed, rather than spend time on it before I start. I find if I know the story too well then i lose interest in writing it. I like to be surprised by my characters and the twists and turns of the plot.

3. How do you know if a story has got legs? Or if an idea is for a novel, or for a short story?

I don't - it's a suck it and see situation, and a writer needs perseverence. I carry on for as long as I have chapter outlines. If they dry up then I'm stumped and have to put it to one side in the hope of coming back to it at some point - that usually happens if I don't have an ending to aim for. Sometimes I can't find the 'voice' and have to ditch it and move on to something else.
Short stories are often written for CW exercises, with a max. word count, so they are self contained writing exercises. I find pictures and a couple of key words, or phrase, helps to kick them off.


- NaomiM

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Just to add that, aside for the final few lines, that was for novels. Short stories and novels are different animals, i don't think i've ever had a short story kick off a novel.

1. How much do you need to know about the story before you get started?

Very little - it will have been an idea which has been bothering me and growing for a while and associated ideas to make a story need to be dragged out of the subconscious. This can either be done, as far as I am concerned, by sitting down and actually writing - at any point whatsoever and without expecting this to be other than something very very rough, or by brainstorming on a sheet of paper sitting in the sun.

Yesterday I did some brainstorming for a new character for my "Ghostly Ghastly" series by putting the character's name in a circle in the middle and doing spider legs about him, which led to some possible plot sequences which led to other spider spin offs. Great fun. Have almost got the storyline off, but I won't have anticipated all of the problems until I have got it down on paper in written form.

2. What preparations do you make before you get started - in terms of making notes, doing character sketches - plot outlines etc

Too much preparation kills it in my view. I will write the scenes that are strongest in my mind. Things start to come together and a theme emerges. Often an end and a beginning (which might well be different to the beginning I started with) and there might be several different endings.

Characters and plot lines grow together and I will do character spider webs as I go along.

If there are "stuck" points in the storyline then I will brainstorm as I get on with the writing. A lot is carried in my head. I feel a danger in putting too much down as a plan (or talked about) as I have found it loses its driving force.

I rewrite a lot, but this suits me as I love polishing the language and editing etc.

3. How do you know if a story has got legs? Or if an idea is for a novel, or for a short story?

It's down to the strength of feeling about the original and associated ideas, whether I get bored with it, whether it continues to make me laugh, love, cry or am just intrigued to find out with where an idea is leading me.

It is fine if I get bored with it - I have had some writing practice, and who knows when a snippet of what I have written will help me in something else.

If I am keen enough I will always find solutions to problems that arise as I get on with the writing. Another technique is to write the problem out simply before going to bed. Next day, not immediately, a solution will often appear which is so ludicrously simple that I wonder why I didn't think of it sooner.

The main thing is to work with my feelings to trap what is lurking below the surface.

I have turned a short story into a novel - I really think an idea can be either - a novel requires months of commitment, probably years in my case, so it comes down to my feelings as to whether it is a fleeting thing, or something which interests me enough to work on for a long period without being abandoned to a dusty drawer.

Don't know if that helps! In the end I think people find their own way of writing.

I'm pretty much the opposite of Susie on this, as I'm not a planner at all.

1. I need to know the beginning and end, and a major turning point in the middle. I'd have the central characters and a few key scenes in my head before I start.

2. I don't do any planning on paper in terms of notes, etc. But I do sort of daydream the book all the time as I'm walking around or in bed or whatever, and think about the characters a lot and dream up scenes that way. I don't do any plot outlines - I've tried, but just can't seem to do it. I think you're a planner or you're not. So I just dive in and start writing once the lying on the couch staring into space phase is done.

3. I don't really know if it has legs. I suppose it's my job to give it legs by writing it well enough.

1. How much do you need to know about the story before you get started?

Usually very little. I begin with any strong scene that comes to mind, and focus particularly on the dialogue to see how the characters might act.

