Plotting, Pantsing, Outlining, and winging it

Hey, all! So this week I wanted to give you guys a bit of an insight into how things are going; and more specifically, to what things I've learned in the process of writing this latest book. In the past, and briefly in the FAQ section of this site, I've touched on what it means to be a 'plotter' or a 'pantser' in terms of writing and which category I feel I fit into myself. Other authors prefer 'architect' vs. 'gardener', and I'm sure there are others, but in any case they refer to how much of the story is planned out prior to the process of writing a first draft.

There is no correct way to write, and whatever works for you is what you should stick to. But if you're struggling - and most often this manifests itself in what we traditionally think of as 'Writer's Block' - the problem could be that you haven't got a clear enough idea of which direction the story is supposed to be going in and need to figure that out first.

I tend to get so swept up in the idea for a new story that I charge ahead and start writing, and only later, somewhere around the middle, discover that I haven't given myself enough of a roadmap to get where I need to be going. I don't much enjoy plotting/outlining, and as uninterrupted writing time is such a precious commodity to me it feels like a waste to spend any of it on something that isn't actually adding to my overall word count. The problem is that by doing that, in the long run, I'm not getting myself to my goal any quicker as I'm only adding more time on to a future pass of edits, and giving myself more work to do later. Most often I'll assemble the bones of a story in the early stages - a framework - and then allow myself freedom to write and see what evolves out of that, to follow the voices of the characters and let my natural storytelling instincts take over to fill in the flesh of the story. In this way, I sort of have a foot in both camps: either a gardener who has designed the layout of the landscape they want to create, or a very easygoing, flexible architect, if you like.

The past few weeks I've been floundering a bit with writing up this first draft, and the reason, I suspect, is this. I hadn't made a clear enough outline. So yesterday I sat down and spent two hours focussing on the framework of the story. The technical stuff. I wrote an A4 page of numbered bullet points, in order, broken down into beats I needed to hit following the traditional 3-Act format, and then broke it down even further using the template found in 'Save the Cat: Writes A Novel' which, if I might make a recommendation, is probably the most useful book on the craft of writing that I've come across. It's saved my bacon - and my stories - on more than one occasion. Then, with that done, I was able to better visualise character arcs, themes and story structure, helping me to pinpoint where I was at in the story (approaching the 20% mark, or nearly at the end of Act 1) and adjust my writing accordingly.

Nothing I've said here hasn't been said in a hundred other places, in a hundred different ways before, but it was game-changing advice for me when I first applied it to my writing and I hope it will be similarly useful to somebody else. So, if you take away nothing else:

1) Learn to associate the feeling of writer's block with there being a problem in the story, not in yourself, and return to your outline to try and diagnose what that is.

2) Get 'Save the Cat: Writes A Novel' (or another positively-reviewed, recommended writing craft book) and apply the techniques within to better understand the processes of writing a killer story.

Talk at you again soon.

RT