Author Anthony Santoro argues that stories will languish in the incomplete pile if the writer doesn't plan. 

Ask the average writer, these days, if he has a ‘plan’ for his story and the answer you’re likely to get is a curious shrug, perhaps a raised eyebrow, followed by, “What’s that?” 

It’s anecdotal, however, there is a contemporary notion that a good story will write itself and involves only sitting at a typewriter and “opening a vein”.  To dispel the rumours and wishful thinking, novel writing involves a little less pain and a little more understanding of technique and methodology.  The story-will-write-itself approach will send the rookie writer off into a verbose and endless desert, not to mention with a few lost litres of blood.  Stories written this way often meet their ends in filing cabinets in a manila folder marked INCOMPLETE (a euphemism for the too-hard basket). 

Further, there is the general idea that creative things aren’t planned; that creativity is spontaneous and comes upon the whim of a moment. 

With this I agree, at least in principal.  A creation is often an instant thing, arriving in just such a ‘moment’, almost like an epiphany.  However, any writer who has experienced this needs now to pull out a blank sheet of paper and plan what to do with it.  Creative moments like this need to be documented, laid out on paper and not kept in the memory banks of the head, filed subjectively between next week’s chiropractic appointment and the argument with the parking attendant. 

A creative idea is perhaps the most valuable commodity on planet Earth. From it comes the future, colourful recountings of the past and almost everything from aeroplanes and space travel to laptops and mobile phones; all of it the spawn of imagination.  And so, things born of creativity require careful and delicate treatment. 

Mistreated, the embryonic idea of a beautiful story can become lost under the drudge of day-to-day living.  A writer sitting at their keyboard, hoping the story ‘just comes’ can find themselves listless and lost after ten or so chapters and, sadly, the story dies a slow death. 

The remedy is two-fold but elementary and involves the art of Story Planning and the foundation of the Story Curve.  These two complement one another like red wine and venison and deserve thorough comment as to theory and procedure.  Using these may not make one a brilliant writer – that takes practice – but it will, at least, help you to finish your story and make a decent tale of it. 

This is an excerpt from an chapter in the new acclaimed book Get Your Book off the Ground, by Anthony Santoro and Suzanne Male. Click here to read the review or buy the book.

Anthony Santoro is the author of the Mike Felice series of detective novels and is the founder of the Writers' Resource Centre. Read more about Anthony Santoro on the About Us page. Anthony's next novel, Last Decent Man, is due in stores in September 2009.