I quoted this in another thread: And that got me curious about the CHYOA writer community: are you more of a gardener or an architect?
I've never heard of this analogy, but it's funny because I do literal gardening as well! For sure, there's some basic planning I do - a foundation you could call it or maybe a frame, but it's otherwise lacking in details. What has happened though is that some details don't quite fit and as a result, certain branches have to be trimmed. I'm certainly making more work for myself than if I planned everything out in a flowchart from the beginning, but there's also no guarantee I'd stick with it because either way, I might find out how to write a story's progression better later on.
I'd say I fall pretty down the middle, In the stories I write I actually try to mimic how I would GM a tabletop game just with myself as player and GM. I know as the GM, the major plot beats, characters, and end destination. But I dont try to plan out the specific way to get between each beat and more try to "improv" in the way that feels most natural
What is it called when you work backwards? Because typically, I kind of know what/where I want to end with/on, but then have to figure out how to get there.
Definitely an architect at heart -- but every new set of scaffolding I put up shows me how many new ideas I hadn't yet considered. Most of the time, I map out my threads in great detail -- and then as I'm actually writing, revise and rewrite, usually stretching what I thought was two or three threads with maybe a dozen chapters into six to ten threads with holyfuckwhoknows how many chapters. I love this analogy!
I am overwhelmingly an architect. I do not go anywhere near gardens. I hate plants and trees and seeds. I am basically the global warming of CHYOA.
I do a bit of both. In the short term, I'm 100% an architect. I know the outcome of the current scene, how I want to get there, and each character's role in that plan. The same for most of the next couple of scenes as well, and a vague idea for how they fit in the mid-level story arc. I don't map out my entire story, though. Not even close. The reason is that I find plot outlining really satisfying. You get sooo much oomph from just a few lines of plot outline. You get to come up with awesome stuff, and it just makes me feel giddy... but once you've done that, the writing becomes very dull, because it takes a ton of time, and you're just following the plot you set up before. Well, to me at least. Sure, there's low-level decisions, sentence-level and paragraph-level stuff, but that's not nearly as enjoyable to me as coming up with unexpected plot twists.
The another common term that a lot of writers use is plotter vs pantser. Plotter is self explanatory, pantser refers to writing by the seat of your pants, and seeing where it goes. Everyone is a mixture of both it seems and both have advantages and disadvantages. I do find with a current story I am working on that I at least plan out scenes ahead of time, but as I write them I learn more about the characters as things progress, so what started relatively simple characterization has expanding a lot as it goes. The order of events also changes as I try to work out what happens, when, and where it makes the most sense. There are definite dangers to both styles. Plotters have a tendency to not realize that the story they started with might not be the story they are currently writing, as fleshing out plot points early on changes things down the line. A dramatic plot twist might not work anymore with the characters as they have evolved, or if it can work, it won't without a lot of new buildup necessary. Pantsers have a tendency to meander... scenes and entire plotlines that feel like they are going nowhere or that expand the cast or world in ways that become unwieldy to handle. Martin himself ran into this problem post Storm of Swords, and it is still haunting him now as it's been over a decade since his last book. But even plotters can have this issue, creating a massive world, tons of characters and their families, friends, political rivals, etc... and wanting to expand on every story beat with every one of them. In amateur fiction where there are no limitations for page count or anything else, the problem can be even worse. Seen quite a few stories here and elsewhere that lose momentum when the initial story idea runs its course and the excitement dies down. Others expand their casts to a degree where the original main characters vanish for chapters at a time, or longer. I think the best thing that works for me is to have a defined story idea, with major plot points worked out, the big twists, and an endgame in mind. At the same time my cast of main characters should be defined, with a backstory and overall arc in mind. Once all that is done, then I need to come to terms with the fact a LOT of things can change. A one off character might light a spark and suddenly become a major influence in the rest of the story, the idea I had for one of the characters might evolve, changing that backstory in a way that is still consistent. The original ending might not work as is, and needs to be flipped around a bit. That really AWESOME idea I was married to? Yeah, drop it. It doesn't work in practice with this story. It's always a mix.
Ooo, I do this too! My characters start out as nothing more than a name, 0-2 physical descriptors and 1-2 mental descriptors: "Zahara, a tall, solemn girl on the track team" or "Hana, meaning 'flower' or 'blossom', a nerdy girl from a Slavic family background" or "leather-clad motor chick, domme" (not even a name on that one). Just enough to give them an identity and make them stand out, but not so much that it makes me feel constrained. And when the story is finished, they read more like: (Fun fact: that character doesn't even appear in the story!)
Definitely a gardener. The main reason I want to write the next chapter is because I want to find out what happens myself. I usually only have the vaguest notion of what's happening 2 chapters up the road, and I cant find out until I get to within sight of it. I may have a bit of an idea, but if the story writes itself one way then I can find myself surprised. I'd like to mention in defense of those sprawling (very loosely) gardened epics with no end planned or ever likely to happen that appear so much in CHYOA. They are just mimicking the form of running serial dramas or sitcoms (or even comic books). ie introduce the characters and setting then off they go until ratings / interest drops with no need for a structured Overarching Plot, or an end, or even a discernible middle. I don't think it should necessarily be seen as a defect if a story on this site has a complete absence of an "Architect" and doesn't conform to a Novel/Novella structure.
I find when I am writing one of my own stories that I verge toward being an Architect. This all tends to change when I read someone else's story, go to add a spur-of-the-moment chapter and boom it's Gardening time. So really it depends on how I'm feeling and the situation I'm in.
I'm gonna go with gardener. I am really bad at planning, and one of the main appeals of CHYOA for me is that I can drop a random chapter to a story and if I never get inspiration to do more than that, then maybe someone else *does* get inspired and branch off from what I wrote.
I am a gardener, and I know basically where I want to end, but how I get there will be a long and winding road. I can see to the next corner but not much further than that. That way, I get to enjoy the journey like the reader and can make fun detours when fancy strikes me.
