You Are a Writer

It has to be congenital.  I can’t think of any other explanation that doesn’t invoke some distant relative of incubi and tinfoil hats.

As a child, I was writing stories at least by fourth grade; my memory isn’t clear on the matter before that.  In those early years, I don’t remember ever suffering writer’s block, but I clearly remember writer’s cramp.  You know, that moment when your hand goes into spasms and the muscles twist up painfully because you’ve been holding a pencil for three hours straight.  I developed calluses on my thumb and middle finger from those pencils, and though I graduated to a keyboard years ago, vestiges of them remain.

I remember Christmas when I was thirteen because my parents finally saw the light and bought me a typewriter.  It was a piece of junk typewriter, but it was a typewriter nonetheless and might as well have been made of gold.  I wore it out.  There were other typewriters, then computers, and other computers.  But the writing never stopped.  I don’t even have an estimate of when I passed those mythical million words, but I’m sure it was a long, long time ago.

Why did I do it?

Why do I still do it? 

As I said, it must be congenital.  I’ll admit that through some of my teenage years it became a way to vicariously live out some exploratory fantasies.  I’ve mostly outgrown that, but the compulsion remains.  It’s in your blood like a werewolf who has no choice beneath a full moon.

When you’re born to write, you can’t not write.

There was an episode of the original The Outer Limits series called “It Crawled Out of the Woodwork.”  Stories are like that.  They not only crawl from the woodwork, but from under the front doormat, from the bathroom sink drain, and from the downspouts.  See that little girl with the tattered dress sitting on the swing over there all by herself?  That’s a story.  See that young couple by the side of the road struggling to change a tire in the rain?  That’s a story.   See the bully hounding the smaller kids out of their lunch money?  That’s a story.  See the Jazz singer who is flamboyant on stage but puts on sunglasses and hides in the shadows when the show is over?  That’s a story.

Granted, writing mostly fantasy and science fiction, my inspiration has always lilted more toward the bizarre.  See that photomicrograph of a polychaete worm?  That could be part of some alien anatomy.  But the general idea remains the same regardless of genre.  Those visions are out there, and they won’t stop coming.  They’re everywhere, struggling to get out, to feel the warmth of the sun upon them, to be immortalized on paper, and perchance to be enjoyed.  To the writer, it’s like being in a chick hatchery where all around you are the sounds of shells cracking as the baby birds within struggle to experience life.  You can’t miss them, and to try to prevent their birth is an unpardonable act of cruelty.

Picture the 12-year-old who finds an orphaned baby bunny at the edge of the woods.  She takes it home, clears out a space for it in her bottom dresser drawer, finds an eyedropper and raids milk from the refrigerator.  She moves her lamp onto the floor to keep it warm, and can’t sleep that night over worrying about the poor thing.  I have just described a writer.  You’re not sleeping at night because a scene keeps running through your head, and when you do, you wake up suddenly and grab your notebook to jot down the dream before it fades away.  You’re in the shower, not singing, but reciting dialog until you get the words just right.  You tell your boss you were not daydreaming, that you were planning, but fail to mention that you were planning out what your protagonist does when he reaches the castle.  You see something pass by on the street and it suddenly drops into place in chapter three, scene two.

But sooner or later, the matter of dollar signs might come up.  “Oh.  Do this for money?  I never thought about that.”  

And you hadn’t.  

You weren’t writing for any profit motive, but because that story in your head was crying for expression, because it wouldn’t let you rest.  For me, I had finished five novels and a couple of dozen started before I was coerced into a commercial direction by the uncomfortable reality of trying to support kids on a graduate student stipend.  I’ve since finished a sixth.  And even then, it’s not necessarily the prospect of money that is drawing me.  If you go the self-publishing route, you quickly discover the joy of putting your worlds into visual form as covers and maybe trailers. 

You don’t try to explain it.  

You live in the assured confidence that people who are not born to be writers will never understand, and those who are so blessed already do.  My oldest daughter remains baffled that I can crank out a quarter-million-word epic and she has trouble pulling together a 500-word essay.  She’s not born to be a writer; I understand that.  You can lament for them, bemoan their unfortunate fate, but can do nothing to make them see the light.

