Wow. This was two years ago. My thoughts on this has changed: If discovery writing gets me going, I do that; if outlining gets me going, I do that instead. It's great to know how to do both. There are short stories I wrote with an outline, and there are some without one. I enjoyed crafting my stories on either processes. One thing I noticed when I was finishing my novels is this: I still discovery write even if I'm using an outline. The outlines I use are summarized so I have wiggle room for discovery writing a specific scene. Lastly, I also noticed that if I started without an outline, I still give myself breadcrumbs, which is like an outline but only for the next two scenes from where I left off. I think there should be a Kinsey scale for writers. I'd say I'm a 65% gardener and 35% architect.
The Old Rules were simpler & much easier to follow: Planner, Thriller dr1 : The ZX-81, so-called hit the computer markets of the world in 1981, although prototypes were released in 1980 on a limited distribution basis. Many of us relished this opportunity to program the ZX81, and when I say program I do literally mean program, let me lay it out for you. First of all one had to purchase one's machine, this was not always as straightforward as it sometimes might appear, because... Pantser WE just get the caterpillar out of the worm dribbly dribbly fried tomato, but like I say to Candy, you can't always crush the system, the system get you and nothing we can do just gotta write your stuff down and they can go to hell just ...When we blend the two, you see - we create literature: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, whatever...
Thanks for sharing the video! I'm a gardener at everything! I just can't escape it (how ironic is it that my name is Georgia?) I will make a thousand drafts and have several complete versions at my hands, then see they can't work and go back to start again. It's like we are the Hulks of writing. Smash until you win
I have 'flashes' of inspiration for a story. Over the course of a few weeks, scenes form in my mind, characters whisper lines of dialogue, and I develop a tone for the story. I treat these as 'signposts' along the journey - what happens in between will only be discovered as I write. I actually work in architecture as a day job, but when it comes to my writing I'm more of a hybrid
I have always been discovery babbler. Then I decided that location is not enough and started to invest thinking, time, writing and reading to outlining. I took some good methods, made some new ones and nowadays I wander around discovery-outline -line.
I used to consider myself a pantser, as did Karen, but in the sequel to the E&D, and also in @K McIntyre's sequel to Ruby, set in WWII, we are both finding ourselves involved in much more planning than our earlier efforts. In E&D my characters pretty much stayed together as a group, and while they were in an historical matrix of events, they didn't interact with any but the historical people in the story... who were largely selected because if I set the story in @100AD, that meant Trajan was the Roman Eperor, Emperor He ran China, King Vima Kadphises was king of Bactria. When I introduced my Xiongnu barbarian woman, I learned that the Xiongnu had been massively defeated in a major battle at Ilkh Bayan in 92AD, with hundreds of thousands killed, expelled to far Mongolia, or forcibly resettled in China, ethnic cleansing on a grand scale. My female warrior was twelve at the time, so this was the perfect impetus for her to become a warrior, revenge for losing her family and her whole clan, and for being accepted as such, as the Xiongnu had lost so many fighters. But that was convenient backstory developed after the fact as I researched the Xiongnu, not a plan In The Long Road Back to Rome, however, I am dealing with these same characters, ten years on. The Xiongnu characters are on the border of Kazakhstan and Mongolia, another person is in Liqian in China where I left him, one commanding a legion in Dacia, another a newly-minted centurion in another legion on the border with Parthia. The Senator is back in Rome, as well as two others in Aquilea near Venice/Trieste,who mercifully aren't going anywhere, but have roles to play. These people have to merge together in the Middle East, each for their own reasons and of course not knowing what the others are doing, in time for the Roman invasion of Mesopotamia in 115AD, and interact with the historical events of the time. So I was forced to adopt a planning technique I learned from David Poyer, a timeline/flowchart. Across the top are the real historical events, by month, from 111 to 117AD, that I need to interact with, for example, the Sixth Ironclad Legion (VI Ferrata) fighting the Armenians in the mountains on snowshoes in the late fall of 114 ... I can't miss describing that! Aulus is traveling with Trajan as a senior advisor, so he will be invovled with everything Trajan does: when he came to the area, negotiations with Parthia, etc, the decision to fight, the earthquake in Antioch that nearly killed him and leveled the whole city in 116. Vertically on the left are my fictional characters, what they are doing, why and where, so I can get them where they need to be within the constraints of transportation of the age: after all China is 6000 miles from the Middle East and Rome 2000 miles away. And I have to explore some historical considerations: was this war planned in advance, with Armenia a pretext, or was Armenia the real casus belli, and Mesopotamia just too easy a chance to pass up? I am leaning toward the former, because of the sheer size of the operation: fifteen legions from as far away as Germany. There had to be some massive preplanning, and I am winding up reading a lot of contemporary writers of this war, Dio Cassius, Arrian, etc. Karen has the same problem. Her MMC is an American serving as a doctor with the Royal Army Medical Corps, starting in 1939, and he needs to interact with the historical events of WWII in a plausible manner. So he will deploy with the British Expeditionary Force to France, then see the fall of France and either (a) be evacuated through Dunkirk, or (c) new plot twist, through an underground railway that got separated Brits and French Army soldiers out of France through Spain to Britain. Then to Egypt for the onset of the war in N. Africa, Sicily, Italy, all with Montgomery's Army, back to England for the Normandy buildup. So she is using the same kind of pre-planned historical timeline to structure hers. So whether you plan or pants can depend as much on the story you are telling as on your personal style
