The art of planning

Sometimes it really pays to plan your story.   That way, it almost writes itself by the time you come to actually type it out.

I've spent the last few days thinking about how I want my entry to this week's Flash Fiction Friday to go and jotting ideas down in a mind42 map.   The result?   Free-flowing text that produced a story very much like the one I'd planned.   Of course, the best planning process in the world is never perfect.   Characters will often do or say something that surprises you.   In this instance, there was very little change from what I had imagined.   On other cases, however, a whole scene can be changed by a wayward character... or even the path of the story itself!

If there is a way to keep characters in check, I have yet to find it.   Instead they roam around my subconscious at will, behaving pretty much as they wish.   Sometimes, I feel like a conduit rather than a controller of their destiny.   But I wouldn't have it any other way.

So, I'll continue to plan for my stories and hopefully my characters will work out their niggles in the planning rather than the writing!