Plotting For Pantsers

Those of you who know me know I am about as close to pure pantser as a writer who produces coherent stories can be. I often have no idea what's going to happen past the next chapter or so, and only a vague notion of how I'm going to get from there to the ending - if I know what the ending is supposed to be.

For those of us who plot by the seat of our pants (pantsers), it's a fairly common experience. It's also why plotters think pantsers can't carry a plot in a bucket. Of course, those of us who plot in detail (something I personally can't do) have nice detailed outlines and they know beforehand what's going to happen - so those fortunate souls probably look at pantsers like me with complete incomprehension anyway.

So how can a pantser plot? One option is to ask Pratchett how he does it (he's probably the most prominent pantser in the genre at the moment) - but he's probably not going to be able to tell you. See, the biggest difference between plotters and pantsers that I can see is that for plotters it's all up front in the conscious brain. Pantsers just about everything is subconscious until it needs to be made conscious (usually while you're writing it, sometimes later than that). I'll find myself dropping something in for no reason I can see - and then later it turns out to have been key foreshadowing.

Anyway, here are some of the things I do in lieu of having a carefully planned out plot. I try to have a very good idea what drives my characters, even when they're being recalcitrant. I look for at least one overriding need which they're going to try to meet. In Impaler, Draculea's strongest need is to protect his family - a need which is so strong he'll risk everything on the slim chance of success - not least because there is no other option.

Which is - for me at least - the key to plotting. Once I know what a character needs most, I arrange to remove the options they have of getting it to drive them into the method that will challenge them most. Impaler was easy - it was all historically there. For other books, I've used weather, other characters, anything environmental I can so that the only choice they've got is the one that leads to the end. Sometimes, if I have a character with a strong sense of duty I can use that instead - the character's own nature will push him or her into situations that force the plot.

Another technique is to borrow from the world of psychology. I hope you'll forgive the digression into what's only a short distance removed from pop psychology, because it does make a handy tool to figure out what that oh-so-irritating character will do next.

What I'm talking about is Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, which is at its core the simplest commonsense. The most basic human needs are for food, safety, and shelter - not necessarily in that order. If those aren't satisfied, higher order needs will be ignored in favor of meeting the lower order needs. So, starve your character, and his most urgent priority will be food. Put him at immediate risk of his life, and he'll do his damndest to survive. Strand him in the middle of winter, and he'll focus on finding somewhere out of the weather. And so forth. You can drive a plot a long way by this method, throwing obstacles that force your main character to fulfill a basic need in a way that will make their real goal harder to achieve.

Another useful technique is to re-use the minor characters, letting them help or hinder the main as the need arises. Pratchett uses CMOT Dibbler - and his many avatars - this way. Dibbler is mostly a background noise character, but he's always there and can be relied on to complicate things, drop a useful or frustrating hint, and sell food items of dubious origin. Pratchett could have worked with anonymous food vendors, but with Dibbler, he doesn't need to, and he has quite a bit of layered information in the things Dibbler does.

All of these things can help, but there's no real substitute for understanding plot structure. The thing with pantsers is, we need to understand it at a conscious level as well as an instinctive one. I use that order because that's the order I learned plotting. I read so much I have a built in grasp of what plot structure should look like. The result is that I'll naturally spawn intricately layered plots without really understanding what the heck is going on until - in extreme cases - I've finished writing the book. This isn't a good thing - the Epic With Everything is 160k words, and was written while I was still in uber-stripped-down style with next to no setting. Properly cleaned up and expanded there's at least three novels crammed into it, all of them hopelessly intertwined. Maybe one day I'll get good enough to tease out the structure of the thing and make it work as separate novels.

By learning plot structure at a conscious level, I have a better idea what's happening, so I can consciously shape what I'm writing to improve the pacing and foreshadowing in what I do.

What are some other ways pantsers can improve plotting?

My Pants Are On Fire

There is a story in you. And it will have to come out.

I used to have a cartoon on the fridge with a doctor giving a patient an xray and seeing a book inside him. Those words were under it.

If only it were that simple.

With me the process goes something like this: First there is the story, all inchoate and HUGE inside me. This is the time when it pushes to be written. I’ll have these fascinating characters – it always starts with characters to me – and they JUST have to be written.

