Gardner or Architect?

[AwkwardlySet]

But I'll still do so in a serpentine, organic way.

Phew! For a moment, I thought you were some GMO gardener

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

All who wander are not lost.

Careful, I think @onehitwanda has that copyrighted or something.

 

[Voboy]

Phew! For a moment, I thought you were some GMO gardener

Now there's a plot bunny...

Gardener uses cut-rate GMO (from AliBaba) on her flowers. Becomes multiorgasmic.

So. Much. Metaphor.

 

[Djmac1031]

I suppose I'd be a gardener, although I don't see that much difference.

It's not like a gardener just let's the garden grow wild. If a plant needs trimming, we trim it. It it needs nurturing, we nurture.

There's just as much a goal, a finished product in mind, whether one grows a garden or builds a structure.

And there's just as much flexibility in the plan, the option to change things as we go, while still staying on course for the main goal.

 

[bumpercars]

Aristotle thought that virtues were the balance point between two vices. If you spend too little money you won't be able to enjoy life or share your blessings, and if you spend too much you'll be poor, but in the middle is a point where you can be generous and content.

I feel like this is true of writing to some extent. If you architect too much, you might be unable to respond if you learn something new about your characters that changes their actions. If you garden too much, your story might move aimlessly, lacking inciting incidents or actions that drive the story forward. I think we each have a point somewhere in the middle where our stories will work best. Mine is closer to the gardener end of the spectrum - I have a vague idea of the arc of the story and I fill in the details as I encounter them.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

It's not like a gardener just let's the garden grow wild.

Come sit in the chaos that is my mind while I write my friend.

 

[Voboy]

It's not like a gardener just let's the garden grow wild. If a plant needs trimming, we trim it. It it needs nurturing, we nurture.

You've clearly never seen my side yard. Lol.

I'm not sure the metaphor involves trimming, weeding and "maintenance," though. Pruning, I guess, is like the editing that some folks here do quite a lot of. But I think the metaphor would require a gardener to "lay out" a garden, Capability Brown-style, which would indeed be a lot like architecture.

I'd say I choose the seeds and then decide roughly where to plant them. After that, the damn things do pretty much what they want.

 

[TxRad]

Don't make me get the back hoe out, you guys.

 

[ericalauren]

I’m a hardcore gardener. I think that most of the poets I know are like that, too.

 

[Peppadance]

Saw an interview with George R. R. Martin the other day where he described two writing styles, his, the gardener, is organic letting the story and characters grow and evolve where they want to go. He contrasted that with The Architect, someone that plans every scene and nuance.

Me, I'm definately a gardener. I come u with an idea, more accurately, an idea finds me, and I just write, letting my characters grow and evolve and teh story lead me where it will. Sometimes it works, sometimes I end up with thousands of words that don't lead anywhere. For me it works.

I'm interested to hear how you describe yourself on this continuum. I mean that's what it is. Even I plan some things out, but my general MO is to let the story lead me, let the characters talk through me.

So, Architect or Gardener?

Gardener

 

[DustofFallenStars]

Architect?

For my current story, I think I architected then gardened then will probably architect again in revision. But I have a seed of an idea for a follow up story which might be all gardening, at present.

I need a bigger sample size to work this out, which means I need to get writing again. Been pretty slow this week for foreseeable and predictable reasons.

 

[AG31]

Neat constructs. I'm a gardner. The planting is the appearance of a fantasy. It grows in the way fantasies grow. The writing is me putting words to the fantasy, like weeding and trimming and picking off bugs.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't like the analogy at all, because a Capability Brown garden or a classic French chateaux garden are just as planned and architectural as any architect's building.

And that little rose garden cottage on the corner block? That woman spends more time planning her plantings than anyone I know.

If anything, I'm a walker in a desert. When it rains, something will grow, water will begin to flow, and I'll follow it down to a river; and if the story's long enough, I'll follow it down to the sea.

 

[AG31]

I don't like the analogy at all, because a Capability Brown garden or a classic French chateaux garden are just as planned and architectural as any architect's building.

And that little rose garden cottage on the corner block? That woman spends more time planning her plantings than anyone I know.

If anything, I'm a walker in a desert. When it rains, something will grow, water will begin to flow, and I'll follow it down to a river; and if the story's long enough, I'll follow it down to the sea.

Well, yeah. If you're going to get all real world on us.
So we'll just add "rain in the desert" to the categories??????

 

[ElectricBlue]

Well, yeah. If you're going to get all real world on us.
So we'll just add "rain in the dessert" to the categories??????

Haha! I spotted your typo. Cherry on top, please .

 

[AG31]

Haha! I spotted your typo. Cherry on top, please .

I already fixed it. It was my fingers, not my mind, because you want more of dessert and a desert is sparse.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Saw an interview with George R. R. Martin the other day where he described two writing styles, his, the gardener, is organic letting the story and characters grow and evolve where they want to go. He contrasted that with The Architect, someone that plans every scene and nuance.

Me, I'm definately a gardener. I come u with an idea, more accurately, an idea finds me, and I just write, letting my characters grow and evolve and teh story lead me where it will. Sometimes it works, sometimes I end up with thousands of words that don't lead anywhere. For me it works.

I'm interested to hear how you describe yourself on this continuum. I mean that's what it is. Even I plan some things out, but my general MO is to let the story lead me, let the characters talk through me.

So, Architect or Gardener?

That's just a fancy way of saying some people are plotters and some are pantsers. I am both. Sometimes it's easy to tell which way I wrote something. And the architectual stories tend to get written faster.

 

[Phantom300]

I am definitely a gardener. Which runs im direct opposition to how I live the rest of my life as a meticulous planner

 

[Rob_Royale]

A bit of both.