Writing without a plan
I managed to type 14,300 words of The Killing Kind, my new WIP this week.
14,300 words. It’s a height I haven’t scaled since lockdown, and I think I’ve reached it partly because I’ve been writing without a plan.
To Plan or not to plan?
I’m a teacher, so I’d been planning to start writing The Killing Kind during the February half-term. I wanted to prepare and plan the novel with carefully marked character arcs, chapter by chapter relationship notes and a separate threads document ensuring everything gets tied up by the end. But life got in the way in the preceding weeks, so all those plans went out of the window. In the end, the on the first day of the holiday, I wrote a brief summary of Part 1 (of 3) and then started writing.
Not having to follow a rigidly structured plan possibly made my writing flow more easily. The threads, the character arcs and the relationships will have to sort themselves out in future edits. Two of the main characters are well on their way, and the antagonist is a nasty piece of work. I’m quite proud of him!
There are arguments for and against the process I’m following.
Third Book Threads
This is the third book in my Angel of the South series, so there are threads from previous novels, and continuing character arcs, histories and relationships, that I need to ensure remain consistant. Having the time to prepare the ground would have been better to ensure I avoid inconsistancies.
On the other hand, I know Billie, the main character pretty well by now. She often catches me by surprise in the things she says and does, but I’m comfortable writing about her, and I trust the twists and turns she introduces to the route.
But it is scary, because all writers have gone down the route of starting to write without proper preparation, and then found themselves running dry. It’s happened to me on several occasions, and it’s why I still have several unfinished manuscripts nagging at my conscience.
Magical Mystery tour
Still, improvising is exciting. With only a loose plan to work off for the first part, I’m bound to surprise myself a few times, which means the reader won’t be able to see what’s coming either.
FURTHER READING
Read No Way To Live, the first book in my Angel of the Suuth series
How No Way to Live got it its name
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