How To Write A Novel: Architect Or Gardener

When it comes to writing a novel, there are just three personalities which many authors fall into. These three personalities are the Architect, Gardener and the Architect-Gardener personalities. The last personality is a combination of the architect and gardener personalities.

Studying your author personality is important as knowing it helps you write effectively using your own style. This means that unlike writing without a plan, you force yourself to write based on a plan that suits your personality type.

An architect type personality may make the mistake of writing like a gardener and mix up the writing or a gardener type personality may write like an architect and create substandard and monotonous writing.

It is no big accident then that many authors fall into the architect-gardener personality. Almost all authors are not one hundred percent architect or gardener, but have traces of both personalities in them.

What Is An Architect Type Author Personality?

As the name implies, the architect type personality spends a considerable time in designing their novel. They outline their novel the same way an architect designs a house. This means all the details are threshed out even before the start of the writing process is done.

The chapters of the novel are carefully laid out, together with the most important scenes in the story. The chapters of the novel even before the start of the writing process, have already names or titles.

The cast of characters are completed way even before the start of the story. How they are to look like is well defined. There are even authors who have sketches of their main and supporting characters.

The places and locations where the scene in the novel takes place are well thought out. Again, just like the main and supporting characters of the novel, they are well thought out with some authors even having sketches of them.

If there are languages that alien or foreign characters use, they are designed as well. For example, James Cameron’s movie, Avatar has a working language for the blue aliens in the movie.

Another example would be the Star Trek science fiction stories. The creators of these stories have created an entirely working Klingon language. In case you are not aware, Klingons are the warlike space aliens who used to be the archenemy of the humans in the Star Trek stories.

As you can see, there is a high degree of worldbuilding that is already happening even before a single line of the novel is written. The author who fit this writing personality style usually have notes which they look at as they start to write their novel.

Advantages Of The Architect Author Personality Type

Perhaps the greatest advantage of this personality type is its orderliness. Everything is carefully planned and constructed so that nothing is left out. This advantage is very important whether you are actually building a house or are writing a novel.

If you are building a house for example, you would carefully plan and construct the foundations of the house to ensure that the house does not collapse because the foundations you have constructed are inadequate for its weight.

The same is true for writing a novel. If the origin stories of your characters and events are inadequate for your novel, you might find that as you write your novel, your story would begin to collapse because the origin stories cannot support the rest of the stories in your novel.

Architect author types effectively prevent this from happening. They make sure that every story fits together in a cohesive way. There are no surprises in the novel from the author’s flow of mind.

Usually, most of the thinking is done by the author during the planning stages of the novel. After the novel has been completely planned out. The much easier work of writing the novel is done.

Architect author types are usually liked by book publishers. This is usually because the author also plans their story based on the requirements of the publishers. For example, the characters and word length are well planned by the author to satisfy the recommendation of their publishers.

Disadvantages Of The Architect Author Personality Type

Boredom

Perhaps the greatest strength of the architect type author which is orderliness, is also its greatest weakness. Orderliness leads to familiarity, and familiarity leads to boredom. You could say that the architect type author personality is more manufacturer than artist.

Planning a novel can be very exciting, but too much planning can also bore anyone. It can become a routine. While the author is itching to write the first few lines of the novel, they are prevented by the nuances of trying to make sure that every part of the story holds together.

Have you looked at an architect working? Have you ever considered how you feel when you work without a plan? There is a big difference. When you build without a plan, every step of the way is a big question.

You would likely have to adjust your initial plan as you go along. There is still an element of mystery and experimentation as you proceed along. Compare this to the work done by an architect which is less mystery and experimentation.

I am not saying the orderliness is a bad thing. It is in fact a good thing as all potential problems are already studied and solved even before the construction begins. This leads to a faster construction of a house or novel.

But this can be boring. Writing a novel becomes less exciting and becomes more of a chore. And boredom is a bad thing. Boredom can lead to uninspired work which can lead to uninspired writing.

Boredom can infect not only the author but could also infect the readers of the author’s novel. It is often said that authors can captivate readers with their words. Therefore, a bored author can lead to bored readers as well.

Predictability

Another potential disadvantage of an architect author personality is the predictability of their work. Let us face it. Many people have read, heard and watched the same storyline over and over again.

