The Gardener and the Architect

     Years ago, I had a conversation with a friend and my wife (then girlfriend) about Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Now, this post isn't really about that, although if you haven't read it I highly recommend it (power through the first book, it'll be worth it later). But part of the premise of the series involves the metaphysical idea that stories come from "somewhere else." In this way, King starts to tie together almost every other novel and story he has written, making the entire Dark Tower series read like a scavenger hunt or Where's Waldo as you pick out the little cameos made by characters from his other stories.
     This lead to the conversation about stories existing "outside," and that all we really do is access them and write them down. Which, in my opinion, is highly insulting. I resent the idea that I'm not actually doing the work, that instead all I'm doing is scribing down something that was created in some nebulous ether. It's like saying aliens built the pyramids; why can't we just accept that humans are capable of such feats? My opposition to such an idea is compounded by the fact that when King himself advocates such notions, he just makes himself seem like even more of an arrogant ass than he already does. Oh, you're not a world-creating God, but just the chosen Prophet sent to give us the Word? That's much more humble.

Muses: Like you're going to get anything done with all this going on.

     Now, I'm not retracting my stance on the subject. When I write, I am not just drawing on the dreams of some collective consciousness, or any other hipster art-student crap. I'm working damn hard to build something, and I'm not going to let some ill-defined pseudo-mystical muse take the credit.
     However, related to this idea is the thought that stories "go where they want to go." In the same way that we, as writers, don't really create the tales we tell, we also have to allow our characters and plots to "be true to themselves." I found this idea similarly insulting: they're my stories and they will do what I damn well tell them to.
     Unfortunately, that's not necessarily true, and it's time I admit that.
     I've been working on a space-opera sci-fi novel for some time, and it hasn't been coming along as well as I'd hope. Part of the problem is that I developed the world and plot first, then came up with characters to go into it. In my previous novels, it went the other way around: I had characters first, and then found a story to put them in. This seems to work the best for me, because I want my stories to be driven by the characters, so they must come first.
     I was discussing this with another friend of mine last week, and he brought up the idea of the writer either as Architect or Gardener. 
     The Architect plans and structures everything, like following blueprints. The Architect is the type of writer who has notebooks full of timelines and outlines and tack-boards full of sticky notes that order everything in the story. The Architect knows every step of the plot and every development of the characters from start to finish, even before they ever write the first word. They complete via organization, and I imagine they rarely have a hard time finishing anything.
     The Gardener, on the other hand, starts with vague outlines and ideas; a "seed," if you will. They then write and let that seed grow, allowing it to take shape as it will. A Gardener's story evolves organically, typifying this idea that things will go where they want to go, as I mentioned above. It's a style that has much more in common with the hippie metaphysical stuff I used to rail against.
     As is so often the case, though, I was wrong.
     See, in my novel I was having a hard time really getting the characters to click. They just seemed to be plodding along with the plot, and thus just came off flat and two-dimensional. I hate stock characters, but I realized that this was all my novel had.
     This conversation about the Architect/Gardener dynamic made me think about my more successful writing ventures. And I realized I am much more the Gardener. I do tend to use terms like "organic" when describing a way a story grows and progresses (indicating, of course, how smooth and believable transitions are between plots and characters). And my last two novels started as mere ideas that were molded into full stories during the actual creation process. I didn't have a good structure before I started, and it still worked out.
     I took a scene in my current project and tried it out. I made one of the characters react differently in a single scenario, which then chain-reacted and made me have to re-write other scenes and add in completely new ones. It was a pain, but the result is that now I have several character relationships that are actually developed. I have people more than just archetypes, and everybody knows that good characters are what get readers invested. All in all, things are just starting to click into place more with the story, and it's because I "let it go where it wanted to go."
     While I'm still not going to go so far as to say that I am just a mere vessel for the transfer of stories from the ether, I can definitely say that there is something to the idea of stories and characters having a life of their own. When you make a character, and you want that character to be fully realized, then you have to really think about what they would do in a situation. Even if what they would do is not helpful to the situation or the plot as a whole. That's how people are; they rarely do what is needed to go along with the plan. But rather than force it, I'm going to start trying to sit back and see what happens.

     P.S. Those friends of mine who I've mentioned here, you know who you are, and I don't want to hear any I-told-you-so.