Stories have a natural flow. The underlying forces of a story are best served when the writer recognizes where and how within that flow to apply those forces and how to connect them as the narrative unfolds. One’s process defines where, how, and how soon the idea for a story will dissolve seamlessly into a concept that sets the stage for the layered sequential narrative of an effective story. And in doing so, she defines when and how story physics will be applied.
Since I started writing about story architecture and story physics, I sometimes feel like I’ve been in a street fight. Pantsers vs. Planners. Jets vs. Sharks. Right vs. Left. Good vs. Evil. You would not believe the vitriolic venom sent my way when I’ve suggested that there exists an underlying, matrix-like set of structural principles and aesthetic sensibilities that, like gods looking down from Olympus through their enchanted reading glasses, determine the fate of our stories.
But no gray exists in the truth about what makes a story work, and there are only some shades of gray (fifty perhaps?) regarding the process of getting there. Many roads will take you to Rome, but only one city bears that name, at least in Italy. We’re talking about physics and tools, which can be used to build just about anything. But you can’t write anything you want and call it a story. Not if you intend to throw your story out there in the hopes of finding an audience.
I think I stumbled upon it. Like the previously quoted truisms on writing about something happening, this, too, warrants a place on your writing wall, written in blood:
The highest goal of any writing process is to find and execute the best possible story. If your process is part of the problem—for writers who can’t seem to get it right, or get it published, it usually is—then the process should be taken apart and changed.
This means that, at the end of the day, planners and pantsers are two names given to writers with the same pursuit. It’s the same game, with different paths and styles. But there is only one finish line.
Like many epiphanies, the problem is simplified when clarified. And the polarization vanishes like smoke blown away in a relieved sigh of recognition.
You can build a castle with a blueprint and a forklift, or you can build it one handful of sand at a time. The latter may be more romantic, it may be the only way you can wrap your head around it, but that doesn’t change the above epiphany.
I believe that the more you understand those principles and criteria, the more you’ll be prone to plan, or at least to engage the search for story in real time, rather than continue to write drafts and put blind trust in a muse that you hope will show you the path. Or at least how your story will end.
Either way, though, the truth and the destination are clear. Only the path remains shrouded in an intoxicating mist.