Then comes that fateful day when you realize that the stories are coming faster than you can write them.  Your list is growing longer, not shorter, and you must come to grips with the fact that some of them must necessarily die on the vine because no matter how long you live, that list will always out-pace your ability to commit your ideas to paper.  But that’s OK, in a way.  Whole worlds came into existence because you created them.  Characters lived their lives, shared their joys, sorrows, and loves because your mind gave them birth.  You nursed them, nurtured them, and watched them grow.  You have cheered for them, cried with them, and stayed by their sides when they were sick.  You have shared their every triumph and tragedy, and consequently they have become some of your closest friends.

I suppose that is when you cozy up in your overstuffed chair by the fire, pull your comforter a little tighter about you and smile because you, out of thousands, were chosen to share the adventure.

You are a writer.

Duane Vore spends far too many hours writing science-fiction and fantasy, and a few other things that are nevertheless weird.  He lives in Pennsylvania with his step-daughter and grandson, and during the day tries to be a physical and computational chemist at the University of Pittsburgh.

http://www.duanevore.com@DuaneVore

How I Plot

            Plotting is a hot topic amongst today’s authors. Some swear by it – J.K. Rowling, for example, released several pictures of the relentless plotting that she did while writing her Harry Potter series. Others feel it’s a waste of time, even counterproductive. Why not let the novel flow naturally, they argue? Stephen King is a well-known advocate for such a style – start with an idea, he writes in On Writing, and see where it takes you.

            If you’re trying to figure out whether “to plot or not,” it seems to me that it should depend on your writing style. To wit, Rowling needed to write a long series, nigh impossible to do without a little mapping. King, on the other hand, often writes stand-alone books, based on “what-if” scenarios.

            So it depends. Are you writing a series? A complex multi-layered stand-alone? If you are, at least minimal plotting is probably a no-brainer. If you’re starting with an idea, a concept, and you want to see where your whim takes you, then it might be a terrible idea to plot.

            Personally, I’ve found that plotting helps me enormously. Mainly because I enjoy writing very complicated books, I feel that it’s important to have a basic (or heavy) plotline written out, to ensure the novel proceeds from Point A to Point Z in an orderly fashion, without taking too many distracting detours along the way.

            Usually I’ll start off with a premise, and a destination in mind. If I don’t have a destination, I’ll try and figure that out first – because while we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, we usually do judge a book by its ending. What/Who do I want my main character to accomplish/overcome/defeat? Why am I writing this book? What is the message I want to convey? Way too often I’ll read a book that has a decent premise, but falls flat towards the end (or middle, because it’s not plotted properly).

            So I’ll usually start with an ending, believe it or not, and work backwards.

            At that same time, I’ll try and figure out a beginning. Once I have an ending, I can avoid starting too early. I can clearly define this character’s problem – i.e. whatever he/she has to accomplish/overcome/defeat. At the beginning, I’ll clearly show that the character has not yet accomplished/overcome/defeated their adversary, and move from there.

            That gives me my “A” & “Z,” my beginning and end. Once I have A & Z, I really start plotting.

            Donald Maass writes in Writing the Breakout Novel that a writer should try his/her best to make things as exceedingly difficult for the MC to attain his/her goal. He advocates that a character should face no less than six roadblocks/obstacles, and maybe even more. So I’ll pick, say, six obstacles in my mind, and put them at points E, I, M, Q, U, & Y (yes, I know, it’s not evenly spaced between A & Z – obviously Y is right at the end – but I like making the last insurmountable obstacle right before my MC attains his/her goal. It makes it more satisfying that way).

            Once I have those – and I’m not married to them, they’re just ideas – I need to get my MC from point A to point E, his first obstacle. I may not need points B, C, & D to get him there, but I need to realize that it’s not always a direct journey. Rick Riordan, for example, often drags his MCs all across the United States, for no other reason than to drag out suspense and keep the reader guessing.