What makes these stories different from each other are the small twists in the story. Many authors use the same story writing formula over and over again with small twists to make them a bit new to the readers.

Unless an architect type has a completely new story, they are likely to write a similar story to what has already been written before. There are no more surprises in the story. The more planned a story is, the greater is the chance of it becoming predictable.

Have you ever read the same adventure story where a hero goes out in an adventure and faces obstacles along the way? Usually the story ends with the hero winning over the final villain or obstacle in the story.

Sounds like almost all the adventure stories you have read so far? This is how predictable stories can be. If you write the same adventure story with this same outline, you as an author end up being very predictable.

Your readers will know or already assume that your heroes will win in the end. It is your job as a good author to provide enough twists in the story to make sure that your readers cannot predict how the next few lines of the story would turn out so they keep on reading your story.

What Is A Gardener Type Author Personality?

In stark contrast to the architect type author personality, the gardener author type personality is less of a planner. They write randomly and are more of a “seat in your pants” writer. What does it mean?

It means that they trust more of their experience and own judgement in writing the first and next lines of their story. They can be pure gardener author types. All they have could just be an idea, and from this they write their story.

Disadvantages Of The Gardener Author Personality Type

While the architect type thrives on orderliness, the gardener type thrives on disorderliness. And we know the problems of being disorderly. Disorderly people usually neglect things even the important ones.

A gardener type personality might just start writing the novel and then when they are a quarter or midway in the writing process, find that their story does not add up together. So what happens?

They have to go back from the very beginning of the novel and rewrite parts of it to correct the inconsistencies or missing parts of the story. This going back process can become tedious and time consuming especially if a big chunk of the novel has been written already.

The bad part is when the author corrects one part and ends up having to adjust more of the story because more inconsistencies sprang up when the first inconsistency was solved. This could end up with the story being an entire mess.

These authors could also end up in a disagreement with their publishers because they usually do not follow the guidelines of their publishers. For example, JK Rowling, Stephen King and George RR Martin have had to cut or add the word lengths of their books just to satisfy their publisher’s requirements.

Advantages Of The Gardener Author Personality Type

The disadvantage of the gardener author personality is also their greatest strength. There are authors who thrive on instantaneous idea creation that they can create entire ideas in a matter of minutes.

They can come up with ideas that are so unpredictable that their readers can’t say anything except: “Wow! I never expected this from the story!” Because they could write stories as ideas flow in their heads. They could end up writing a story or an entire novel fast.

This means that author of these types are gifted or have developed a strong set of storytelling skills. They can patch up stories together in a cohesive manner very fast. They usually write their story notes after and not before they began their stories.

What Is An Architect-Gardener Type Author Personality?

As the name suggests, it is a combination of the two personalities. It is the most common author personality type. As there is hardly a pure architect or a pure gardener type author personality.

What usually happens during the writing process is this. An author gets an idea for a story. Then they proceed to outline how the story progresses, including the main characters and important events in the story.

This outline could be as simple as writing sentences detailing how the story would proceed. At other times, authors could write an entire short story before deciding to make the short story a longer story which could turn out to be a novel.

After the author has decided that it can become a novel, they start to add details to the characters, places and other events of the story. This is where the architect type and the gardener type differ.

An architect type would develop an exhaustive detail of the subjects of the story while the gardener type would just make a basic detail of the important subjects in the story. It could be so basic that it is not even written, but only resides in the mind of the author.

Then the writing process begins. The author writes the story according to the initial layout they made. However, during the writing process, the characters develop or new characters emerge which adds and deviates from the original story.

Then as the writing process proceeds along, the author may ultimately change the entire outline of the story to fit with the new story they have in mind. There are authors who have abandoned original stories just because they think their new story is better.

Conclusion

There are authors who fall more under the Architect or the Gardener type of author personality. However it does not matter on which one you belong, as many authors are actually a combination of the two author personalities.

By being a combination of both, you get to enjoy the advantages of both of them. You get the orderliness of the architect type and the creative spontaneousness of the gardener type author personality.

It is important whether you are an architect or a gardener type that you develop an outline of your story which would serve as the basis of your complete story. It does not matter how detailed it is as long as it is enough for you to make a complete story in the end.

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