Writing question: How much of the psychology of a story do you nail down before writing pages?

A comment from Betsy:

Thanks Scott! Your analysis is really helpful to see how key the psychology is to the character, and hence plot and theme lines.

I’m just wondering, in terms of your process, how much of the psychology do you feel is important to nail down before writing pages? All of it? Most of it? Kind of a similar question with themes, do you consciously shoot towards theme in the early stages, or let the themes emerge as the story unfolds organically? I know different writers have different approaches, just curious about yours.

My response:

Betsy, every writer is different and every story is different, so it’s hard to quantify or concretize a specific approach that always works. Frankly that pertains to my own writing as well. But generally I follow what I lay out in the 6-week Prep: From Concept to Outline course (Screenwriting Master Class).

Start with Protagonist and delve into the character.

Brainstorm like crazy including other characters, possible plot elements. Spend a lot of time sitting with characters, talking with them, interviewing them — and thinking about their respective narrative functions (this is where I usually find working with archetypes — Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster — quite helpful.

Four primary Plotline points: Best way I know of wrangling the basic structure of a story.

Four Themeline movements: This gets into quite a bit of psychology as it drills down in the metamorphosis process for the Protagonist and any other character who goes through a significant change in the story, especially those tied to the Protagonist.

Ten major Plotline points: Working through the rest of the big events in the story.

Narrative Throughline: An outline which includes everything that happens scene by scene in the Plotline (External World) as well as the emotional plot of the Themeline (Internal World).

Much of the psychological work emerges in Prep, but then I spend a lot of time in prep-writing because I think it’s the best place to ‘find’ story and characters. But in page-writing, I can’t help but discover new and deeper themes emerging, and with that the inner psychological life.

But here’s the key: It’s the characters who reveal all that stuff. It’s all there, all that’s required of me is to spend time with them, get curious about them, dig into them. It’s not work so much as it is an ongoing dialogue with them, then time to reflect about them.

That’s just me. Actually you’ve inspired me to do a GITS post to ask folks how important the psychological aspects of a story are. So thanks for sending me down this path, Betsy!

So what about it? How much of the psychology of a story do you nail down before writing pages? How important do you consider your story’s psychological dynamics? How much time do you spend delving into them? How do you do that? How much of the psychology emerges in the page-writing process? Finally how much of being a writer is being a psychologist?

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