There's no one right answer, of course, but I myself am wary of mapping out a story or novel in advance of writing it. The relationship between character and narrative is complex and symbiotic (think of our own lives: we both determine and are determined by our stories), and for me, at least, the characters only come to life in the act of writing. I fear that if I map the work out in advance I'll straitjacket my characters in a preordained plot and I'll end up with what a friend of mine calls Lipton-Cup-a-Story. On the other hand, if you have no idea what you're writing about/toward you're liable to end up writing a lot of pretty sentences about mounatins and sunsets that don't go anywhere. So what I try to do is place my characters in situations where there is potential for conflict--where something can happen. Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Thanksgiving dinners, reunions, graduations. My feeling is, it's perfectly OK for a writer to know where he's going when he starts a novel. He just better be wrong.
I've never been any good at mapping out my novels beforehand. I'd love to, honestly. The best I managed was to decide where I wanted my protagonists to end up, write the last chapter and then get them there taking the scenic route. That worked quite well.
Posted by: Jim Murdoch | November 13, 2007 at 02:37 AM