On Discovery Writing

I suck at it.

Discovery writing, for those that do not know, is writing without an outline or guide. You may have a vague idea of where your story will go, but you are coming up with the actual plot points and character arcs while you are writing.

My “bad” story has been an exercise in this. I do not have a particular direction in mind for it to go. This is a problem for me. When I hit a block, it seems that much worse since I do not have a later scene that I can jump to.

Should have used an outline.

I am embarrassed to say that I have made barely any progress in that story. I am still under 9,000 words. I keep running into the problem that I have no plans for what happens to the main character next. I end up following him around his life as he does things like going to work. It’s some boring shit. In the right hands it could be used to make a point, but in my case it was because I had nothing else for him to do.

There is one positive thing I can take out of this ongoing endeavor; I have learned that I prefer outlining. There is always an element of discovery writing present when writing anything, but I do not think I can sustain it on its own for a whole book and produce something readable. I need some sort of lattice work to write things of significant length.

For completion’s sake, I am interested in continuing to write this story. I might try sketching out a few broad points, though.