            Leaving points B, C, & D open also leaves room for that flash of inspiration, that “see where my whim takes me” that often comes up even after extensive plotting. I might be writing a scene, and realize that the most logical reaction is for my character to retrace his steps, but the next obstacle is nowhere near his last one. So I have open space to work with, a flexibility that allows for the creative juices that often kick in smack dab in the middle of writing the manuscript, so I can avoid getting too far off track.

            After I have my plot mapped out, I’ll usually sit down and start writing. I’m never married to my outline, but now I have a great idea of where I want to go, and how I want to get there. And if I feel an urge to deviate off the path I originally intended, I have a GPS to get me back on track without losing too much momentum or changing the story altogether.

This post was generously written by Seth Z. Herman. You can find him on the internet blogging and tweeting and just generally being very helpful always. If you want to contribute to MMW Resources, please email ginadenny129 at gmail dot com.             

Where to Find Story Inspiration: Pinterest Edition

One of the most hilariously frustrating questions to get asked as a writer is where and how you come up with the ideas for your stories. The answer “I don’t know, about eleven million different places, marinated and shaken just the right way” doesn’t usually work for people, no matter how true it might be.

But for the vast majority of the time, that’s how things work in my brain. At least, that’s what I’ve figured out by now. Complete story ideas and inspiration are two different things entirely. Very rarely do ideas just show up in my brain fully formed, ready to be written.

However, it’s a legitimate question, which requires some sort of reasonable explanation- how DO I get my ideas? At first glance, I couldn't figure out how to explain where my ideas came from, my head not really being a helpful answer to anyone who isn't me.

Second glance, I've come to the realization that since I seem to get my ideas from everywhere, that isn't too specific and therefore not entirely helpful either.

However, before you roll your eyes and stomp away from my very unhelpful post, I’ll tell you about one of the tools I use that has completely changed the way I brainstorm.

Pinterest.

Pinterest? You may ask. You mean that wonderful time suck that I pin all sorts of fabulous crafty projects that I probably won’t be making ever and are just there to guilt me about the fact that I’m not the perfect women?

Oh, hon.

You are using Pinterest in ALL the wrong ways.

Okay, so I also pin crafty things and dream house things and ideas for my classroom. But I mainly use Pinterest for finding and storing ideas for future books.

I approach the pictures on Pinterest the same way I approach people watching. First you just scan what's there. Who's there. Someone or something is going to catch your attention at some point. At this point on Pinterest, I'll pin it- usually to the board I have called Ideas. (I know. I'm super original.) 

Then, of course, comes the questions to ask about the person or thing. What is it? Why is it there? How did it/he/she get there? Where are they going? And so on and so forth, until suddenly you have the beginnings of a story.

There are a few different ways for you to search through Pinterest- you can search on your main dashboard where all the things pinned by the people you follow will show up. You can also use the search feature, and either type in a specific keyword, or scan through categories- everything from Geek to Travel to Women’s Fashion. If you don’t have anything in specific you’re looking for, the Popular category is a mishmash of everything.

Sometimes all it takes is one picture for an idea to form. Sometimes it's a few pictures. 

I’m going to be honest with you: Pinterest is a dangerous place- once you get there, it’s not always easy to get back out. Self-control is definitely needed for it. But fear not- you can find inspiration quite easily without Pinterest.

• Swap pictures with a friend, but someone whose family you don't really know so well. Have them send you a picture- any picture- to get your creative juices flowing.
• Pick up a foreign newspaper, and look at the pictures there. You have no idea what anything means, so you just have to decide that by yourself.
• Check out photographer’s websites, and think up the backstory of the people photographed.

Or you can play the connect the dots game, and outsource this one a bit as well. This is also a fun writer’s group activity if all of you are looking for ideas.

If doing this with a writer’s group, everyone should bring in one picture that intrigues them- whatever kind of picture they want. No limits (unless you specifically want to set them, though I don't recommend it). If you're meeting in person, print enough copies so that everyone can have one for themselves. If you're emailing, email a copy to everyone. 

