By Monette Michaels
Member, Speed City Sisters in Crime
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| *Image open source license for reuse |
When I began my writing career, I tried to be a plotter. I’d start my novels with pages and pages of beautifully outlined plot points and scenes. But once I got past the first chapter or so, I’d realize I wasn’t on point with my outline, that I had gone off in a new direction. Instead of continuing to write, I’d stop, revise the outline using the new direction in which my muse or characters had taken me, and then pick up where I left off in my novel. After stopping and rewriting/revising my outlines for several books, I finally just said to “hell with it.” I spent more time revising outlines than writing. What was worse – the outlines stifled my creativity. I had to find another way.
So that made me a pantser, right? Wrong.
Being A-type, I still needed some structure. There had to be a starting and an end point. And I soon realized I needed certain things to happen along the way. I didn’t need to know every scene that would occur in the book, but did have to assure that my characters wouldn’t end up meandering all over creation and getting stuck in the middle.
In the plot-point method, all a writer needs to know is where to start (the set up) followed by the first main plot point, the inciting incident, where your main character is forced outside his or her comfort zone and forced on a journey to attain a goal. Then after a series of scenes and complications (the middle), there is the second main plot point, the crisis, where the main character is forced to make a decision in an effort to attain his/her goal and which then leads to the final climactic scenes and, eventually, the end.
That’s two plot points. Very important ones to be sure. The bulk of the novel is then made up of scenes that turn on complications facing the character(s) in attaining his/her goal(s).
This simple method allows you the room to let your novel evolve rather than follow a strict outline. And, if your characters are anything like mine, they are fairly bossy and know what needs to happen next.
Thus, when someone asks me whether I am a pantser or a plotter, I tell them I’m a quasi-pantser. Maybe you can be a quasi-pantser, too.
Monette Michaels is a Speed City SINC member who has over twenty-five published novels and is best known for her romantic thriller series, Security Specialists International, and her science fiction romance series, The Prime Chronicles. She also has written paranormal romantic suspense under the pen name Rae Morgan.
I really enjoyed this article. I was a die-hard pantser, although I didn't know there was a name for me. I remained a pantser even after I began making notes and plotting points to help herd in my gamboling characters who loved to wander off subject into friendlier pastures. As I took more and more classes and attended lectures to help me hone my writing skills I began to see more clearly that I was both a pantser and a plotter. I called myself a hybrid or a plantser. But to be honest, I was mostly a batttered author, a victim of my characters who insisted on directing me this way and that, marking their own paths with no regard to my desires. I've learned to follow my characters' directions for the most part but subtly (ahem) guide them into proper paths. Sometimes there's a backlash which can often be worked into the story for the benefit of all. Other times, well, what was I saying...
ReplyDeleteOh, yes, I really liked this article. Good points were made. A writer can be -- in fact I believe, must be --- both a plotter and a pantser, or as Monette puts it, a quasi-pantser. I like her simple method of letting the novel slowly evolve from its starting point to the end goal with a few plot points in between to help guide the writer, and the characters, along the way.
Such a simple method. Yeah, right! There is nothing simple about writing. It's actually hard work. We have to love to write or we would never face the obstacles it brings.