2. What preparations do you make before you get started - in terms of making notes, doing character sketches - plot outlines etc.

None.

3. How do you know if a story has got legs? Or if an idea is for a novel, or for a short story?

By the time I've done the first couple of scenes I've decided if I think the 'voice' is right, and readable, and whether the story is fun to develop and will keep me amused. I then keep writing and let the story emerge by itself - really, most of the time what happens is a surprise to me too. Over time though, specific plot directions do appear that I try and point the story towards.

ST

I'm much more along Sidewinder's lines - I'm rubbish at planning and no matter how much I intend to plan loads before starting, I'm always too impatient to just get on with it.

1. How much do you need to know about the story before you get started?
I usually start with a strong beginning in mind and an idea of the general narrative arc, but develop the plot in more detail as I'm going along. I've found it useful to set out the chronology in quite a lot of detail first.

2. What preparations do you make before you get started - in terms of making notes, doing character sketches - plot outlines etc
Probably not enough! One thing I've found useful on my latest project (a novel) is writing a brief(ish) plot rundown in chronological order from each main character's pov - kills two birds with one stone by clarifying the plot and getting inside the head of the character.

3. How do you know if a story has got legs? Or if an idea is for a novel, or for a short story?
Whenever I used to try and write short stories my writing group would say it just sounded like a condensed novel largely because it took place over a long period of time. They suggested that anything that takes place over more than a week isn't really right for the short story genre. They were right as all I ever really want to write are novels, short stories are just there for a bit of instant gratification in between!

1. How much do you need to know about the story before you get started?

Quite a bit. I have to a have a rough road map but I make sure I keep it rough or I risk taking the spontanaiety out of proceedings. If things get too 'fixed', I tend to get stuck as I tend to get bored. It's like a mountain with several roads winding to the top, but I like to still be able to guess what happens around the next corner. As long as I can see the mountain, I'm ok.

2. What preparations do you make before you get started - in terms of making notes, doing character sketches - plot outlines etc

Usually two pages of plot outline in bullet points and a character list, with notes about the characters. These get added to as I go along. I now have about 30 pages of notes for my WiP and that will only grow with the second book, if I ever get to write it. Because I'm world-building, I also have a list of locations, the name of the country and its capital, and then add to it with any other smaller places as I go along. I also keep a miscellany of relics, creatures and the like. It will come in handy as a makeshift glossary, if I'm ever asked for one...

3. How do you know if a story has got legs? Or if an idea is for a novel, or for a short story?

I usually only discover this when I'm actually writing it. The present WiP began life as a long-ish short story, 10,000 words. Then it became three loosely connected short stories. Then five. Then I realised I was writing a book. Some ideas flash in the mind and seem to suit the short story form much better than a novel. Usually because I imagine them that way, as being over and done with quite quickly. A novel idea always strikes me with a much broader theme, and I have to really love it in order to explore it i.e. spend upwards of 3 years in its company.

JB

Just a quickly to let you know I am here, listening and facinated with all thes replies

1 - Very little but I have a vague sense of what it should feel like.

2 - A fair bit of exploratory and loosely connected reading - all linked to mood - and images - and 'fact finding' - lots and lots of 'looking things up' and making vague connections that fit somewhere - a bit like the outline for a jigsaw puzzle?

Also some notes for sketches and plot and characters - which tend to go into files I seldom or never open again...

3 - I don't really - I just try to write it all out - I generally have some sense as to 'length' and sometimes I get stuck or find i'm going nowhere or I don't know where to go next - how to get there or I don't have the right tools...

Sarah

1. How much do you need to know about the story before you get started?

It starts with a the vision (in the strict sense: I see it) which starts the whole thing. Then the question is either 'What happened next?' or 'How did they get here?'. Often it turns out to be the beginning, or the end, but not always. I'll think and read around it and brood on characters and ideas, maybe make notes, but mostly do what the children's author Philip Gross calls free-search.