If you’re doing it as a solitary activity, ask five of your friends to send you one picture they love, but without any descriptions or explanations as to why they love it.

The objective of the activity is for you to take the pictures you have and find out how and why they're connected. What's so incredible about this exercise is no two people will have the same story, even though you're all using the same pictures.

Man, creativity is so cool :)

Bonus: I've picked five random pictures from my Pinterest boards to jump start your creativity. 

Picture One:

Picture Two:

Picture Three:

Picture Four:

Picture Five:

Happy pinning, happy plotting, and happy writing!

KK Hendin writes NA books to make your heart happy. She blogs at http://www.kkhendinwrites.blogspot.com/ and tweets at https://twitter.com/kkhendin

Beating Writer's Block

It's all happened to every writer at one point or another. You have a great idea! Great character with a great voice in a really great dilemma! Things are going swimmingly, until suddenly ... they are not.

You don't know what to do. You hate everything. Or (worst possible scenario) you are BORED.

You lost the spark in your writing. And you can't figure out why.

Before I tell you what to do, let me tell you a couple stories.

Stephen King is one of my all-time favorite writers, and this is one of my all-time favorite analogies, so bear with if you've already heard me deliver it. In Misery, King describes a writer named Paul who is being held captive by his biggest (read: craziest) fan. Writers often give their opinions about life and humanity through their work, and lots of people view Misery as a prime example of King telling the reader what it is like to be a writer.

The line that stuck out to me from Misery is, “Paulie, can you?” You see, Paul's problem is that he killed off his main character and ended a long-running series. Annie, the fan who "rescued" him from a car accident, is insisting that he write himself out of that corner and resurrect poor Misery Chastain, or be killed off himself. And of course, Paul is thinking, "How do I get Misery out of her coffin and back in the land of the living?"

Paul doesn't want to write any more Misery books. That's why he killed Misery. But in this one instance, he really, really has to.

In his drug-addled, foot-chopped-off condition, Paul starts hallucinating about a memory from kindergarten when the little kids played a game where one started a story, and the next kid added to it, and then the kid after that, and so forth. Paulie, can you?

And the point of the game wasn’t to come up with some Pulitzer-prize winner or a New York Times bestseller ... it was just to keep the story going. “Can you, or can’t you?” And if you can’t, the game is over (and in poor Paul’s case, you’re going to be murdered and chopped up into little bits.)

Writing, whether you're plotting or pantsing, is sort of like a game of “Can you or can’t you.”  If you want to be a good writer, all that really matters is if you “can.”  You may be a genius with the ability to write prose that would make Shakespeare weep, but if you “can’t” on a consistent basis, then you can’t. People who put in the time and effort, and are honest with themselves, will always be able to get to the point where they “can” on a consistent basis.

Look at this one other way (not to belabor the point). A friend of mine is a computer programmer, and he pointed me to this anecdote:

"A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."

The lesson, of course, is whether you're writing books or code or throwing pots, the more you do, the better you are.

So what to do when you've felt the spark go out in your writing? Well, I think you have a few options.

1. Take a mental palate cleanser. Go for a walk. Play a game. Read a book. Watch (good) TV. No Keeping Up With The Kardashians, we're talking Breaking Bad or Parks and Rec or nothing. If it doesn't make you think (and I do mean THINK) about something different for awhile, it's useless to you.

When you feel refreshed, return to the writing. And if you still don't feel the spark, go to Step 2.

2. Quit making excuses and start typing, Paulie. Remember our pal Paul and his dilemma? Do you think it mattered to him that he hated Misery and hated that she couldn't ever pick between Ian and Geoffrey and he wished he'd never started the stupid series? NO! His foot was about to be chopped off! So just write for awhile, like your ability to remain ambulatory depends on it. And after awhile, evaluate whether that worked. If it didn't, go to Step 3.

3. Take everything you've just written and put it in your "Extras" folder. I have a theory that no writer really ever deletes anything. I can't bring myself to erase pages (and days) of hard work. Usually when something has to go, I put it in what I call my "Extras" folder. 

