Dean Koontz on Plotting

I picked this up off an Amazon plog. It's Dean Koontz's response to a question about plotting:

Q: Which do you think of first: character or plot? --John, Columbus

I do not plot. Not consciously. Characters drive the events of the story and take me places I never would have anticipated. This does not mean that every book starts with a character. Some do--like ODD THOMAS, in which I knew the character in detail long before I knew what his story was going to be. In books like THE HUSBAND, the hook--some would call it the concept--comes first, but the concept is not a plot. It is more a situation, a premise. With that, I have to know who the lead characters are, have to understand them, and in the understanding of them, I find the plot chapter by chapter. This feels organic to me, and character-driven stories feel more real, even when they are stories of the fantastic, than do plot-driven books.

In personal news, I finished my article on Jim Sallis so I'm taking the day off. Unfortunately, I had a bit too much drink last night and am not feeling very good at the moment on my day off.

Plotters versus Pantsers

Since some discussion of plotting is going around I thought I'd throw in my 1.5 cents on the Plotters versus Seat-of-the-Pants writers. I started out writing short stories, often no more than a couple or three thousand words, and often I wrote them in a white heat. In addition, most of these were horror stories, where mood and atmosphere is often as important as the "events" that take place. For such pieces I really didn't need to do much plotting, so seat-of-the-pants it was.

When I wrote my first novel, well, my first decent novel, which was Swords of Talera, I used the same strategy that I'd learned in short stories. I didn't plot it out, just let it unfold. It was fun, perhaps the most fun I've ever had writing. But I can look back now and see that there are some weaknesses to that book that I don't believe are there in the two sequels. The latter two books were plotted, albeit not to the point where I developed a detailed outline. Instead, I knew where I wanted to begin, where I wanted to end, and at least several major points I wanted to hit along the way. I think the books are better for it.

For Cold in the Light, I initially just started writing, without thought of what might lie ahead. But after I got a couple of chapters in I realized I had a long piece coming and I stopped, spent some time plotting out the story chapter by chapter, and then rewrote the first couple of chapters to set up the rest. However, I still didn't know the end of that book until I finally got there. But at least with the steps planned out the ending became inevitable.

For short stories, I like the freedom of not plotting, of just spinning out the words to see where they go. This results in plenty of false starts, but those starts are usually no more than a page or so. I don't think I'll write another novel without a much more detailed plot, however, which is why I'm reading along carefully with C.S. Harris as she talks of plotting over on her blog.

A Return to your Regularly Scheduled Blog

I'm going to put RZ E NEWS on the shelf for a bit and return to more serious commentary. It's pretty hard for me to maintain the illusion of comedy anyway, seeing as how I was born without a sense of humor.

Sidney Williams, Stewart Sternberg, and Wayne Allen Sallee have all posted on the issue of "Why We Blog" lately, and you can find commentary on those posts at their website. Stewart has pointed out that the key to increasing your blog traffic is to "have something interesting to say." One point about that, though, is that "interesting" exists more in the reader than in the blogger. Obviously, to many people, Paris Hilton is an absolutley fascinating person. I don't feel the same way, and I'm not going to have much or anything to say about such celebrities. I remind myself, however, that I'm not likely to sell my writing to "most" of the people who find Paris fascinating. My potential audience is different and I have to find and post here that which interests "them."

In related news, C. S. Harris is posting over on her site a series about how she plots, especially related to her current historical mystery series. I found the first entry quite informative so you folks interested in plotting might check it out.