When your story one-ups you! Any fellow explorers out there? Let's find eachother!

[MoonlitHues]

So!
For some writers, the struggle is to come up with an idea for a story or finding the right way to approach an idea they already have. There are many good threads on how to plan out different stories, getting that skeleton down, figure out the main events from beginning to end... Or maybe you'll throw in some random elements to make it fun.

But...
I can't plan out a story this way. I can't just sit down and decide what will happen.

AHEM.

This isn't about planner vs pantster. That's an entirely different debate.

I feel more like an explorer.
Someone who takes a walk around, so to speak, and sees things happen from the outside, or experiences it through a character - feelings and everything included. Cue tears or funny faces while writing. And a lot of the time, I don't know what is going on. Events don't come to me in chronological order either, just for it to be extra confusing, haha...

So... I'm trying to figure things out by exploring rather than deciding.
And I have to make sense of it all. Turn it into a story that can be told (and make some sense).

This comes with its own pros and cons, like with any approach to writing.

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Does any of this sound vaguely familiar?

Then please introduce yourself and stay a while, fellow explorer!

Of course you're welcome to lurk in the shadows, reveling in the familiar chaos that this writing approach can cause - but I do hope you pop in and say hello!

Tell us about your experiences, new and old, and maybe share some of your work?
I'll be getting more into my experiences with in the next posts - and I hope you will too!

And please keep us updated on your projects!
Maybe something fun happened while writing your newest update?
Maybe you suddenly found yourself propelled into the past, unraveling background stories you never knew about before!
Maybe your villain decided not to be a villain anymore, or a good guy turned bad..?
Maybe new characters just show up outta nowhere, and you don't know their intentions yet!

I just wanna not feel alone in my (temporary) confusion, ok?
No pressure or anything.

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NOTE:
Anyone is welcome if they're interested in the topic, whether they consider themselves an explorer or not! I'm just curious to see what people think!

Maybe you've experienced something similar, or you find this completely OUT THERE like one of my friends did when I tried to explain it to them, haha.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Daaaaaannng I was literally just thinking about doing this...

Ideas are my thing; I LOVE making plans, so I'm not a 100% explorer...but occasionally I get in a spot where all I have is a vague idea of what happens, and the only thing to do is just jump in and let the story write itself for a little while; let the characters figure out how to get to the next part.

I'm in such a spot now with a new novel; I'm not really sure what my antagonist is going to do for the majority of the story or how the protagonists are going to handle it. All I got is 'she do bad stuff, and they try to escape'...so I figured, hey, why not just write and see what happens?

This will probably be the biggest exploration attempt I ever make. ^^; But I don't care if it turns out bad and I have to rewrite it; at least then I'll have something to work with instead of an empty page.

[MoonlitHues]

Haha, sorry for stealing your idea!

But I'm happy to see a planner-explorer!
It's probably more effective to not be a 100% explorer, honestly, but what can you do.

But ohhh, what an exciting endeavour you have on your hands! Let me know how that exploration goes! Antagonists on the loose is always fun, haha! And like you say, if it doesn't end up in a way that works for you, you can always rewrite it.

Most likely, you'll still have unveiled something of value that will help you forward one way or another!

I had a character that I kept seeing, but who only ever interacted with one character - which I found odd. Then, I realised she would only show up when I wrote from a certain character's perspective. Turns out, it was his memory of her that kept giving me that image. Him remembering all the things she would say to him or remind him of. But because she was never actually there... she would never interact with anyone, or perform any physical actions, naturally.. Suddenly it did make sense, but I had to rewrite quite a bit. Sneaky!

[IndigoShirtProd]

I've never really understood people who claim, "My characters are out of my control! They make decisions whether I want them to or not!" because it's fundamentally not true. This is not to discredit "explorer types" or "pantsers". If spontaneity and having a deeper understanding of your world and characters is your MO, then go for it. It's just that to claim fictional characters that are only capable of doing the things you want them to do, are out of your control sounds like a cop out. I bring this up here, because I feel like it's easy to conflate free thinking creators with those who refuse to take responsibility for their characters' actions.

Sorry if this is off topic, it just got me thinking of that.

But at the end of the day, my point in all of this is decision making. Whether you allow the story to "write itself" or plan chapters in advance, we all chose to let certain things remain in our stories. To me, it feels like creators aren't giving themselves enough credit when they claim to "let the story go where it wants to go" because no. The story doesn't have a mind of it own. You're just creative in you problem solving and decision making to produce the best story possible. I know the kind of language I'm siting isn't literal, but I think my point still stands.

[MoonlitHues]

@IndigoShirtProd

Hello! It's fine, it's an interesting discussion for sure, and I'm happy to take it Please let me know if I make sense or not, haha. Hopefully I can shed some light as least on how it works for me. I can't speak for anyone else, of course!

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It's just that to claim fictional characters that are only capable of doing the things you want them to do, are out of your control sounds like a cop out. I bring this up here, because I feel like it's easy to conflate free thinking creators with those who refuse to take responsibility for their characters' actions.