This is helpful for two reasons. One, you never know when something you wrote in that folder will be helpful after all. (It's happened to me a few times.) Two, it's nice to have a tangible (as tangible as a computer file is) reminder of all the pots you've thrown. Now move to Step 4.

4. Continue your current story in a different spot. So you've gotten yourself bogged down. Your main character is trapped on the top floor of the house and the murderer is in the kitchen, and there's no way she can get outside without passing him. You don't know what to do, and the more you think about it, the more you want Det. Ex Machina to show up and save the day because you're so confused/frustrated/bored

. 

This is what I want you to do: type "XXX," then hit your return/enter key a couple times and start somewhere else. Oh, now your main character is having a sweet moment with her love interest. Oh, now you're revealing how the bad guy left fiber evidence behind at the scene. Oh, now you're describing a really awesome road trip that actually has no place in your novel, but at least you're stoked to be writing it! 

When you're done, all you have to do is find all the spots you typed XXX and fill in your gaps. Usually you're going to find that those spots aren't nearly as bad as they were the first go-around. Did that work? If not, skip to Step 5.

5. Stop. This book is an abandoned pot. Don't feel bad about it, because the more pots you throw, the better writer you're going to be. But don't keep coming back to it, because if this project isn't ever going to hold water properly (the analogy has now gone too far ...) you're wasting your time. Who wants to agonize over an unfinished pot? Save it in a file on your desktop somewhere and move on to your next project. Someday you might find some use for it, or not. But don't feel bad about moving on.

Go make something else!

7 Steps to Writing a Query Letter

A query letter is a letter sent to an agent or publisher, asking them to take a look at your work. There's a TON of info out there on writing queries, so I'm going to be giving you a lot of links today. Be prepared.

1. Your book must be finished. If you are writing fiction, your book  must be finished, revised, read by others, revised again, and again, and again before you even think about writing a query. If you look at the traditional publishing process, you'll see that after the querying process, everyone will expect your book to be done. It needs to be done. You do NOT want to blow off an agent by saying, "Thank you for your interest, but I'll need six to eight more months to get this finished. KThanxBai!"

If you are writing non-fiction, you'll need a solid outline, serious source material, a built-in platform, and your first three to five chapters completed and revised before you write a proposal. We'll talk more about proposals later, but let's just call them non-fiction query equivalents for now.

If you're writing memoir, even though it is non-fiction, you will need to treat it like a novel. Unless you're, like, Jon Bon Jovi or something. But us mere mortals need to prove ourselves before an agent will take a bite.

2. Understand your genre and category. No, you do not have a genre-bending stories for all ages. Precisely one person has done that in the history of forever and she was the first billionaire author, ever. You're not her. You won't be her. If your goal is to be her, you need to spend a lot of time talking to published authors who are not her. Again, us mere mortals have to play by the rules. You need to know who you're selling your book to, and you need to know why. You need to understand what agents and publishers will be interested in your work, and you need to know how to talk about your work intelligently.

3. Read other query letters. Galleycat has a collection of 23 letters that worked, across different genres and categories. Query Shark has archives of query letters that made the cut. Writer's Digest has a whole blog tag dedicated to query success stories, with commentary from agents about why those letters worked.

4. Read the techniques of query letter writing. Agent Query has a great post about the basics of query letters. Nathan Bransford has a great post on how to write the letter, mad lib style. (note: please do not leave your letter in your mad lib format, this is a jumping-off point) The Query Shark has tons of archives showing the evolution of query letters as they are revised, moving from garbage to gold.

5. Write your query letter. There's really no way to do this, other than to do it. Get it down on paper (or screen). You can't fix it until it exists.

6. Send out to other people. Send it to people who have read your novel (it's finished, remember?) and to people who have not read your novel. Let them make notes and tear it apart. After, ask the people who haven't read your book to answer a couple questions.

- Who is the main character of my book?
- Who is the villain?
- What is at stake for my main character?
- What kind of tone do you expect my book to have? Funny? Scary? Romantic? 

