John Fowles: Stop Planning and Start Writing
John Fowles looks like a guy who might beat me up if I call his book a "love story." (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Let me tell you a secret. After yesterday’s post, you might think I really dislike The French Lieutenant’s Woman. But, truth is, this is a strong novel to this point. Sure, the cover is a bit “romancey” for me, but the story itself is powerful.
I didn’t expect much from this book, and it’s blowing me away to this point–not too different from I, Claudius in that regard.
One unique aspect of The French Lieutenant’s Woman is the narrator. Fowles, the author, inserts himself into the story several times. He talks about the characters, about his writing process, and he makes you very aware that this is a fictional story he is telling.
About 100 pages into the novel, Fowles takes a break from the story itself and talks about his writing and planning process. To me, this is absolutely fascinating stuff.
You may think that novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones, for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement: as skilled furniture makers enjoy making furniture, as drunkards like drinking, as judges like judging, as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy’s back. I could fill a book with reasons, and they would all be true, though not true of all. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that we begin to live.
So, Fowles says to take your outline and trash it. If the characters are to live and breathe, you have to let them roam on their own, let them go wherever your imagination takes you–not from point A to point B in your Word document.
And I’ve got to admit, Fowles process worked incredibly well. He’s an amazing storyteller. As I read, I almost feel like I’m sitting by a fire listening to an old man with a white beard tell a story. It’s really impressive.
But what do you think? Is Fowles off base? How important is planning to writing a novel?
I haven’t read this one; but I did read “The Magus”. The danger of free-floating, especially for a weighty tome, is that the reader can be disappointed, or get fed up with the author’s self indulgence. I thought the ending pages of “The Magus” were lousy. I felt cheated, after plowing my way through the story. One expects a satisfactory denouement, and gets a lot of rambling mystical junk, ala “Steppenwolf”. I get an impression of
Fowles that he’s kind of showing off, which isn’t to say he can write some
good lines: but he could use an editor. And hey, not all Sicilians enjoy murdering people as a way of being.
I had the same experience with The Magus – it gave me pause before reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman. I’m trying to think of which author it was who talked about writing the end of his story first so that the characters and plot didn’t roam around so much. (Did I read that in this blog?) I can see a case for both approaches … being creative and letting a plot and characters bloom, or wanting to write a very specific story.
J.K. Rowling wrote the end of the Potter series before she started, but not sure if that’s who you are thinking of.
Wait til you get to the last third or so of the book. I really do like Fowles inserting himself into the prose; its different from all other kinds of reading I have done and it gives one a peak into his thinking in addition to doing so in the story itself. In many ways he also shows how life can have different outcomes. A bit like the butterfly effect. How do you like his vocab! I love that he uses unheard of words so easily in his prose, assuming all readers are equally as eloquent.
Great vocabulary. Doesn’t come across as pretentious either, which is a feat.
Regarding planning/outlining, Fowles is both right and wrong–really wrong. He’s right that the characters need to take over the story for it to live. He’s dead wrong to suggest that outlining/planning is a bad thing to do. Writing is about 5% “procedure” (things you must do) and 95% “technique” (things you may or may not do, or may do in different ways). Planning/outlining is a technique: writers will use it if they think it’ll be helpful, and won’t if not. And sometimes they’ll change their minds! We all have different strengths/weaknesses, skill sets, etc. To suggest that we should treat using or not using a given technique as a rule ignores that reality.
BTW, still working on coming up with that copy of Neuromancer.
I think the best approach is to plan but then be flexible enough to move away from that plan if needed.
You bet! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve blown up my outline. Doing that right now, as a matter of fact.
you have to love this line on why people write:
“as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy’s back”
makes me want to read Mario Puzo…
The Godfather!
Honestly, everyone’s process is different. This worked for Fowles. But for others, having that jumping off point might be the needed catalyst. More importantly, I think he is saying that you have to end the planning and background material to get to the writing. You can get lost in the planning and scare yourself into never starting the really hard part – the writing.
Right…don’t overthink it. That’s the way I take it. But maybe he didn’t use any type of planning. That’s impressive, if true.
I am so glad another writer thinks like me. It was aggravating and stressful for me to create a “plan” for my stories. I always felt I had to follow the rules of writing that are out there but now I have a peace in my heart that I can “go with the flow.”
I agree with him. I don’t have an outline when I write. I just have ideas floating around. A lot of times, the ideas I began with are not what I end up most times.
At school, when a teacher issisted that I hand in an outline for something I wrote, I wrote the outline last. True story.
Jodi
I started out reading this book, but felt very bogged down. I guess because my expectations were all wrong going into the book. Will anyway prefer to wait for your complete review before I think of taking it up again