For me it's a bit of both - a bit of planning, a bit pf pantsing. I've usually got a general idea where I want to go, how I want the character to change and so on...
Inductive reasoning. For all we know the world is full of Shakespeares who never get near a publisher.
Yes, I particularly like the Lincoln quote where he's warns us not to believe everything we read in the Internet.
Frederick Forsyth apparently wrote The Day of the Jackal in about 30 days on a typewriter, meaning he effectively finished the book in that time. Clearly he was driven and it's a fact that I've always kept at the back of my mind. I keep notes and reminders, re-run the story in my head and just write. I don't outline.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/03/day-jackal-frederick-forsyth " The novel took Forsyth just 35 days to write" At 30 wpm (my wife worked with a journalist who could touch-type at 110 wpm, so 30 is allowing time to think up that killer phrase!), that's 78 hours work. Put in a ten-hour day (the guy was broke) and you've got time to edit it at least twice! Bear in mind that he was a journalist, accustomed to writing competent English pretty much first draft (and, since we're talking typewriters, he would have been practiced at NOT messing up and re-editing a WORD doc), he had knowledge from his journalism of an actual assassination attempt on De Gaulle, and he'd been in contact with mercenaries in Biafra, who'd taught him a lot about the seedier side of Europe. Before the internet, the research he'd managed was formidable.
I'm a planning pantser - is that a plantser ? - I generally have an idea in my head of where the story is going before i start , but i pants the detail ... also quite often whole scenes appear out of the ether that were included in my original plan what i don't do is write the plan down as that really kills the creative flow
Hello there, I'm new here. My husband and I are both songwriters and once we were performing at a Writer's Festival and took part in a story workshop. At the end of the workshop I had a multi-layered story idea but only one sentence (which i was still rewriting constantly, like a poem) whereas my husband had over 2 pages of a really funny story which he hadn't yet thought out fully. I learnt then that there are so many different ways to write. And I felt like i had held myself back by trying to think it all through first. I am a deep thinker and can definitely get lost with the fairies sometimes! My songs have mostly been spontaneous creations and my poems are like tiny universes of sound and image which are just fun to craft out of words and space, but writing a book....... I just don't know how to approach it. I have a book to write which I have been researching for years and now need to start writing, but this is a new format for me creatively and I am so nervous. I would love to get into a flow of writing as I have so much I want to say in this book, but my creative side wants to play with all the word sounds and symbols, which prevents me from simply getting information down ! Thank you for reading and hello from Ireland
Persephone welcome to the forum and I hope you have good luck in your writing effort. Writing songs would seem to be a different world from writing stories (novels) since you have to get your story done in a few minutes of singing as opposed to thousands of words with writing. I love Bob Dylan's music which can often be quite lengthy, but even at that they are just a few minutes of words. I would suggest starting with short stories and also reviewing some shorts in the workshop section and then posting your own feedback so that you can gather the points needed to post your own work when you are ready. Spend as much time as practical looking through this forum to absorb as much knowledge as you can, writing is a lot more complex than I would have ever thought - it is so easy to read a good book and so hard to create one. I don't know if writing music has much creative carry over to writing stories but maybe it does. If your music originates from things you have experienced in life maybe you can take a personal favorite song and develop the story behind it into a full short story or more. Good luck and may all the high notes in life be melodious. (as you can tell I prefer to see the lighter side of life)
In 1996 I was reading a non-fiction, "Seamanship in the Ancient World" part of which dealt with Roman Indian Ocean trade. This mentioned they got as far as Borneo, and by 166AD had a presence in the court of China. This started me wondering what the first Roman mission to China would have been like, and found that although there had to be a first, there was no surviving record of it. So backing up from 166 and allowing time for things to happen in the first century, I figured that they would have started around 100AD. They would have gone by sea, since Parthia was hostile to them. There would be two soldiers, besides the ambassador, some love interest that would screw things up in court and force them to return overland under duress. Twenty years and 800 pages later, it is finished, and I am marketing it. To be sure, I often did not know exactly how a chapter would turn out until I wrote it. So yes, @Nebulous, it can be done. If I had to have all those answers in advance, I never would have started.
