3 ms·

From my experience, you don’t need to know the exact ending but you should have a general idea of where stuff needs to go. Knowing the end state makes planning

• munificent 3y ago
  > makes planning the events and character development easier My impression is that it makes the former easier and the latter harder. Having a planned-out plot-focused story can lead you to a very tight, satisfying climax. But it can often make the characters feel wooden or like they are acting out of character in order to do what the plot needs them to do. When a writer focuses more on the fidelity of a character's inner psychology, they can write more believable, interesting characters. But they sometimes get stuck in the position of "The plot needs them to do X but their psychology makes it more likely they would do Y." Then the author has to decide whether they keep the plot on rails and sacrifice some character fidelity, or have the story meander more to keep the characters feeling rich and authentic. At one end of that continuum, you have thrillers and action novels where characters are little more than a bullet list of personality archetypes, but a bunch of cool shit happens and the pacing is perfectly dialed in. At the other end, you have literary fiction where you feel like you're getting a window into the minds of actual people, but nothing really happens.
  • volkk 3y ago
    what a great point, never thought of it this way
  • cousin_it 3y ago
    > At one end of that continuum, you have thrillers and action novels where characters are little more than a bullet list of personality archetypes, but a bunch of cool shit happens and the pacing is perfectly dialed in. At the other end, you have literary fiction where you feel like you're getting a window into the minds of actual people, but nothing really happens. Part 1 of Dostoevsky's The Idiot is maybe the best example I know that works from both perspectives. It's full of interesting characters with different motives, and it escalates to a incredible firework involving all these characters and motives all acting at the same time. The ending of The Great Gatsby is also like that. A big tragic thing happens, but not because of some evil dragon - it happens because the characters are what they are. And then you have something like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or On the Road, or Breakfast at Tiffany's. Where things happen because the characters are basically chaotic assholes, the kind of people to whom things happen and you want to read about these things.
    • slavenh 3y ago
      I sure want to read about these things. :) Any more books about chaotic assholes? Not necessarily junkies, but misfits at odds with civilized society.
      • karmakurtisaani 3y ago
        Anything by Charles Bukowski, or the beatniks, whose names I can't recall at the moment. Edit: ah, Jack Kerouac was at least one of them (although On the Road was already mentioned). Electric Kool Aid Acid Test is a wild ride, as well as pretty much anything by Hunter S. Thompson.
    • munificent 3y ago
      > Part 1 of Dostoevsky's The Idiot is maybe the best example I know that works from both perspectives. It's full of interesting characters with different motives, and it escalates to a incredible firework involving all these characters and motives all acting at the same time. Yeah, that's absolutely the goal for most writers, but boy is it hard to craft a set of character psychologies that both feel believable while also leading to a plot that feels inevitable and monumental.