If your friend cannot correctly answer all those questions based solely on your query letter, you need to dig in and seriously fix some stuff.

7. Revise. Repeat. If you dig through those Query Shark archives (seriously, go read them), you'll see that the first draft of a query letter usually looks nothing like the one that finally got a bite from an agent. This is not a light revision, slight alteration of word choice and spell check. No. This is like revising your novel. Hack, cut, expand, revise, change, delete, move. (If you didn't do that to your novel, you're not ready to query.)

There you have it. Seven steps to writing a query letter. Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Defining Plotting and Pantsing

Yesterday, Ruthanne talked about her experience with plotting and pantsing. Today, I want to explain what plotting and pantsing are, and give you some of the benefits of both, and why you might want to try a particular style of writing.

I'll define the terms, and then give you some of the most common reasons people give for why they chose (or didn't choose) a particular method. I'm not saying these reasons are right (or wrong), I'm just saying these are the reasons people give, and you can evaluate their rightness or wrongness for yourself.

Pantsing - Writing by the seat of your pants. It's the same as doing anything else by the seat of your pants (if English is not your first language, and you are unfamiliar with idioms, I AM SO SORRY because this one is really weird.) You start out with only vaguest idea of where you're going, and you let the journey shape your path as you go. Or, in the case of writing, you let the story shape itself.

Pantsing Benefits: 

- The thrill of "discovering" the story. Many people say it's akin to reading, just you're the one telling the story. It's fun to say, "Ooh! It'd be crazy if THIS happened now!" and then make it happen.
- Freewheeling feels more artistic and creative. Feeling like your characters are speaking to you, or your muse is leading you on, or any of these things is very liberating. Even a dedicated plotter loves the chance to free-write once in a while, just let the mood take them wherever.
- Doesn't require any special planning or training. You don't need to know anything special about the three acts of a story, or pacing, or any other technical aspects of constructing a story. If you read a lot, and you can feel "something needs to happen soon" then you can pants your novel. Anyone can dive in. 

Pantsing Drawbacks:

- It's easy to get stuck. It's easy to get caught up in the fun of a story and not realize that you have no possible way to tie things up. Or that you put your love interest in two places at once. Or you killed off your villain halfway through the book. It's also really easy to write twelve thousand words of crap before you realize you're going in the wrong direction.
- Drafts are super messy. Plot holes, inconsistencies, tense issues (as in, switching from past to present tense), appearance and disappearance of characters (and not in the good way), and a whole host of other problems will present themselves more often when you write without a plan. Pacing is more likely to be wrong, and you're more likely to find huge, sweeping scenes of absolutely nothing useful at all, because you got caught up in the moment and just kept writing without a plan. 

Plotting - Creating an outline before beginning to write. Outlines can be detailed (I'll spend 3,000 words in chapter four on this scene, it will have sexual tension, an almost-kiss, and three jokes) or not (First they'll travel to the Forbidden City, and along the way they'll pick up a hitchhiking ghost. Next there will be a fight scene and the tall guy will lose a hand.) Some people plot chapter by chapter, or by how many words need to be dedicated to a particular scene or plot point.

Plotting Benefits:

- Writing time is all word count. You have a plan. You know you need to write a scene where the villain confesses his evil secrets to a secondary character so she can eventually betray him. You have one hour. For that one hour, you will do nothing but write the scene that you need. If you don't have a plan? You'll spend time writing stuff you won't use, going back an re-reading previous stuff, tinkering with editing, or writing a scene that takes the story in a wrong/weird direction.
- Editing is smoother. You'll still make changes, some of them major, but it will be unlikely that you'll say, "What? This character disappeared after chapter six, and then I introduced somebody else kind of like him, and why do I have twelve pages of dialog that has nothing to do with this story?" Also, because you outlined specific scenes, it's easier to cut and paste them if you need to move them around. Without that outline, it's more likely that you have scenes interwoven together in a nonsensical fashion.
- It's like building a puzzle. Piecing things together without the messiness of dialog or setting or sensory details getting in the way. It's easier to see how the plot fits together.