2. What preparations do you make before you get started - in terms of making notes, doing character sketches - plot outlines etc

The main thing is a big plot-chart of all the strands running in parallel - more about structure than detail of the action. Both 'now' and 'then', and tracking any information which it's specially important to control who knows when. That's when I feel I've started the novel. Spreadsheet of how old everyone is, both for the time-span of the novel, and for their pasts. Research for the facts that determine the plot:

I usually also do some of the following, though often not until I'm into the first draft, and find that I need them: family trees; sketch-maps; spider-diagrams exploring the interconnections of themes and ideas; some lists of characters and names: perhaps a few notes of the broad characteristics of the most important onces; maybe some comparisons how how the different characters think about a particular topic, or behave faced with a particular problem. Never a straight character outline in the text-book sense: I find them sterile. Notes about technical stuff or particular bits of history. But I rarely look at the notes: it's so important to leave the research behind, and that's hard to do if you don't internalise the material, and let it be sifted by your memory and dealt with by your imagination.

3. How do you know if a story has got legs? Or if an idea is for a novel, or for a short story?

I find the idea dictates the length, but I'm fundamentally a novel writer, so ideas tend to fall away unless they've got legs. I do note them down, but as with research, I rely on my memory to do the sifting: there's usually one that insists however little attention I try to pay it (I'm usually in the thick of the previous novel) and gradually realise that'll be the next. On the other hand, it can often then become a pot into which I can toss other things which might have been standalone, and wait for them all to stew down.

Emma

That's interesting. I think my character lists hark back to the days when I played Dungeons and Dragons. I don't need to write down characteristics, because I often think I have a good sense of them anyway - they are usually so fully bodied in my imagination by the time I sit down to write, they're like old friends.

I do, however, keep an 'important keynotes' list, where I jot down things I need to remember in terms of the plot. I find it very handy, especially when reviewing a draft to see I haven't forgotten anything. The thing I'm dreadful at is time frames. Both the last novel and this one both took criticism for existing outside the normal laws of time, but I'm getting better at it...

JB

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i.e I discovered to my horror in my WiP, where the main action takes place over a month, that the month was actually 19 days long. I've fixed it now, but it took a bit of effort...

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I also had a moon that was full in one scene and then a crescent 2 days later. That kind of thing.

for existing outside the normal laws of time,

Part of why I had so much fun with Vay1 - having characters who acted as if the normal laws of time didn't apply to them

Initially it was all a parallel time scheme over two weeks set in different times and places and worked out almost to the hour - but then it all began to unravel when a character went into a house on Midsummer Eve and came out at 3 am in mid winter...

And I lost a day which was kind of deliberate except it was a bit like when you put the clock forward instead of back so one of my characters was spotted the day before she went missing...

And then when I got to the rewrite I thought never mind and shifted a phase of the moon mid scene and have been trying to work out a plausible explanation for how the character did that ever since

Sarah

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I blame it all on a hangover from Othello at A level - a whole literary theory based on Shakespeare maybe just - losing track?

It would be great to read Vayl all in sequence some time. I've enjoyed the bits that I have read, but I think any time you start messing with old Father Time things get tricky. I had ongoing nightmares writing Unrequited - shifting back and forth between past and present, and asking myself has this happened?/yet to happen? in regards to certain characters etc. My editor called them 'transitions'. She never seemed very happy about them. Even I was scratching my head!
I was absolutely determined to then go on to write a more linear story, and with the WiP, I have again failed dismally. At least this time I get to blame the universe going skew-whiff though!

JB

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I imagine Emma could say a lot on this subject. The shifting time-frames were handled beautifully in TMOL, I thought.

Yes and the 'intricacy' in A Secret Alchemy is very good as well

Keeping with the time metaphor it's like the beautifully constructed inner workings of a clock.

Absolutely agree re complications with time - it really is 'change one thing and you change everything' but that was the key idea for the book - it would be great to have the writers' skill and toolkit to make it work
One day...

Sarah