Usually at this stage I know the main problem of the novel. I might also have – or not – a general idea of what the novel wishes to SAY. This is not always clear for novels. It always is crystal clear for short stories “This is a story about bereavement” for ex. Or “this is a story about how the stronger/more male culture takes the women.” Or, one of my favorites “You never know your kids.” Of course, the tech, etc. then serve that purpose. But that’s shorts. Novels, I get the character, their problem and a feel. Sometimes I’m halfway through the novel before I go “oh, duh. It’s about ... x.” And then I set about making that stronger.

And there you’re running into hints of what drives me insane. It’s the “Sometimes.” The initial push is usually the same – the feel of these characters and what they want and can’t have. But then we get down to brass tacks.

For years, I wrote outlines and followed them slavishly. Those of you who study my work, the three published according to this model are Ill Met By Moonlight; All Night Awake; Any Man so Daring. With Plain Jane, I wrote it all in one very quick run-through. It was in my head, then on the page. Fortunately, it was an unusual work. Being history “fictionalized”, the plot was not a big problem. I could have “Start with Jane as a child.” and “Put in a Cinderella structure.” Once that was done, I was fine. (No Will But His was MUCH harder, because there’s less that’s “fixed” on Kathryn Howard.)

By the time I hit Draw One in the Dark – running – I was dissatisfied with the way that the first three books read. Part of it, I realized, was that by writing the whole plot in advance – including subplots – I essentially locked myself in to an artificial structure before I PROPERLY inspected the terrain. It was sort of like the battle plans of WWI, before the generals saw what the weapons did.

No, I’m not insane. Well, not technically. I know the novel comes from inside my head. But those of you who’ve written books know, the perception of the character changes, the idea of who the villain is, and why he’s the villain. My villains tend to be A LOT more cardboard on the outline, until I come in contact with them and see them breathe and CRAVE. Some become much more horrifying – Nigel’s brother in Heart of Light who, I swear, wasn’t even a villain in the outline – and some become non-villains (Tom’s father in DOITD.)

Anyway, to counter what I thought was a hasty locking-in of events, I started plotting ONLY ten chapters ahead. This is how DOITD was written, and it gave me a chance to improve on my timing.

I wrote Heart of Light and Soul of Fire and the Musketeer Mysteries by THIS method. And then I hit a wall with Heart and Soul and Gentleman Takes A chance, which insisted on a) coming out at the same time b) not letting me plot the closure. I’m not sure how it worked with h &S but I think it worked very well with GTAC.

And then... I became a pantser. Which for someone like me, who has an absolute need of control, is sort of the equivalent of becoming a Martian. All of a sudden, I can write all the outlines I want – and do – the books WILL NOT follow them.

This is a huge problem. Weirdly, it doesn’t seem to make books harder to write, but it makes them incredibly more frustrating. I’ll get three fourths into the book and realize I have the wrong end of the stick. Sometimes, as in this case, I realize that the book I have essentially written (though some chapters are “something goes here”) needs to be completely recast and sharpened because the message is not only different from what I thought, the ... quality of the regime in question is different and my main character’s history is COMPLETELY different.

It’s also a problem because while it gives me flexibility in HOW to tell the story, it makes it impossible to put a story down once I’ve started it. Which robs me of flexibility in my career. I promised my agent I’d set the spec space opera aside and do the mystery and space opera that ARE contracted, but ALL I managed to do – already being halfway through novel – was block myself on everything. And now my only choice is to write the revision through, very quickly, so I can move on.

The main problem, though, is how stressful this method is. I will write till I stop/till I know it’s “off tune” and then I spend a week, a month (or in the case of Sword and Blood – which is still out there) three years trying to get the problem to manifest itself and the novel to gel. As we speak, for the first time in my life, I’m trying index cards. (Pray for me.)

I really am NOT at heart a pantser. And this still doesn’t feel like pantsying. I’m not meandering over the landscape, enjoying myself. It’s more that I have this very rough map, but it’s soooo wrong, I find myself taking all sorts of detours, and trying to find other maps.

So HOW do you do it? What part of the story does present to you first? And when it does, how do you coax the rest out? And more importantly, how does one cure Middle-Age-Onset Pantseyreyism?

