Pantsing vs. Plotting (yes, again)

Should I keep calling it the “lockdown” progress report? We’re not technically in lockdown anymore in California, despite the governor re-instituting restrictions for some counties.

Total words: 0 (but I have a good reason!)
Manuscript total: 75,492 (yes, that’s the exact same count as the last update)

I desperately want to be like my acquaintance and fellow lesfic author Jae. With a discipline and efficiency that I must (in the most warm-hearted way) attribute at least in part to her German-ness, Jae revealed at a GCLS virtual conference panel I attended recently that she “never gets writer’s block” because she plots out each novel meticulously and sees plot problems long before they arise.

In other words, unlike me, she never writes 75,000 words and then throws most of them away because they don’t work.

I want to be a plotter when I grow up.

I’m kicking myself, y’all.

After Soldier of Dorsa, I swore to myself and you, #NeverAgain. I told myself I had reinvented the writing process. But when I sat down to start on Empress of Dorsa, I somehow magically forgot all the lessons I learned, wrote a loose outline for only the first quarter of the book, and, growing impatient with outlining, off I went.

Finally admitting that I was stuck on Empress and had written myself into a corner YET AGAIN, this week I sat down and started outlining from scratch, using the tried-and-true author method of index cards.

I can teach an old author new tricks.

Right now, I’m stuck between the thoughts “every author’s process is different” and “yeah, but this is clearly not working for you if you keep throwing away weeks’ / months’ worth of work.”

I do think it’s acceptable to “discovery write,” which is a method of novel writing in which the author just “plants things and sees what grows.” George RR Martin is a discovery writer; so is Stephen King. It’s a method that slows Martin down, but it clearly doesn’t stop King from being prolific.

Other speculative fiction heroes of mine, namely Orson Scott Card (yes, he’s a writing hero if not a political one) and Brandon Sanderson — oddly, both Utah Mormons — are plotters.

I’ve mainly been a hybrid author, somewhere in between plotting and pantsing. Generally, I have started novels knowing a few broad plot and character brushstrokes — for example, I might know in advance what the midpoint or three-quarters mark will bring — and then I discovery write in between those broad brushstrokes.

But at least for this project, I’m committing to outlining the whole dang thing, very specifically, scene by scene and chapter by chapter, like dear Jae.

I’m not sure how much of the 93,000 words I’ve written so far are actually words I can keep. I’m hoping I don’t have to throw away as much as I did when writing Soldier, but I can’t say for certain yet.

Fantasy seems to lend itself more to plotting.

I will say this: I think that for me, attempting to write a layered, complex epic fantasy definitely requires more forethought than writing contemporary romance. So although I wrote To Have Loved & Lost totally by the seat of my pants and it worked out, I just think my process has to be different for these long fantasies I’ve been writing lately.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at. I’m still hoping to publish Empress of Dorsa before the end of 2020, but as I mentioned in my last post, I am not going to rush this book.

PS, if you haven’t heard, I’m publishing a piece of short fiction on Patreon today. It’s the first short story I’ve written in about six years!