First of all... You're always responsible for what you put out into the world, no matter where it came from, so in a way I agree. When I say my story lives its own life, it's not meant as an excuse for anything that goes down in it or the actions of the characters. If I publish it, it is still my work and my responsibility.

It's kind of like how some people will say "Don't judge my character, you don't know their past!". Well, at the end of the day your character is responsible for their actions, and a traumatic past doesn't justify why they act the way they act - it just explains it. Big difference.

So... When I talk about the story living its own life and throwing me curveballs, it's in terms of how that content comes to be in the first place. Not a freedom of responsibility. If that makes sense.

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I've never really understood people who claim, "My characters are out of my control! They make decisions whether I want them to or not!" because it's fundamentally not true.

Okay so... Just like perhaps your brain and creative process doesn't work like mine, and subsequently makes it so it doesn't make sense to you, I could actually say... "I don't understand how people can just sit down, make an outline, decide everything and write it."

Because I have tried, and it doesn't work for me. I'll get stuck instantly. It feels forced and unnatural. Now, I don't mean this in the sense that it'd be physically impossible to go in and change something, or force something or someone to do something - but mentally that would kill my creative process. It doesn't work for me.

So can characters / a story be out of a writer's control?
For me, I would say yes.

You can argue that everything is still a product of your imagination, and yes, that's true.
Does this mean that it's all in your control, though? That's where it changes...

It's kind of like dreams? They will come to you out of your control, you will get people and events thrown at you (unless you're one those people who delve far enough into lucid dreaming), and you're just there.

In a similar way, I will have story related events and characters thrown at me in my mind, just I'm awake. Sure, they are a product of my mind, but like dreams, I haven't decided what is going to go down. I repeatedly experience characters popping up who I don't know who is, and events going down that I didn't plan. It won't always make sense, again, like in dreams.

That's kind of how it works for me. Not sure if I'm making sense here, haha.

Simply put...
I will suddenly see a scene unfold in my mind, like I would in a dream, and I'll explore from there.
But it's observation rather than taking action.

And maybe that's just my brain's way of approaching the story, and that it's my 'creative problem solving and decision making' - it depends on how you define it. But I'd still argue that if it can surprise me, time and time again, it's from a more subconscious level of my mind.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that a story is literally (haha, pun) doing it's own thing, but it's definitely out of my conscious control - and I can't control the very recesses of my mind (yet?) so... While it still comes from a part of me, it's a part out of my control.

However, when these things are thrown at me... That's where the real work comes in. The conscious part. Where you gotta make sense of all these fragments, putting the puzzle together. Getting stuck because something is off compared to how the story is meant to go, and I gotta figure out what.

It's exhausting, and in no way am I not giving myself, or other writers working this way, any credit here.
I'm working hella hard on it. It's not easy or effortless.

No one way to write is superior to another, just so that's said.
I'm sure there are people who would hate writing being this unpredictable or even chaotic and confusing at times. But for me personally, being able to just... experience the story in this way and be surprised just like a reader would, not knowing who is going to show up or what is going to happen... I love it.

I hope this made some sense!

[IndigoShirtProd]

I think this is just a situation where we agree to disagree. I still feel as though, whenever you are conscious, whether or not ideas come to you out of nowhere or you think through them, those ideas are still with your control. That's me personally. Though I will give you the dream thing. If an idea comes to you when you're awake or when you're daydream, those are the only cases where I would say "sure, that's out of your control." Otherwise, even if you're not dutifully planning out what's happens next in the story, you're conscious of the decision making going on.

[yansusu]

I'd like to jump in on these two things first:

To me, it feels like creators aren't giving themselves enough credit when they claim to "let the story go where it wants to go" because no. The story doesn't have a mind of it own. You're just creative in you problem solving and decision making to produce the best story possible.

I will suddenly see a scene unfold in my mind, like I would in a dream, and I'll explore from there.But it's observation rather than taking action.

And maybe that's just my brain's way of approaching the story, and that it's my 'creative problem solving and decision making' - it depends on how you define it. But I'd still argue that if it can surprise me, time and time again, it's from a more subconscious level of my mind.

So, to preface, I'm writing a lot like what @MoonlitHues describes here. I normally describe it as some kind of 'intuition' on what has to happen or has happened in past events because I feel that is the easiest to grasp for other people. (E.g., it's like when you're in a forest and lost and have no survival skills but something told you 'Yeah, pick the left one!' and you do and it works out. You can't explain it but it works. The plotter would be the person who prepared a map beforehand or is able to tell directions from the moss on the treebark or something )
I think it's right to call it a subconscious thing. And I even have an explanation for this:

I taught scientific writing before and one of the lessons I liked to incorporate at least in passing was how researchers come up with their ideas. IMO, scientific writing is very similar to creative writing in a lot of ways and I think that especially this 'coming up with ideas' is one of these similarities.

In short: Some researchers have described the same thing as @MoonlitHues just mentioned. Ideas jump at them while they're awake or appear in their dreams. (There's this story that this is how Einstein came up with some of his theories. I can look up which book that's from if anybody cares.)
This happens because they have previously been thinking about the subject. Like, they studied it, they read works about it, they came up with some own ideas and did some initial research on given questions. And even when they don't actively think about it, their mind continues to churn on that. In the end, what comes out is this kind of 'enlightenment' of 'Oh, wow, so it's like that' or 'It could be this! Try that out!'
(There are actually stages to this and all that but this is the gist.)

