Pantser to Plotter
Writing a novel is hard. I’m pretty sure I’ve said that before but some things bear repeating. The Fringe is my third novel and you would think that I’d have this novel writing stuff down by now. I don’t. As a matter of fact, it seems to be getting more difficult. While writing Eve of Redemption and Blood of the Fae I often commented that finding words was like pulling teeth, one at a time and each one very painful. The words did come, though, and most of the time I knew where I was going, if not always how I was going to get there.
The Fringe has been different. I have known the end of the story for a long time and I think that ending is very satisfying. I also know that there will be at least one more book in the Fae series. The problem with this story is that emotion is critical and I have a hard time with emotions. The characters in The Fringe are deeper, more complicated than those in my previous books. This is good. I believe that this shows growth in myself as a writer. It also scares me to death. It scares me to the point where I can barely move forward. I stare at that flashing cursor on my screen with no idea how to say what I want to say. This brain lock has me so stuck on the current scene that I can’t see clearly into the rest of the story.
Writer’s block, you might ask? I don’t think so. I have a pretty good idea what I want to write, I just can’t do it. I have vague glimpses of the future of the story but I’ve never been able to write forward while leaving unfinished business behind. My brain simply doesn’t work that way.
I’m a classic Pantser when it comes to writing. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a Pantser is one who writes from the seat of their pants making the story up as they go. That’s me. I’ve tried outlining in the past and, again, I have that problem of seeing into the future without having written the past. I figure out the story as events take place. I’ve actually killed off characters that I had grown very fond of without even seeing it coming. I was as surprised at the sudden turn of events as the poor character. Again, that’s how my brain works.
This past week I read a book on outlining that might have changed all of this. I stumbled across Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker on Amazon and something about it resonated with me. As I always do before purchasing a book on writing I looked to see if the author has actually written anything. Libbie Hawker has written and published a lot of books so I decided to give it a try. It’s a short book, full of great information and a system for outlining that didn’t leave me feeling dazed and confused.
I gave the Take Off Your Pants method a try and within an hour I had figured out the entire character arc of one of the main characters. So many pieces of the story fell into place in such a short time that I felt confident in it for the first time in a while. Of course, I have been working on this book for quite a while so I already had a feel for it. This method un-stuck me, though. I actually had fun, which is what’s supposed to happen when writing a good story. Hawker’s method teaches to go through the same process with all main characters which in the case of The Fringe is three of them. I am looking forward to going through the process with the other two and getting a good look at how this whole thing comes together. Onward!
Take Off Your Pants is currently $0.99 on Amazon Kindle. I definitely recommend it to both Pantsers and Plotters alike.
Take Care,
Tom