Gardening vs. Plotting

There’s always been an insatiable amount of curiosity about writers and their methods. It’s one of the first questions asked of an author during an interview. Whether it makes the final cut or not depends greatly on the answer, and whether or not it will match fan expectations.

I’m sure no one at this point in my career is beating down my door to learn my methods, but I think a brief discussion is warranted, if only to crystallize my own thoughts.

Trained as a scientist, I typically plot most items in my writing. I know the high points of the plot, the main characters, the setting (sometimes in stupid detail), and the ending. The details may evolve slowly, but the pieces are mostly there before I even start writing. If I don’t plan well, then I end up drifting sort of aimlessly. My voice suffers without a concrete outline; my prose isn’t as tight, and I am easily drawn into tangents.

The caveat to this is that sometimes character interactions are forced. I know that Character X must do Y to Character Z, and that creates a certain degree of artifice. If I were to allow them to interact naturally, to put them in the world and see what happens, then it might serve my craft a little better.

To do that sort of thing is what George R. R. Martin calls “gardening.” Plant characters in a fully-realized world and see where they go and what they do. How do they react? If you’re good at keeping interactions consistent, if you really grok people and what makes them tick, then your fiction can feel more authentic. The problem is that you must maintain your focus, and be willing to to excise cancerous growths from your manuscript before they consume valuable editing time. This is also, unfortunately, the reason why I believe A Dance with Dragons has taken so long for Martin to complete.

I decided to try an experiment. I’ve written several sketches over the past six months with no pre-planned plot safety net. (Say that three times fast!) I was curious to see where they took me, and what stood out about each one.  I ended up with a story that has been rejected three times (one with a personalized!), a Firefly pastiche (but with great character interaction), and a little novella that is turning into something reminiscent of S. M. Stirling and Allen Steele. In nearly every case (whether I’ve got a plot that’s worth a damn or not), the dialog is better, the character interactions are more natural, and there is a depth of emotion that wasn’t present in my writing before.

The trick then, is to marry this new-found authenticity with my penchant for world-building and plotting without driving myself mad.

Wish me luck.