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Another post to get a conversation going. Most of the time when I see discussion about the writing process, it usually involves descriptions of outlining of some form. Pantsers don’t often discuss how they produce a story.
So how do you write a story?
What is Pantser? (I saw this on another thread and thought it sounded like a middle school prankster.) But seriously, I’m excited. What is it? I’m afraid to google it…
People are generally divided into two groups when it comes to planning a story — the Plotters, and the Pantsers. Plotters are writers who develop the story before writing it, creating an outline for the story and working out the plot before writing it. Pansters (named after ‘Seat of your pants’) are people who take a novel idea and gun it without any preparation. There is a middle ground which people take (naming themselves Plantsers or Plonters) but people usually identify with one or the other to some extent.
I’m moving away from pantsing novels, but I do still pants things which I feel are going to be shorter. For instance, right now, I’m working on a side story, probably of novelette length, which I’m writing without an outline.
Basically, when I pants something, I take a character (or two or more) and have a situation they’re in, and I run with it to see where it takes me. Sometimes I have a full background for the MC (I have a more complete knowledge of the MC of my current side project), but just as often I don’t. All I have is the MC, their situation, and some vague notion where their story’s going to go–not even always an end.
It’s a little different process for me to pants something than it is to outline something. With pantsing, I don’t always have any idea of what the point of the scene I’m writing is until it’s done. Sometimes I start a scene without knowing everything in it. Sometimes, I have an idea of where I want the scene to go, but not how to start it. Still, my subconscious has enough of a handle on the story to make it come out the way it needs to.
Ashe Elton Parker
"Just love me, fear me, do as I say, and I will be your slave." ~ David Bowie as Jareth in Labyrinth
~*~
Member since 1998.
~*~Thank you, Mr. Gray! So, I guess I’m more of a pantser. If I do an outline, two bad things happen. One, my brain thinks all of the work has been done, so it falls asleep. Two, I feel locked into the outline—like I can’t change anything because it’s on paper and is fixed forever.
I usually start a story with a character or two and a situation. This will play in my head for a while. By the time I sit down to write, I have a good idea what the scene’s about and where I want to take it, but it can change midscene if something happens. I usually don’t get to write more than a scene at a time, but if I’m able, sometimes a scene or two will naturally flow from the original scene.
I will continue to add scenes (often in nonsequential order) until I can see the big picture. At that point, I write a sort of loose sketch, usually just a couple of sentences and similar to a short blurb, which highlight the theme and basic plot. That way vampiric zombie unicorns from Mars don’t invade or something.
After that I keep building scenes in my head, then writing them down. I do most of my content editing in my head. Often, the scenes are not in order, so sometimes I’ll try to write little notes to myself about what the context is, what precipitated it and/or what I want to follow. There are often frustrating gaps where I know I want something to happen here, and I know I want something to happen there—but I don’t know how to get here from to there. When that happens, I’ve learned not to push myself. Things will come to me if I shower or garden or sleep or go for a walk.
Sometimes I get a flood of plot information all at once and know I won’t have time write it into scenes, so I’ll bullet it out. That’s kind of like an outline, but it’s usually only a series of four scenes or so and usually just one storyline. I will also write notes to myself if I know I’m not going to be able to write for a long time, but only if I feel I have something really worthwhile to tell myself in the future.
Other than that, I use exercises and various techniques to flesh out characters, world build, or create conflict any time I get stuck or bored. Basically, I’m open to anything and everything; I just can’t stand to feel tied to any one method.
I generally write chronologically, and if I can’t imagine what happens next, I’m blocked. (There’s some dancing in the text while I make my words for the day.)
I am just starting to experiment with writing what Holly Lisle calls the candy bar scenes and then writing the connective tissue that makes them make sense…but I haven’t completed that yet.
Great at theory, terrible at practice.
When I think about it, I simply don the clothes and trappings of the character and set him or her down in whatever situation is happening and then describe things.
In one practice snippet my main character had been the cause of a revolutionary riot. I put him down amid the destruction and had the police spot him. Good fun.
My process is chaotic.
First there’s the idea. I get a lot of ideas, but only a few of them ‘stick’. Most are just fleeting things that never go anywhere. Once an idea sticks though, I start to play with it in my mind. I attach extra bits — maybe ‘who is the main character’ or ‘what sort of world is this in’. After a bit, I feel the need to write ‘something’ on the growing idea. I don’t mean notes, outlines, character sheets — I mean scenes. I write in some POV about what could be the beginning of a story. Maybe it actually is, maybe it isn’t. And this runs anywhere from a few paragraphs to 20k words.
