Out of the Mist?

Among authors, there are plotters, the people who know everything that is going to happen and their characters follow the outline. Pantsers, who as you might have guessed, have no idea what's going to happen and write by the seat of their pants. And a combination of the two types. Plantsers?

I'm kind of a hybrid, although more on the pantser side of the spectrum. From time to time, I make an endeavor to try being more plotty--after all, if I'm already a mix, why can't I change the percentages of said blend? This is the story of my latest attempt.

I'm a slow writer. Part of the reason I'm slow is that I work full time and have an elderly parent living with me. Another part of the reason is that I usually only have a general idea what's going to happen in the story and I get stuck trying to figure out what is going to happen next. I might even write part of the scene before realizing it's not interesting enough for a book.

I decided to see if I can become more of a plotter so that I'm not lost in the woods, trying to find the next scene. I began by watching some YouTube videos and then I went and bought some ebooks. I also discovered that I already owned some of the ebooks I planned to purchase. They were buried deep in my Kindle app. Oops! I also found I owned some of the books in paperback already. I had a better memory of these, though, since they're in my office.

And I began reading. I bought index cards. I made notes on index cards that I will be throwing away because I didn't understand the system when I filled them in. I wrote more cards, discovered I needed to cut two chapters (sobs) because my characters had gone on strike. When that happens, it's almost always because I wrote something they would not do. Griff insisted that he would never do what I had him doing. I'm hoping I can salvage one of the scenes with a rewrite, but yeah. More index cards to toss.

But it also kind of underlined the reason why I want to be more plotty--if I could have figured out before I wrote those two chapters that they weren't right, I could have saved myself a lot of time. Including the time it took me to figure out why I was stuck.

I don't know if plotting will take hold in my brain any better this time than it has the other times I've tried to learn it, but we'll see. I did find cute little carrying cases for my index cards! They even have little dividers I could label Act 1, Act 2a, Act 2b, Act 3, and Discard.

Plotters, You Confuse Me

I've been reading plotting books. I'm more on the seat-of-the-pants side of the equation when it comes to writing, but well, things happen. After my mom died, I wasn't able to even hear my characters much for a really, really long time. The voices finally came back, but the part of my brain that worked out the plot hasn't returned and it's frustrating.

My solution was to read plotting books. Surely, something would spark me again. And then I read things like pivot point and pinch point and my head starts to hurt.

It boggles my mind and it leaves me wondering how a plotter's brain works. Someone should hook plotters and pantsers up to an MRI machine (Okay, I know you don't get "hooked up to an MRI machine," but go with me here) and figure out what makes us so different from each other.

Pivot and pinch points? My characters go on strike every time I write them doing something they don't want to do and I'm supposed to know ahead of time what problems arise in the story? Really? Gah!

I never wanted to be a full-fledged plotter, but I would like to have more of an idea which direction a story is going than I usually have. (And usual is a lot more than I currently have. I know grief doesn't go away overnight, but I need my small amount of plotter head space back.) I just don't want to know everything. I don't want to be stuck sweating out what the hell is a pinch and what's a pivot.

It isn't that the books didn't do a good job explaining these things, it's just that my train doesn't run on those tracks.

My answer to this? Buy more plotting books. Surely something will click.

The Pantser's Lament

On the spectrum between writing by the seat of the pants and plotting, I definitely fall on the pantser side of the equation. I've tried to learn to plot, but it takes all the joy out of writing for me to know too much about the story. I like to write and let it unfold. Usually.

Right now, I'm pretty frustrated. I have less than 1500 words to go to reach a rough draft of a proposal (that's about 60 pages or 15,000 words) and I have no idea what happens next. The characters aren't sharing that information with me. Usually, they help me out and guide me to the next thing. At the moment, though, they're just staring at each other spouting inanities. It's enough to make a writer weep.

I thought Okay, work on the synopsis--maybe that will unstick you. This is a sign of sheer desperation as writing synopses is easily one of my least favorite things to do, although when it's completed, it is helpful to have a general idea of which direction the story is headed. This, too, failed. I made some notes about ideas I have for my heroine to resolve her issues, but no synopsis.

This is the times when I envy the plotters. They don't sit and stare off into space, searching for some answer to what happens next.They know what happens next in their stories. I don't. So I'll mull some more and hope either my hero and heroine feel like sharing or I get struck by an epiphany.

Plotter Absolutism and the Panster

I saw a quote this week, something about how "most" writers don't sit down and simply write. That their stories are carefully plotted out beforehand so that they have a map of the story. Most writers? Really?

It's quotes like this that gave me fits when I first figured out I wanted to write stories. I've always leaned toward Seat of the Pants writing on the plotter - pantser spectrum. I was stronger on the pantsing before I was published, but I still only put together a loose synopsis. I call it a framework, not a map. It gives me a general idea of what I want to do and then I just aim that direction.

But all the how to be a writer books that I checked out of the library were written by plotter type people and they were all about how to create a story map. I contorted myself trying to be a plotter because I believed that was what "real" writers did. After a few weeks of torture, I realized plotting had made me hate writing and that I didn't want to do it anymore. I realized then I had two choices--I could either follow the writing books, hate wriing, and quit or I could toss the 3x5 index cards aside and have fun.

I decided to have fun.

So when I see quotes like the one I mentioned, it aggravates me. Believe it or not, plotter person, "most" writers don't have detailed maps of their stories. Many do. There are also many writers on my side of the pantser spectrum.

I wish when authors/writers gave advice they wouldn't be so absolute about it. Whoever said that quote I read could have conveyed the same message in different terms and still addressed their audience without adding to the pantsers' fears that something is wrong with the way they write. Because if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say there were many more pantsers thinking they have to plot to be "real" writers and very few plotters trying to force themselves to be pantsers.

Bottom line is whatever works for you to write is the way you should do it. No other writer can or should dictate your process.