Processing

*Guys, sorry to be so late. Something was trying to land on me yesterday and by the time I went to bed I'd forgotten what time it was. By the time I woke up I was two and a half hours late. SORRY.*


Everyone has a different process, of course. I know saying that seems like a given, but strangely, it’s not. I spent at least the first ten years of my career trying to fit the process of whichever advice book I’d just read or whoever had just spoken to our writers’ group. Considering how many people who write these books or give lectures talk about “the one true way” the idea of “more than one process” is probably more arcane than I thought.

But it gets worse than that because at least for me – how it is for you guys out there? – each book has its own process. Yeah, it might be close to the last one. At least I usually try the same “point of attack” because it usually works for me. But there’s the occasional book that just won’t “talk to me” and will keep me trying new things till it unlocks.

My older son, who is quite smart – smarter than I at any rate – is now writing his second novel. It took him almost two years to actually get going on it. Why? Because he couldn’t figure out what was happening in it. And he couldn’t “just write” till he figured out what the plot was because if he did that “everything will be trash. I’m not a pantser, I’m a plotter.”

I kept telling him “Some novels don’t tell you till you’re halfway through” (meaning of course, your subconscious doesn’t allow you to unlock whatever it’s come up with till you’re halfway through. I’m not under the illusion novels TALK) and “Just start it and find out.”

Of course he refused to for two years, which is why he’s only now doing it and finally figuring out what the novel is all about, etc.

With short stories my “process” is more consistent. Originally – though I never fit the “know everything about it before you put a word on paper” – I started with a short story outline. It went something like this (if I find the original, I’ll post it.)

POV Character:

Problem:

Setting:

Reason POV Character can’t obtain goal easily:

First attempt:

Block:

Second attempt:

Block:

Internal realization/mirror moment/story goal flip:

Third attempt:

Block/climax/resolution:

Epilogue:

Having this skeletal sort of outline allowed me to write the short story very quickly. The first time I found out there was an issue with it was when I got halfway through a story (Traveling, Traveling, sold to Analog) and realized it was complete. At that moment, I started suspecting my process was out of kilter. I think I still outlined a couple more, but after that, I found I had the entire short story completely in my head. No need to outline.

Does this happen to novels? Sometimes. That’s more insane because then I need to write very fast, before I forget all the twists and heaven helps me if I have to take a break because of an emergency.

So, how do you do it? Do you try to fit someone else’s process? Do you have your own? Does it change? Have you created your own? Did you take it from someone? Do you experiment? Does it vary by book?

Talk to me!

Almost exactly a year ago today I found myself at a cocktail party at RWA. In case you wonder what professional writers talk about when they get together, it goes like this: Money; taxes; weird contracts; how do you do *this*; books. More or less in that order.

The first time I heard this from a pro writer, when I was a wanna be I thought “Taxes?” but of course, if you assume that everyone has already made it in, and if you know that taxes for any creative artist are a mess not likely to be covered by accountants, you see the importance of this.

However, since this party was with total strangers – you don’t normally plunge into the money on introduction – it became the second to last topic. I.e., “how do you work.” Or in this case “Are you a plotter or a pantser?”

Since – pace Robert A. Heinlein – only a fool or a sadist tells the unvarnished truth on social occasions, I normally answer that with whatever I think will let me off easier. If it’s a working crowd, I say “Plotter” while if it’s a more sensitive, literary crowd, I say “pantser.”

However this day I had been drinking for something like 10 hours straight, and when I drink I don’t play around. It started with whiskey at nine in the morning... (It was my agent’s fault, I swear. The woman did tempt me and I did drink, Lord.) So by seven in the afternoon, I had reached that place of terrible and compulsive honesty where I tell the truth. In this case, “Both.”

Unfortunately this is not something that lets you off easy, so you have to explain. I do bizarrely detailed outlines to begin with. But it’s sort of like doing an exact road map of an eight hour trip. Once you get under way, you find there’s construction blocking a road you planned to use; another area the road has washed out in floods and yet another the map has nothing to do with what’s on the ground. So there is this tendency to get ten chapters in, discard my outline and make a new one. If I am under pressure, then I often end up with the beginning of a book, the middle of another, and the end of yet another, which I then have to change into a cohesive whole.

By the time I was done explaining, I swear people were edging away from me and contemplating calling the men in white coats on their cell phones. But to me it’s the only thing that works.

And while I would like to tell you that all my plotting is absolutely rational... well, a lot isn’t. Something comes alive. Or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, usually it means I’ve done something wrong. The book goes silent. The plot I have doesn’t work, but I don’t know what to do. This is when I start drawing. Or listening to the right music. Or playing with the directions and seeing where it goes. It’s rather like trying all the little back roads looking for a way back to the highway.