I actually don't mind the term 'pantsing,' although I'd never heard it until after I joined this forum! Writing by the seat of the pants versus planning everything out beforehand seems straightforward enough for me. It's as good a word as any, especially when you're contrasting it with 'planning,' which is usually the case. And there is always the matter of degree as well. Some plan an outline and pants the details. Others pants most of it, but, like @EdFromNY, have a general idea of their plot, the characters and the ending of the story in mind when they start out. Each pure method has strengths, but each has weaknesses as well. Whichever method you gravitate towards, be aware of these attributes. Pantsers run the risk of starting and never finishing. If a story goes off the rails or doesn't seem to lead anywhere right off the bat, the temptation can be to just drop it and try something else. The end goal of every writer is probably to produce a finished product. Pantsers should keep this goal in mind and stick to the process of writing 'organically' if that's the method they prefer. And, of course, if something doesn't work or doesn't fit your story it can be changed or discarded. It's not necessary to get everything perfect until you're actually submitting for publication. So go ahead and be organic. Just make sure you finish what you start. And then edit the hell out of it. Planners, on the other hand, often don't GET started. They can become so embroiled in the planning process that they never start the actual writing. Or, when they do, they can discover the story has lost its appeal and feels flat and uninspired. They can become dot-connectors, and may reject a fantastic new idea if it turns up later and screws up their plans. They can also become so fixated on their outline that they refuse to admit that something they have planned doesn't actually work in practice. So planning also has its drawbacks. I'm all for encouraging diversity in writers, so I'm glad there is this 'controversy.' Or, more accurately, this topic. It's good to think about the method you prefer. I'd hate it if everybody wrote the same kind of story the same kind of way. Dull dull dull....
You mean you don't plan ahead! I want to know where I intend to go, whether I get there or not is not as important as simply having a destination to strive for. To expand on jannert's comment I think pansters may have a better chance of completing their story, I wouldn't think they have to worry about following a set path, if they like what they have done then they can simply call it complete when they want to. Even then I think pantsters probably have a particular outcome to their story in mind.
Yeah, there is always degree. Most pantsers probably have some kind of notion of what they want to do, and most planners probably realise there are a few details that will work themselves out as they go. There will always be the purists, of course, but most of us combine the two methods to some extent. As a person who leans towards pantsing, I found I often didn't know a character's name till I actually wrote them. No character bios for me! I'd get to the part in the story where the character would appear for the first time, and the name would just spring into my head. I pre-named only a couple of my characters. Is that weird, or what?
In the begining I woefully under prepared. To be honest I would just write. Like Christina mentioned, sometimes you know your characters so well, you get them doing all kinds of stuff but nothing anyone would want to read about. My first story, which I recently finished, took me 3 years to write. Not because it was a difficult story to tell but because I changed my mind alot. After writing lots of nothing interesting about my new friends living in my head, I decided to knuckle down and give the main character a cause with a goal. I sat and thought about what my main characters flaws were, their fears and what made them tick. Once that was done, the ideas started to flow. Soon enough, I had 3 points down on paper. I set the begining the middle and the end. So, when I actually began writing the story itsself, I knew where I was going. Events changed throughout the process and I did many re-writes, but I think because I knew my ending and why it all began in the first place, it kind of helped me. I've already started another story, and again, I know where it's going to end up. I have two different endings, too, which luckily for me does not affect the story before it. So, come the end, I shall wait and see what my Beta-readers think and make a decision form there. Saying all that, I have the freedom to change the begining, middle and the end anytime I like. Why...because I can.
I had a very different experience. I was woefully under prepared to write my first novel but I had a solid idea of where it would go. The plot was pretty linear and only spanned a few days time. I sat and wrote it in a month or less. I got up every day and wrote through the problems. It's currently gathering dust in my hard drive while I gain the skills to go back through and make it presentable. For the next one, I'm going to plan much more of it. Only because I think it will result in a better first draft and story all together.
Most of my ideas begin with vague notions and then I start writing. My WIP was triggered by a picture I came across on the internet of a young man dressed up like a Dryad? My mind immediately started creating a why - and I thought of a boy hired to play a part in a TV series. I started writing and eventually fleshed out my characters and conflict. I don't always like to know where I'm going ... I like to find out on the journey. I'm like a driver who hops in a car and sees where the road carries him. It might not be as exciting as having a destination but that's what 2nd drafts are for.
I think sometimes you have to just go with it. Your process might not be someone elses way of working but that doesn't make it wrong. I've read in the past, that you have to do x, y and z in order to write a good story... what a load of old cock-a-doodle-doo, everyone is different. You'll find what works best for you soon, and you'll do it in your own unique way, and I'm sure the results will be fab!
It's really just a matter of trial and error. I like to hear and read what other people have to say about process. Even if they speak in absolutes. I know that no two processes are the same. That kind of "do this, don't do that" can be damaging for someone who doesn't know how to apply those rough guidelines to their work.
And sometimes people confuse, I think, what's "right for them" with what's easiest. If writers are following a certain process and the results are meeting their expectations, fantastic. But if they're disappointed with the results, I think it can be a good idea to experiment with the process. I agree that there's no one right way to do things, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to our process and try to refine it as needed.
See, where were you when I needed you. I was one of those idiots who listened to the do's and don't's of writing. It damaged me, hence my name