Plotting Drawbacks: 

- Stifles creativity/artistic freedom. Lots of people feel like planning their art is a little like painting by numbers. Putting the story into boxes or outlines or timelines or anything else involving straight lines is boring and not artistic.
- Takes a lot of time before you get to the fun part. Spending time on an outline is time spent not actually writing. It's technical and much less fun than spending time writing a kiss or a sword fight. Especially since most dedicated plotters will plot before they write a draft, then will use a beat sheet after each subsequent draft to check their pacing, an awful lot of writing time gets dedicated to not writing the story.

The Combo - Of course, many people combine plotting and pantsing. I pantsed my way through a 40,000 word rough draft with almost zero dialog or world building, just plot and character introductions. Guess what? That's an outline, albeit an unconventional one. It was easier to make changes to that doc than it would have been to make changes to a full draft.

Some people write chapter-by-chapter concepts with no details, some people pants the first half of the book to get to know their characters and then create a detailed plot before they continue.

On this blog, and on many other resource blogs, you'll find writers talking about their methods, as well as how and why those methods work.

Plotting Vs. Pantsing

If you're new to the writing and publishing game, you've probably heard a lot about this "plotting versus pantsing" business and wondering what the heck we're all talking about. In essence, we're describing two different ways of writing a story: plotting, which is sitting down and outlining all the events of your story before you begin drafting it, and pantsing, which is when you have a basic concept and then you just let your typin' fingers take you wherever your imagination leads.

I have written (and by that, I mean COMPLETED) two "pants" novels and one "plotted" novel. When I first began writing, pantsing was what came most naturally to me. I usually come to a story when one character, or one concept, pops into my head. What I usually did at that point was to just start writing, without any thought for where I might end up.

When I wrote my most recent novel, however, I realized that path wasn't going to cut it for me. First, because my second novel had taken me TWO YEARS to finish, and that was when I had the luxury of living a student's lifestyle. Second, I ended up cutting 1/3 of the novel, just because (as much fun as it was to write) I tended to launch into tangents (which, of course, I didn't realize were tangents at the time).
So why did I switch to plotting for novel No. 3?

As an attorney, there was no way I was going to be able to just write whenever. Most days I come home intellectually drained. I might be able to read a book, but usually all I have in me is to watch some TV or take my dog to the park. If I were going to pants my novels in that state, I suspect it would take me a lot longer than two years (and involve significantly more cutting).

So I sat down with an outline like the one described in Save The Cat and plotted out my third book. And you know what? It didn't always feel right to me to do that. But I stuck with that method, and ... it worked. For that book, it was actually sort of perfect. From the moment I figured out what I wanted to write about until the day I put the final period on the final sentence, only 11 months had passed. After two months of revisions, I was ready to start submitting it.

Pantsing and plotting both have strengths and weaknesses. When I was pansting, it took me a long time to draft and even longer to revise. But when I was plotting, there were times when I felt like the "spark" in my writing was missing. (I'll talk more about what to do when that happens later.) Ultimately, though, all that really matters is whether or not your chosen method results in a final product.

Now, are there overlap between the two methods? DEFINITELY! With my current project (which I am plotting), I realized halfway through that a character was missing. So I added him in! After all, an outline is just a tool, not a contract. 

What you need to do is honestly evaluate yourself. Do you feel more comfortable writing when you know where things are going, or do you feel more comfortable when you are just letting your imagine run rampant? Once you've figured that out, ask yourself whether this particular project will benefit from the alternative method. 

In my heart, I'm still a pantser. But at this point in my life, plotting is the way to go.

I will be the first one to tell you that if you are a natural born pantser, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. We all have to write in the way that feels most natural to us.

This post was generously written by RuthAnne Snow. RuthAnne is a lawyer and aspiring writer. She lives in an old house with a little dog and a big porch. She blogs at http://andthenshewaslikeblahblahblah.blogspot.com/. Follow her on twitter @ruthanne_snow and facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RuthAnneSnow.

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