I’ve talked before about Plotters versus Pantsers, and where I fall within the spectrum.\u00a0 To summarize, Plotters want everything planned in advance.\u00a0 They craft outlines which capture the high-level structure of their story.\u00a0 Within the nodes of the outline, they outline further, laying out the chapters.\u00a0 Within the chapters, they outline the scenes.\u00a0 They go deeper and deeper with their outlines, until it’s a small step to just writing the story.\u00a0 They string up their structure with prose, sewing flesh onto the skeleton of their ideas.\u00a0 Famous Plotters include Brandon Sanderson and Jennifer Brozek.<\/p>\n
Then there are the Pantsers, though they may prefer to be called Discovery Writers.\u00a0 They aren’t bound by the constraints of an outline.\u00a0 They start with a vision.\u00a0 Then they sit down and write.\u00a0 They are the first readers of their stories, the words appearing beneath their cursor with the movement of their eyes.\u00a0 They need the surprise.\u00a0 They often have an idea where things are going, but they’re more prone to let the characters take over.\u00a0 Famous discovery writers include Stephen King and Dean Wesley Smith.<\/p>\n
It’s interesting listening to writers that are at the extremes of the spectrum, because they seem to have such disdain for the opposite approach.\u00a0 I remember listening to Dean Wesley Smith on a panel at my first WorldCon (Reno, 2011).\u00a0 He described how he refuses to outline because when he does, he spoils the story for himself, and he no longer has any desire to see it through to the end.\u00a0 Years later, I listened to Jennifer Brozek at a different convention.\u00a0 I think it was a Con-Volution, but it might have been somewhere else.\u00a0 She talked about the outlining process, and how when a Discovery Writer finishes their first draft, THAT’s their outline.\u00a0 Both had compelling arguments that resonated with me.<\/p>\n
And of course, in Stephen King’s book\u00a0On Writing,\u00a0<\/em>he talks about plot like it’s a clumsy tool.\u00a0 He talks about the story like it’s a fossil buried in the ground.\u00a0 The Discovery Writer works at the excavation, carefully revealing the finer details.\u00a0 The Plotter, on the other hand, goes into the same excavation site with a bulldozer.<\/p>\n As someone that is still trying to perfect his writing methods, I think about these perspectives on writing all the time.<\/p>\n It’s clear to me that each writer is different, and that the methods of one may not be appropriate as the techniques of another.<\/p>\n For myself, I’m starting to think that I need different techniques for different stories.\u00a0 For example, when I started\u00a0The Repossessed Ghost,\u00a0<\/em>I already had a character with a strong voice in my mind.\u00a0 I’d dabbled with him in a few short stories years before.\u00a0 I’d played him in a roleplaying game.\u00a0 I liked Mel, and I thought he deserved to be in his own story.\u00a0 But I wasn’t entirely sure what that story would be.<\/p>\n I started with a scenario.\u00a0 He’s a repo-man, and he finds a ghost in a car.\u00a0 What happens next?\u00a0 I thought that he’d become a suspect in her murder.\u00a0 So I went that direction.\u00a0 One thing led to another, and the ideas started to fall into place very organically.\u00a0 I wasn’t sure how the story would end, and I didn’t really know what the main conflict would be.\u00a0 Somewhere in the middle of the first draft, I started to think the book was a strange love story.\u00a0 I even tried to end it as a love story.\u00a0 That turned out to be a bad idea.<\/p>\n The first draft of that story involved a lot of Discovery Writing.\u00a0 I wound up editing it for about 3 years, and maybe it’s still not really done.\u00a0 I certainly don’t want to work on it anymore, right now.<\/p>\n That approach worked for that story, but it isn’t going to work for\u00a0Synthetic Dreams<\/em>.<\/em>\u00a0 That story is too complicated.\u00a0 I’m coming into this story with strong ideas about the world and the themes I want to explore.\u00a0 I didn’t know who the characters were until I was about to start writing.\u00a0 I really like the main characters now, and I want to see what happens to them.\u00a0 But they weren’t the ones that drove this story into existence.\u00a0 This story isn’t going to go anywhere unless I chart a course.\u00a0 So for Synthetic Dreams,\u00a0<\/em>I’m doing a lot of outlining.<\/p>\n In November, I’m starting an entirely different story.\u00a0 Like\u00a0The Repossessed Ghost,<\/em> I have a strong sense of the main character.\u00a0 But like\u00a0Synthetic Dreams<\/em>, the story is big.\u00a0 There are mysteries involved, and I have to know in advance what crimes my main character will be solving.\u00a0 I need to know the bigger picture so that I can make the smaller pieces fit together into a coherent whole.\u00a0 In preparation for NaNoWriMo, and to make sure that this new story makes sense, I’ve done some outlining.<\/p>\n There is no magical one-size-fits-all solution.\u00a0 If there was, we’d all be doing it.\u00a0 Instead, we fumble around, experimenting until we find something that works for us.\u00a0 And sometimes what works once doesn’t work the next time.<\/p>\n I think I like it like that.\u00a0 When I talked about playing music, I mentioned how I like to go into situations that scare me a little bit.\u00a0 Well, every story is a little bit scary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve talked before about Plotters versus Pantsers, and where I fall within the spectrum.\u00a0 To summarize, Plotters want everything planned in advance.\u00a0 They craft outlines which capture the high-level structure of their story.\u00a0 Within the nodes of the outline, they outline further, laying out the chapters.\u00a0 Within the chapters, they outline the scenes.\u00a0 They go 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