Plopantser. - an intuitive middle way
Writers are always being asked "Do you plot your books first, or do you write by the seat of your pants?" In my early years I was a pantser. Later as I got more serious I became a plotter. The last half dozen novels had fully worked out chapter plans before I started. I knew which character had the narrative thread, and what he or she was doing to move the story forward.
But as I worked my way through the plan, translating its flat statement of what happens into the living prose of the story, I saw things I needed to change. My plot outline often ended the chapter in the wrong place. When I came to write the action I found it often went on beyond the point of the strongest cliffhanger. So I altered the chapter plan. The typed script is full of notes like "move to chapter twelve" etc. The chapter plan told me what was coming next, but I had the flexibility to tweak it when I got down to writing.
In the book I'm currently writing I've become a plopantser, a hybrid of both approaches. I'm rewriting a fifteen year old manuscript that is, in effect, a finished first draft. There's a lot I like about it, but a lot I don't too. When I started to write I thought I needed a chapter plan, but I abandoned it a few chapters in. Now I'm being a plopantser. I'm using the original manuscript for my storyline, but adding characters, their backgrounds, and motivations,
The story revolves around a series of sabotage and murder attempts on a orbital shipyard. Originally I have five different bad guys, some of them with weak motivations. That always bothered me.
So now I've unified those criminal activities against the backdrop of an old inter-species war and the motivation of revenge. My experiment in plopantsing is going well so far.
But as I worked my way through the plan, translating its flat statement of what happens into the living prose of the story, I saw things I needed to change. My plot outline often ended the chapter in the wrong place. When I came to write the action I found it often went on beyond the point of the strongest cliffhanger. So I altered the chapter plan. The typed script is full of notes like "move to chapter twelve" etc. The chapter plan told me what was coming next, but I had the flexibility to tweak it when I got down to writing.
In the book I'm currently writing I've become a plopantser, a hybrid of both approaches. I'm rewriting a fifteen year old manuscript that is, in effect, a finished first draft. There's a lot I like about it, but a lot I don't too. When I started to write I thought I needed a chapter plan, but I abandoned it a few chapters in. Now I'm being a plopantser. I'm using the original manuscript for my storyline, but adding characters, their backgrounds, and motivations,
The story revolves around a series of sabotage and murder attempts on a orbital shipyard. Originally I have five different bad guys, some of them with weak motivations. That always bothered me.
So now I've unified those criminal activities against the backdrop of an old inter-species war and the motivation of revenge. My experiment in plopantsing is going well so far.
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