Staying on Coarse

[MDPthatsme]

So we've talked about "planning" out stories before and using outlines (imaginary or real), but most of us create a very "free" outline which allows space for pretty much doing whatever the heck we want. But it can side track us.

In writing, distractions in storyline can be a very bad thing as you can get off "coarse" and lose yourself in the big middle. Much like the little sail boat in the big blue ocean, how do you find your way back?

Discuss follies of planned writing, not going so planned. What do you do? An illegal U-turn? Turn a sharp corner or carry out the detour and find your way back to the main road, I mean, plot some way?

[spookythings]

I tend to kind of "overplot", where I write a detailed outline for every single thing that's supposed to happen in a particular chapter. Then I write it out, fulfill my own demands... and become incensed because it's entirely too stiff, and more often than not, I feel like I've had to force all kinds of conveniences and contrivances to get where I thought I wanted to go.

So then I delete and start over, and never, ever learn from my mistakes.

[joseph]

Ooh nice to see this section of the forum revived. Also nice to see you, Spookythings.

I'm the complete opposite where I have a bunch of ideas in my head for my characters and absolutely no idea how to get to the resolution or how the plot is going to play out long-term. It's kinda fun... and completely chaotic when it comes to trying to work out whose turn it is to have a scene.

I started out just free-writing and seeing where it took me so I never really managed to get myself into a 'planning zone' until it came to writing the first draft of my novel and realising I couldn't wing this (and even then I went completely off course anyway when it came to writing the final chapters).

As for storylines, I'm sure my online stories are a complete joy to read in full (sarcasm) what with the horrible u-turns and contradictions and contrivances and all sorts. But it's a learning experience.

[MDPthatsme]

Oh my gawd do you know how many loopholes I find in my own work! Sooooooo many! So newly done writing a novel based on my sim story Alternate Universe, I found everything went smoothly using the sim story as an outline (because there's so much we can't do in the sims that we can in prose). What took a whole year in sims, only took 4 months in prose. I kept saying to myself: it's like I've written this story before I had.