Curiosity beats over-planning, in my book

For a long time, I thought writing a novel meant knowing where you were going before you began. Plot it out. Understand the structure. Know what happens in the end, and preferably in the middle too.

That belief probably delayed me writing a novel by years.

Whenever I over-planned, I lost interest. The project felt finished before it had even started. I knew what was coming. And the absence of surprise, jeopardy even, left me cold.

One of the most useful pieces of advice I received while working on On The Way Out was simple: write with curiosity. You don’t have to know exactly where you’re going. You just need to be interested enough to find out.

That was counter-intuitive to my journalism training, where clarity and structure come first. In fiction, I found the opposite to be true. If I didn’t surprise myself occasionally, there was little chance the reader would be surprised either.

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Some of the most important moments in the book weren’t planned at all. They emerged because I stayed with a scene longer than expected or followed a thought I hadn’t anticipated. There’s one twist in the novel that I genuinely didn’t see coming. It just emerged from the circumstances I had created and the constant question, ‘what would the character do next?’ Fluke? I don’t think so. I’ll claim it as the result of persistent curiosity.

That curiosity kept me going. It gave me permission not to know everything in advance, and that turned out to be the difference between finishing and abandoning the work.

MORE ON THE CRAFT OF WRITING: See HERE. I’m adding to this on an ongoing basis. As I learn, hopefully you can too. Every day is school day for us all.