Last week I wrote about my difficulty finding the balance between down time and working time, and how a lot of that difficulty is that I lose focus very easily. That feels like a natural segue into a topic that I've also seen getting some attention again lately in the writing community. Plotting versus pantsing.
I know most of the people who might read my blog will probably be familiar with those terms, but in case you're not, plotting is when a writer plans out what they're going to write in advance (self-explanatory term, I think), and pantsing is when a writer figures out the story as they go (flying by the seat of their pants).
I'm not here to argue one way as being better than the other. Everyone's brains work differently, and a method that's golden for one person will be garbage for someone else.
I think that those of you who can sit down and write out a whole novel and produce something cohesive without planning it out first are magical. How do you do it? How do you not get side-tracked or end up with something completely different from what you wanted? How do you foreshadow? How do you not get side-tracked? How do you mix in hints for twists that haven't happened yet if you don't know they're going to happen? Seriously, how do you not get side-tracked, I need to know this secret? I don't know how you do it and I think it's witchcraft and you are phenomenal.
I used to be a pantser. Or I guess I should say I used to try to be a pantser. And every time, I would lose the thread of my story and wind up somewhere wildly different in a way that didn't make sense. Not just that! Arguably worse, I'd also get completely bogged down in absolutely unnecessary exposition or back story or trivial nonsense. In one draft of a novel I wrote, I had an entire chapter of a character doing chores on her family's farm.
What I'm saying is that I need an outline.
But before I can even start outlining, I have to brainstorm. I am so bad at unstructured writing that I literally start by typing, “What is the thing I want to talk about with this story?” And then I type anything that comes into my head until I have a couple that resonate with me. Then I type, “What is the story about this?” A character usually pops up there, and with a character comes the sort of thing that character would be in conflict with. A situation or another person. From there my questions can get more specific (with the occasional “but why do they do this” or “how do I get them there” mixed in with the rest), until eventually I hit the kind of flow that lets me summarize the basics of the story.
Then I can start outlining. With novels I go chapter-by-chapter, and the first thing I note for each chapter's outline is what I want the character development to be like. I will then make a bullet point for the major events that happen in the chapter, with sub points for character reactions and motivations and any transitions I need.
I outline my short stories as well, although that's a lot less extensive. The beginning of the process is the same, but after the basic summary is written the last step is to more or less just expand on that and then get writing.
As I draft the story or the novel, I refer back to the outline frequently. At the beginning of every chapter or section, any time I find myself starting to drift (which happens a lot) and any time I get stuck. As I finish drafting a section of the outline, I change the font on that part of the outline to red.
I cannot imagine myself writing a whole novel without having the roadmap my outline gives me.
So that's my basic method, it works really well for me. Maybe if there's anyone out there struggling it would work alright for you, too.
As a side note, I don't outline my flash-fiction pieces. Those I do pants, I start with a concept and wing it. Anything longer than flash, though, and I get lost again. And – can you tell? – I don't outline my blogs, either.
If you have a different plotting method, or if you are a pantser and you want to shed some light on how you do that incredibly enviable magic, feel free to comment and share how your writing happens!