{"id":2441,"date":"2011-09-06T10:50:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T00:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zenashapter.com\/blog\/?p=2441"},"modified":"2013-11-22T09:14:24","modified_gmt":"2013-11-21T22:14:24","slug":"kate-forsyth-on-planning-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/kate-forsyth-on-planning-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate Forsyth on planning stories."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kate is a passionate believer in the power of stories to set us free… But how does she write those stories sooo well?<\/p><\/div>\n

Kate Forsyth is the author of almost twenty books for both adults and children, including the fantasy series Rhiannon\u2019s Ride<\/em> and The Witches of Eileanan<\/em> series (read more about Kate here<\/a>). She’s also a planner, which means she plans her stories \u2013 including the who, what, where, when and why \u2013 in detail before<\/em> she writes.<\/p>\n

“In a novel,” she says, “the beginning, the middle and the end are the corners of the jigsaw.”<\/em><\/p>\n

At the same time, Kate’s told me that the primary source of her stories are her dreams and daydreams…<\/p>\n

“I love the feeling that the story is writing itself, that it somehow existed in the universe already and I am simply the chosen conduit to bring it to life.”<\/em><\/p>\n

She also believes “much of the story can only be discovered by writing it”. But if that’s so, how much of a planner is Kate really? Perhaps she’s more of a pantser<\/a> (someone who flies by the seat of their pants when writing) than she realises? Fascinated as I am by the different approaches and techniques writers use when creating stories, I devised a set of cunning questions to find out…<\/p>\n

1. Do you know the ending of your stories before you write them?<\/h3>\n

Yes, I don\u2019t begin writing until I have a clear end-point. I\u2019ll think about the story and imagine it in my mind\u2019s eye, and build a skeleton of a narrative arc, first in my mind and then in my notebook, and then when it seems strong and clear and logical, I\u2019ll begin writing. I think about writing a novel as being like assembling a giant jigsaw. The first thing you do is find the corners. In a novel, the beginning, the middle and the end are the corners of the jigsaw.<\/p>\n

2. Once you start writing, do you ever change your mind about where a story might be heading?<\/h3>\n

I never change my mind about where the story is headed. I do make lots of wonderful and surprising discoveries along the way … and sometimes a character will die unexpectedly … but because I have thought through the shape of the story before I start to write, I know what I want to have happen in the end and this never falters. I don\u2019t always know HOW it\u2019s going to happen, though.<\/p>\n

3. What are some of the things you always plan before you write?<\/h3>\n

I always begin with the most basic planning tool of all \u2013Who, What, Where, When and Why. Because most of my novels begin with a story idea \u2013 i.e. a girl who must find a broken puzzle ring \u2013 my next step is always assembling my characters and thinking about my setting. I spend a lot of time daydreaming, thinking and searching for serendipity in these early stages of the novel. Sometimes I need to wait for serendipity for a long time.<\/p>\n

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“I did not begin writing the book till I had a clear sense of the story.”<\/p><\/div>\n

I had had the idea about the quest for a puzzle ring for at least a year before I found the next idea – I kept thinking who would search for a broken puzzle ring? Why? Then one day I was browsing in a second-hand shop and found an old tome entitled \u2018The Book of Curses\u2019.<\/p>\n

Picking it up, the pages fell naturally open at a chapter about the Seaforth Doom, a curse cast by a warlock in 16th<\/sup> century Scotland against the Mackenzies of Seaforth. It\u2019s a story about a curse that took generations to come to fruition, and I thought \u2018what would it be like to be born into a family that has been cursed? Wouldn\u2019t you try and break the curse?\u2019 and at once, this idea seemed to fit with my idea of the broken puzzle ring. I had my Why, and because my own family heritage is Scottish, and the story that gave me the idea was Scottish, I set the story in Scotland.<\/p>\n

All I had to do then was decide When, and so I began reading and researching, and slowly narrowed down the period to the final days of Mary, Queen of Scots\u2019s rule. I did not begin writing the book till I had a clear sense of the story, though \u2013 about six months after having my epiphany in that old second-hand bookstore.<\/p>\n

4. What are some of the things you always end up changing as you go?<\/h3>\n

Sometimes I\u2019ll change a character\u2019s name, sometimes several times until it starts to feel right. Finding the right name often slows me down for weeks. Otherwise each book is different! In general, much of the story can only be discovered by writing it, and so my early ideas and plans will change as I go deeper into the story.<\/p>\n

5. Do you ever imagine your protagonist\u2019s world so vividly you find it encroaching into daydreams, dreams or other random thoughts?<\/h3>\n

Always. My primary source of the story is my dreams and daydreams, and when I\u2019m writing a story I think about it constantly. It becomes an obsession. I cannot read a book or watch a film or see a show that isn\u2019t going to feed into the story somehow, and I find it very hard to concentrate on anything else. Every night I lie in bed and think about problems in the book, and trust to my dreams to deliver the answer by morning. Many of my best ideas have come while my conscious mind is sleeping.<\/p>\n

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“Many of my best ideas have come while my conscious mind is sleeping.”<\/p><\/div>\n

6. When writing organically, what is it that you enjoy most about that process, and what is it you find most difficult?<\/h3>\n

I love the feeling that the story is writing itself, that it somehow existed in the universe already and I am simply the chosen conduit to bring it to life. When I feel this way, I do my best writing and love it the most. It\u2019s not always that easy and natural, though. Often I have to fight my way towards that feeling of perfect flow \u2013 the more I write, though, the more easily I find that rhythm … and whenever I have a break from writing, I find it hard to get it back again. That is why I try and write every day.<\/p>\n

7. Do you ever find your protagonist approaching an unplanned, but perfect pitfall? If so, how far back do you go back and foreshadow that pitfall (back to the beginning, a few chapters or you don\u2019t go back)?<\/h3>\n

Yes, I love it when that happens. And I\u2019ll always go back to the very beginning, and make sure that it makes sense in the story as a whole. I\u2019m constantly reworking earlier chapters so that the story\u2019s inherent chain of logic works.<\/p>\n

Planner or Pantser?<\/h3>\n
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How do YOU decide what to write next?<\/p><\/div>\n

So what do you think? Does Kate sound more like a planner or a pantser? She prepares for stories in detail, yet trusts her dreams to deliver plot answers, waits for serendipity and epiphanies, and her ideas and plans change as she goes deeper into her stories…<\/p>\n

Perhaps the division writers make between writing as a planner and as a pantser isn’t all that clear cut? To find out, next time<\/a> I’m going to ask a pantser, Rowena Cory Daniells, the same exact questions. Then we’ll see just how different \u2013 or similar \u2013 the two approaches can be. We might even learn a thing or two about how we write stories<\/a> ourselves…<\/p>\n

MORE PLEASE! Don\u2019t rely on Twitter or Facebook for updates to this blog. Subscribe to receive email notifications!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kate Forsyth is the author of almost twenty books for both adults and children, including the fantasy series Rhiannon\u2019s Ride and The Witches of Eileanan series (read more about Kate here). She’s also a planner, which means she plans her stories \u2013 including the who, what, where, when and why\u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[336,457,471,484,601],"class_list":["post-2441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australian-authors","category-writer-advice","tag-kate-forsyth","tag-novel","tag-pantser","tag-planning","tag-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8517,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions\/8517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}