Then… well, nothing. I put the stuff I’ve written away on the hard drive. The story has to grow in my back brain. This isn’t an active part of the process. But, it is vital for me. The story will sit for a LONG time. Weeks at least. Months almost always. Even years. Every once and a while I pull it out and look at it again. I might write a bit more, or not, and put it away again.
Eventually, the story is ready and it goes into the active writing list. I do try to focus on completing the active writing list, but there are gaps. Active writing is just that — writing the story.
I write relatively slowly. I write a paragraph or a scene, then I go back over it to make sure it says what I mean. I spend a lot of time between scenes deciding what comes next. I revise a scene until it seems to be doing what I want it to do. Then, I move on to the next one. By the time I’m finished I have a pretty solid first draft.
The first draft still needs work, but it’s generally pretty close to ‘finished’. Second draft is nipping and tucking, correcting pacing issues and fixing any inconsistencies. But, really that only takes a short time.
Then it’s copyedited and it’s done. Move on to the next project.
Of course, sometimes, like now, I have a lot of active projects.
Currently I have:
Ciqueo — which I’ve been writing for years. It seems to be write a bit and put it away for months. So, that one is a really slow go.
The space adventures — book one is at about 15k and I’m eager to get back to that now that I’ve figured out the plot hole that was driving me insane.
Domino — which is my Julno and is still moving fine (if I could find time to write around the other things I’m doing)
And the on-going anthologies — of which book one is ALMOST done (1 story to revise. 1 to get out to the copyeditor)So, I am not efficient. But I do get things finished eventually and this is the only way that seems to work for me.
–June
First I decide on where I want to set the story. This one is pretty important because I’m so bad at details. If I don’t anchor the story somewhere, I won’t anchor it at all in the story. The research is nothing fancy — probably 2-3 hours, including travel time. I look for anything unusual that makes the place stand out. Then I look for the names of trees, plants, and animals in the area. I chose a specific date, and then look up what the weather was like (not for nitpickers, but because, again, if I don’t have it, I will ignore it in the story). Then I look at pictures of the setting to give me an idea of what it looks like.
I also try to come up with a list of names to pick from. This is not a lot of effort. I might grab the Washington Post and pull names from it. Or I might say that this story is set in California, so I need a Mexican name.
After that, I take diverse elements, mash them up, and start writing and see where the story leads me. For a story I just submitted, it was set at Port Reyes, California (I’ve never been there). I picked the location because I was writing for two picture prompts for a magazine. One of them was a rocky shoreline. The photographer didn’t state where it was, so I figured Northern California was a good place. The other picture was a wooden door, so the location merged with one I’d visited when I was growing — my grandparents house. Then a third prompt I’d seen on another site mashed into the story: Voices in the fog. What were the voices? Mermaids! Then I made the main character a soldier on emergency leave, and just followed the story to see where it went. I ended up with a second woman war vet and had to revisit the research well to see how a seal moves on shore because I figured that’s how a mermaid would do it, too.
My method hasn’t been working for me too well lately so I’m thinking about changing it but this is what I’ve done with almost all my stories:
First I’m hit with an idea. It can be anything, the setting, the main character, the way the magic works. One of my favorite stories started with just the thought of a handsome man in a purple cloak standing alone. I wanted to know why he was alone and the story grew out of that. A lot of ideas come from ‘what if’.. like one was ‘what if you had a second chance with the love of your life that you lost years ago’, another was ‘what if an elf was dropped into our modern world’, ‘what if the princess of a land terrified of magic found out she was a shapeshifter’… you get the point.
Sometimes I will jot down a few notes and ideas before I get started like concepts of character or scene or government that I have already come up with. My idea will often come along with at least one scene attached , though it may not be the beginning, so I will write that one. I’m finding more and more often this scene is actually back story that doesn’t end up in the completed project but I write it anyway to get myself started. If it flows from there great, I keep going until I hit a road block. Once I’m stuck I have to try and figure out more about the character/plot/theme whatever it is that has me stuck so that I can move on until I get enough to consider the first draft complete.
My first drafts are almost always pretty bare and sparse. They are mainly just action and dialogue without near enough emotion or description so second draft is about adding those things and third draft is polishing.
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