Discovery Writing Is Insane · 4:19am Jun 29th, 2013
I write from an outline. I work out the major developments and arcs. I make a rough list of what scenes happen in what order. I have a short list of powerful moments I'm trying to work towards. Once the plan is in place, and only then, I start writing prose.
(Sometimes the plan changes drastically as I learn more about the story. When that happens, the first thing I do is open the outline and revise the plan.)
Some writers do it differently. Some writers start at the beginning and sprint forward, blazing into uncharted territory a scene at a time to discover what's out there. This always struck me as bold and powerful. It could be a way to infuse freshness and originality into my work. I like to test new techniques—some of my more powerful tools are crazy ideas I first tried on a whim—so for the Mortal sequel GV commissioned, I gave the discovery approach a shot.
Turns out this is a crazy way to write. I don't mean adorable quirky crazy, like that guy who puts ketchup on ice cream. I mean sheer gibbering madness. I mean all-out pants-on-head Lego-chewing lunacy.
A story doesn't just happen. You have to craft it. Each scene needs to build towards later content. You set up arcs before they pay off and build up conflicts before they're resolved. This didn't work here because I didn't actually know what I was working towards. The result was an emotional mess, where the first scene starts working on one conflict for a character, but that gets discarded when she shows up again in the third scene and deals with completely different issues. I had no idea how each scene fit into the larger whole because I didn't know what the larger whole was.
It's as though you're trying to solve a Rubik's cube, and you've got three red squares on this side, and there are four more red squares on that side, so why not put them next to each other and see what happens? I'll tell you what happens: it looks like you're making progress locally, but you're not any closer to solving the fundamental problems between you and your goal.
Fortunately I'm far enough that the story itself is now serving as an outline. I can tell what the important conflicts are because I've already written them. (This is like navigating by using a map that's exactly the same size as the territory it represents. Technically it works, but it's not recommended.) The problems weren't too obvious until I got to this point because I couldn't see the story's shape well enough to realize how badly misshapen it was.
Lately I've been going through and revising to bring everything into line. This is a significant undertaking. To give one example: over half of the scenes need to be rewritten with a different narrator.
tldr: Discovery writing is insane. Also I am the tiniest bit frustrated.
Discovery writing is most of what I do :D!
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
The real trick to discovery writing is actually exactly this: basically, you start out, and you build on what you've done before.
Discovery writing is actually how a lot of RPG campaigns are done, and it actually can work very well. The trick is that the people reading the story (or playing through it) have no idea whether you are actually engaging in discovery writing/playing or actually have a plan if you do it right.
You have things and then later on you go back and you find things you didn't even realize you set up at the time, and you use them. A lot of shows do this, and it can work very well, even if you didn't have a plan to start out with.
I think part of the key to this, though, is remembering what came before so that you can build on it afterwards.
Interesting, I've seen the "discovery writing" phrase before and I've seen authors describe that as the approach they are using, but I've never seen it precisely defined and connected together before.
I gotta say, as a reader I definitely have mixed feelings on it. Whenever I see a fanfic author say that that was the approach they were using on a story I'm reading, I'm always half inclined to just unfav the story and move on. I'm sure that some authors do it well, and I'm sure that I've read and enjoyed plenty of stories written that way, but the number of train wrecks I've read on this site where the story goes all over the place and eventually gets cancelled...
I try to strike a balance between the two. If my outlines get too detailed, it squelches the characters and makes the dialogue come out forced. For less involved stories, I can usually go, "Okay, here's what this story is about, here's the main idea, here's how it ends" and then Vonnegut my way through the beginning. More often than not though, I'll take an idea that isn't fully realized and find myself scrambling to come up with an ending, and that never works. :B
I've found that discovery writing has its uses on a local scale. Once I know the general form of the story, seeing where the characters take me in individual scenes can be a fun way to let those scenes develop organically, so long as I eventually fulfill those scenes' purpose in the larger narrative. But, as you noted, it is no way to write an entire story. That way lies chaos, and not the fun kind.
I wrote Old Friends that way. It was really fun and exciting to do, and that's still my favorite thing I've ever written. However, it's also very short; I can't imagine writing something longer that way. Too easy to write yourself into a corner or lose cohesion, IMHO.
I think it says an awful lot about me that it seemed perfectly reasonable to me until you said anything. Of course i also always post stuff only when it's complete, and since I've never heard the term before I might be doing it wrong. I usually have a rough idea by the time I start literally writing something down, the first few drafts just being in my head.