I just had a book go silent like that, and it took me a month to realize the “fork” I’d taken led to a lot of “business meeting” situations, instead of developing the plot through things people DO. So I’ve eliminated eighty pages and taken a different fork. And now the book is talking and flowing.

So, how do you do it? How do you think it should be done, and why? Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you have guesses about your favorite authors? Do you work differently for different stories? And does anyone out there discard as vast an amount of text as I do?

the plantser...

Dave Freer posting:

I blundered into writing. The bit about fools rushing in: that’s me.... And in retrospect maybe it was a good thing. You see Sarah advised things like seeking out writers and studying writing - well, I did the latter, but only other novels. There was NO money for ‘how to write’ books - we were on the ragged edge of disaster. As for other writers... Let me tell you they’re not thick on the ground in small towns in northern Zululand. Honest. I rattled several bushes and turned over at least three damp rocks. All I found was a slug and a very irate mamba. That was in pre-net days (the net was there I just didn’t have access until after I’d sold my first book)... so it was just me on my tod and a lot of novels - mostly courtesy of second hand book stores and other people’s throw outs.

I had no idea how to write a novel, but I wanted to. (I also had no idea of the obstacles - which can be a good thing too, except I was pretty damn dumb about falling over most of them, unnecessarily.) So I set about looking at the subset I was interested in - Not ‘authors I admire’ but, because I think oddly -- first book, good sellers. I looked at murder mysteries, romances, aga-sagas (yes, Maeve Binchy), thrillers, horror... even sf and fantasy. Made notes. Counted words per sentence. Worked out average syllables per word. Up and down peaks (number of pages). Noted character numbers, types, relationships, resolution types etc. Calculated proportions of dialogue. Yes. I am anal and obsessive, now that you mention it.

The one thing I never looked at was plot. All those nice books on plotting, 7 basic plots etc. which had I been in touch with writing books or my peers I would have been influenced by just didn’t come my way. So... as I didn’t know any better, I did my own way. Which, like most things I do is arse-about-face to most people. But it works for me. You see I am neither a plotter nor a pantser. I’m a character plantser, playing a complicated balancing act between situation and character. The end result is my books are usually born out of someone saying ‘you can’t do that!’(whereupon I must. Sorry.) So: I work out how said impossible thing could be done and that forms a core (and often an end) to my book. ("You can’t uplift rats and bats" - their skull capacity is too small - RATS BATS AND VATS. "You can’t be sure of habitable worlds around other stars" - A SLOW TRAIN TO ARCTURUS ) I then write about 5K... introducing my lead characters, setting the scene. Pure pantser. I then sit down and use those characters to derive my plot. I’ve set the scene - (and therefore have some idea of the obstacles - both physical and of character) I probably know the outcome. I now know the character. The point is the plotter has worked out how the character will overcome the obstacles and meet his/her true love and arrive at the end. Join the dots. The pantser waits for the character to tell them how to cope with the obstacle, which they can only do when they get there... which can make a story meander. I sit and game scenarios. Usually in the bath. I even remember to wash sometimes. The result is the obstacles change to fit the character ... and sometimes I go back and change the character to fit the obstacle.

The point I am trying to make in my usual circuitous way is no two characters will deal with the same obstacle in the same way. Let us assume a large angry mob crowding a street between our hero and his goal. Benito would go up the side of building and go over them. Marco would attempt to reason with them (and it would then be necessary to put in the mob parents of children he’d helped - modify obstacle) Manfred would simply try brute force and die (hence need to modify obstacle or add force) Erik would pick out the leader of the mob and attempt to draw him into single combat. Cair would throw a thunder flash. Fat Fal would run away shouting ‘there he goes’ and let them run past him. Arial would run up the trousers of the leader and taking strategic hold tell him to take her to where she wants to go. Howard would attempt to reason with them, and die (unless they threatened someone else). Fionn would step into an alley (needs to be an alley) and start a fire, and call them to it. Meb would try to imitate him and set fire to either herself or the entire street, and need rescuing (her talents are wildly out of control). So I will build the story around the character and the obstacles and whatever else they may need....

So... by not knowing how to do this I evolved my own method. It works for me.

And the bathwater gets cold.