I'd argue that it's the very same for us. Most of us have some kind of preferences. E.g., I love pseudo-historical, fantastical gay romance. I read it, I watch it, I play games that go in that direction. And yep, most of my ideas are that type of story.
So, the initial idea is just the logical consequence of what I spend most of my time with. As for further ideas, they come about because I spent several hours a day on my projects and that for months on end (my main project is going to reach its 2 year anniversary next month ) so my mind is constantly occupied with all the questions surrounding the project. (Like, just writing does that, as does editing, and any kind of research I do.)
In the end, before I even get to the part I have to write, everything will have become clear for me. Like, just today, I've had ideas for some chapters that are three, four volumes away at this point in time but it still happens.

I almost never sit down and actively think about the project and what's going to happen because I don't need to. That doesn't mean that I don't put in time and energy though. It's just that I put that in at another place than people who plot their stories.
For me, revisions are vital (in most cases) because of that. That is more or less the only time when I actively plot because I have to make sure my brain hasn't left anything essential out.

[MoonlitHues]

I think @yansusu explained it much better than me! But we don't always have to agree, of course!

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@yansusu
Ahh, that's all really interesting, thank you for sharing! And send me all the science!
I just accepted that this is how I work, after many failed attempts to do it other ways, so this is a fascinating read for me. Some of it I've heard of before, but in another context, so I didn't really make the connection to how I write.

Glad I'm not insane, or alone, getting my story visions from my subsoncious brains, and that there's actual science behind it, haha.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I still feel as though, whenever you are conscious, whether or not ideas come to you out of nowhere or you think through them, those ideas are still with your control.

I don't think anyone is denying that (at the very least, I'm not)...I think maybe you might be taking it a bit too literally when we say things like "the story will just write itself".

We don't actually mean that we have zero control over the work, we just mean that every decision is either spontaneous or riding the coattails of a previous spontaneous decision. There's no predetermined direction; the work inspires itself while it's being created.

It's like freestyling as a musician...you can't ask the musician to describe to you exactly how they're going to freestyle before they do it. It's just a bunch of stuff they decide in the moment, knitted together by their musical expertise. Maybe one note will lead to an arpeggio, and then that arpeggio will lead to another arpeggio, and then you sustain the last note of that arpeggio because the chord is about to change, and so on and so forth. You just wing it, moment to moment.

And when you're creating a story that way, it really does feel like the characters have come to life, and you're just following them around and writing down all their adventures. When you suddenly come up with a great idea out of the blue, it feels like the story itself suddenly did something amazing that surprised you. So that's how we tend to talk about it. ^^

[yansusu]

And send me all the science

The one we worked with was "Methods Toward a Science of Behavior and Experience" by William J. Ray. I did like his writing style and the examples he chose. Pretty easily understandable even if you have no background in science.

It's like freestyling as a musician...you can't ask the musician to describe to you exactly how they're going to freestyle before they do it. It's just a bunch of stuff they decide in the moment, knitted together by their musical expertise. Maybe one note will lead to an arpeggio, and then that arpeggio will lead to another arpeggio, and then you sustain the last note of that arpeggio because the chord is about to change, and so on and so forth. You just wing it, moment to moment.

I really like that analogy! Especially that you're mentioning musical expertise being part of it. Like, yes, it looks like you're just winging it but you're winging it while having the necessary knowledge about the subject at the back of your mind. It's a mixture, really.

Btw, one thing I've been wondering about: Am I the only one who tends to come up with really huge projects because of this writing style? Like, I will start out with one novel or one series but because those ideas jump at me, it'll suddenly get a prequel and a sequel and five side stories and another spin-off and this really cool extra that came at me when writing that other idea the other day or a story set in the same world that has absolutely nothing to do with the original novel but I'm reluctant to let it go.

[darkone4587]

I make an overall plan for a series, but then might add some elements here and there finding out that it helps make the story flow better and giving some characters a bit more focus here and there. Hell at one point I even changed an entire character just because it would make things a lot more interesting.

[VibrantFox]

I never thought there was a way to describe this but it's awesome knowing there's other folks who create like this!

I've always done explorations for world building and definitely with getting a better understanding of characters. Something about just "letting them roam" and seeing what comes out at the end is really exciting. Personally backstories and personality traits/quirks are things I find out most via the exploration method, getting a better grasp of how characters react to certain things and how they interact with the world and others; and then getting an idea of how certain worlds function in terms of people, places and environment.

Lucid dreaming isn't something I've got a solid grasp of but I've found I'm pretty capable if I can become aware of the fact that I'm dreaming, then I get to play with my characters and their stories like actors on a set moving through scenes until they make sense.

I can understand the perspective that characters aren't just becoming sentient but rather enough dwelling and meditating on things related to a story makes it a bit easier to visualize and develop their world, story, personality, etc. but a little hyperbole doesn't hurt