Outliner or Discovery Writer

There are consider to be three types or writers: outlines, discovery writers and those who do a bit of both. What is the best method depends solely on how you prefer to work. Mostly I use a combination of both outlining and discovery writing. I tend to start with a very general idea for the story; I know what the conflict is and I know how I want the story to end more or less. I just start writing and let the story flow out of my fingers onto the document or page. It is not always easy since I tend to get stuck sometimes and when I do, I jump to outlining. What has to happen in order to get my characters where I want them in order to sort out the problem. When I am done with the first draft, I will outline the whole plot so I get a good overview of everything that happens in the story. It is a great way to delve deeper in the structure of the plot to make it more interesting and to get rid of events that are otiose.

For me the biggest downside of discovery writing is that the story can end up being very messy and in need of a lot of revision. Which of course costs a lot of time. You can actually compare it a bit to an unplanned holiday: you get into the car with a vague idea where you want to go to and you just start driving without any plan. You have no idea what you will do and where you will spend the night. This can be a very fun and thrilling experience but it might as well end up being very messy and even unpleasant. Discovery writing is for me an adventure!

Some people prefer to outline their story completely before diving into it. A neatly overview of what is going to happen in each chapter seems a very good way to work with. By doing this, thinking out the whole plot in advance, you always know what you will be writing. I do not like to do this. I like to let my plot grow together with the characters without knowing how it grows in advance. I like the chaos of the unknown. Outlining does, however, reduce the chances of having inconsistencies. I do think you have to be careful not to outline too much so there is still room for spontaneous plot or character development.  

There are people who combined the above to methods into the path between discovering the plot and characters while writing and planning it out. I am sure I am not the only one around who only lines out in second and thirds drafts or when the discovery is not providing to be as efficient as hoped. If you do not know what works the best for you, I suggest you try them all out.

Get to Know Your Characters!

Characters are very important in stories and you should spend time on moulding them. There are a lot of different ways to this and no way is right or wrong. Some people work well with a character sheet on which every single detail of the character is written down and some work best with writing down nothing at all. It is, however, important to you get to know your characters. 

You want to know how your character react on certain situation and why. The why is for me more important that the reaction, though the latter can have a major impact on the plot as well. If you want to know why a character reacts a certain way, you need to know what drives him or her. To know what drives him or her, you'll have to take a dive in your character's history. If your character refuses to ride a horse because he or she is afraid of them, you have to find out why the character is afraid. Perhaps he or she fell of a horse once and broke something or maybe a horse kicked the character or even worse, the character lost a loved one because of an unfortunate fall of a horse. These are fairly clear reasons that influence reactions, but it isn't always as easy. I have a character that experienced a traumatic event a couple of years before the story starts and since he never managed to really cope with it, it's something he keeps dragging with him. This event has changed him and influences every move his makes and it has an enormous effect on the story.  I must say he is sometimes very hard to write because I have never been in a similar situation and that makes it hard to place myself in his shoes, but not impossible.

There are, as I said, many ways to get to know your characters and maybe some character require a different method than others. I have done some research about such methods because when I started developing characters, I found that I had a hard time connecting with them and getting them know good enough to understand their actions. I found that letting the characters talk about their life is very helpful for me. They tell about the events that they think were important in their life. I write this down in a monologue. Perhaps an example will be useful to illustrate this:

"Girls… not my strongest point. I could never tell if they liked me because of me of because I was in a well known band. It wasn’t rare that girls would almost fall down before my feet and declare their love for me. I hate it when they do that. They don’t even know me. So I'm always very careful around girls. While I don’t open up easily to anyone, I especially watch out what I say to a date."

 I also tried to write whole scenes from first person, but that didn't work out for me. I had the feeling I was distancing myself from my characters instead of getting closer to them. I will probably write down important scene in third person limited from my characters history just to understand the events better and exactly know how what happened and how the character felt at that very moment. Character sheets can be another useful tool but I find that it limits my characters' potential of growth. I do not want to cling on to some triads I have given them early on. Another way to get to know your character is to hang out with them. When you go somewhere, ask yourself how your character would get there. Wonder what your character would do on a bus: would he or she chat with someone he or she doesn't know or stare outside and listen music? Would your character notice the girl who walks across the street or the birds in the sky?

Some writers let their characters take personality tests and build them further on the outcome of such tests. I do not think I will ever do that since I do not believe you can put labels on people based by some questions they answer. Especially since people evolve and change the whole time. And we do want our characters to be just like real people, don't we? They could perhaps serve as a guideline but than it's important you don't cling too much to the outcome of the test. Dare to colour outside the lines!

Whatever method you choose (I'm sure there are many more than the ones I briefly summoned up here) it's important to remember that if you want a great character, you must remember to give them flaws. Perfection is boring and no one is perfect. Flaw create tension and tension creates a story. Don't worry too much about if the readers will like your characters or not. Even unlike able main characters will still be able to give the reader a good time reading your story. You just have to make sure you develop your character well. Evolution is an important aspect of this. Characters, especially main characters, should learn something while they journey through your story. If your character at the start of the story is a heartless bully and is still the same heartless bully on the last page of the story, then why have you written the story? It's much more interesting to read how the events in the story make the bully realise that he is feeling lonely and that he bullies because his insecure. Maybe he will even learn to love someone and perhaps he will understand at the end how bullying can destroy a person.

To be able to create such an evolution, you need to understand your character. To say it simple, your character has to become one of your best friends. Writers have a great excuse to have imaginary friends, so take advantage of that! Just remember to give your characters the opportunity to grow.