For example...
In order to live in the "good" dorms on campus (aka, the ones that cost twice as much to get a private shower and balanced gender division), students are required to take a half-credit class (it should technically be one credit, because we meet for a full hour each week) from a number of boring, uninspired options. Art: do nothing, occasionally look at pictures. Experiential Design: form groups to design and build a device with which you participate in a competition against other teams. The catch: nobody cares. Global Research: listen to lectures by different researchers on campus. Or, in my case, listen to lectures by one researcher on campus who likes to wing things.
Yesterday, we met for our weekly lecture, and it was about as invigorating as a lecture from Dr. Comp. Sci. (self-referential, much?). Here's what happened: the teacher showed up late. He was only late by around five minutes, but it's clearly not the best start. Then, he asks the class for a list of "questions" they have about research topics. Apparently, he hasn't got anything prepared, so he's going to list off the class's questions. So, we do. My table writes (read: I write) something down about the development of artificial intelligence, because I'm really a Comp. Sci. major (I have ambidexterity of the brain—someone go tear apart the roots of that word and make me a new one that applies to brains, please).
Of course, nobody's really paying attention to the teacher, because he's clearly got nothing up his sleeve, and he's not even a bit conspicuous about it. So he starts reading off the lists—as anticipated. Somehow, we unanimously (monanimously) decide to talk about space materials, whatever that even means. All I could think about was space debris. Somewhere along the line, we wound up talking about organic materials or the space between cervical lumbar vertebrae, or I don't even know. Needless to say, it was an awful lecture, punctuated by some splendid technical prowess:
Yes, the teacher's computer blue-screened. It was pretty much awesome. I think I'm going to call him Doc Blue Screen from now on.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that unless you want to fall flat on your face, preparation is an integral practice.
Of everything I have written, only one impromptu work of fiction has ever actually survived from start to finish. And even after going through two revisions and two contests, I still hate it. Everything else is just kind of sitting there, collecting virtual dust, and will probably never be resurrected.
On the other hand, when I go through the trouble of creating, expanding, and developing characters, plots, subplots, and themes before actually diving into the work, things turn out infinitely better. I know when I first started writing fiction, I almost never did any prep work. As a result, almost nothing I wrote back then every got anywhere. I have four novels (including both of my previous attempts at NaNoWriMo) and three short stories that have hardly gotten off the ground because—after the initial "Great idea!" splurge—I had absolutely nothing to write about. Who knows, maybe they'll come back. But before I even write another word of dialogue or narration, you can be sure I'll have a full, detailed outline covering plots, characters, themes, and whatever else I can come up with.
But! As with every rule you've ever been taught regarding writing, this one has a huge exception. Well... it's not so much an exception as a major, major hole. In the course of planning to write a large work of fiction, almost inevitably, your plot will develop parallel to your characters, but not along the same path. The problem with this is that once you get to writing, your plot and your characters need to follow the same path. About a third or halfway through the story, you'll realize that your characters' personalities will absolutely not allow your plot to develop the way you planned.
DON'T PANIC!
This is a good thing. What this means is that your plot and characters are converging (diverging from the theory, but converging in practice), and that you have actually developed characters with personalities: characters that are human (or something like that). But... what next? Easy. You send your plot in the direction your characters would take it, realistically. Any good story's events are controlled by the characters, not the author. The author is God, and if you're anything like me, you consider deus ex machina the bane of fiction. Yes, there can be an element of inexplicable conflict, but absolutely not resolution.
So what does this mean? It means that, even though you've planned your whole story, don't expect to follow your plan to the letter. In fact, that is a more destructive practice than not planning in the first place, as—instead of unfinished and unread—your story is forced and uncomfortable.
(Side note: Blogger/Blogspot needs to work on its formatting system. Italicize something once and it NEVER GOES AWAY. I wrote this note about two paragraphs into this post and just left it at the end just to convince the post editor I didn't want to type in italics.)
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