Wanderlust

by Allison Pang

I've mentioned before that I don't plot too well. Or maybe it's just that I don't like to. For me, much of the magic is more or less lost when I have a play by play schematic.

Now, just because I don't plot much doesn't mean that I don't know where I'm going. For example, this new book I'm writing? I know the exact sentence it's going to end with. (And actually this book has pretty much become two books at this point - and I know the exact sentence *that* book is going to end with.) What it boils down for me is that as long as I know where I'm going, it doesn't really matter how I get there.

There's a caveat to that though - there's a big difference between author wanderlust...and author wanderLOST.

(I'm so horribly clever, aren't I?)

Just because I have a vague idea of where I'm going doesn't give me free rein to just arbitrarily create characters or scenes that don't have purpose.

Or really, as a panster, it does - however, the other side of that coin is cleaning it up. Obviously, YMMV, but for me, the first draft is nearly always a hot mess - the beginning works, the end works, but somewhere in the middle I tend to lose my way.

Sometimes that actually works out okay - I end up going down paths I hadn't intended to, and suddenly I see that one strand that ties it all together.  Sometimes that strand ends up unraveling the whole damn thing. I really try not to let it get that far, though. I can usually tell when something isn't working - that's when I back up a few steps and see what happens if I take it down a different path.

How do I know when something's not working? My characters start standing around snarking at each other. It's a bit like being a play director - sometimes actors can improv beautifully, but if they're constantly looking off-stage for their lines? Yeah...there's a problem.

If I get really stuck, then I will sometimes look at "plotting" - which for me involved writing down what I already know, and what I'd *like* to see happen. I do it with pen and paper instead of the keyboard because there's something about being able to doodle while I do it that helps me connect the dots.

I tend to brainstorm and puzzle things out best in the shower, though. I have been known to take upwards of 4 or 5 showers a day, though that's fairly rare. Hot water is relaxing and helps me think. (I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this - I know some people who have tile crayons they use in the tub for much the same reason.)

But that's about the extent of my plotting. If I'm feeling really up to it, I may actually put down plot points I'd like to see happen in hypothetical chapters. (e.g. Chapter X - they find a body. Might be under the bed. Who put it there? I will find out!)

The one exception to the plotting thing is my collab for the webcomic. 1) There's no undo button. I can't risk

writing us into a corner because the story is already out there and being read. 2) It's a collab for a reason - both Aimo and I have to be on the same page as far as where we're going. 3) It would be pretty unfair to Aimo to constantly change my mind. If she's only storyboarded a scene, that's easy enough, but once she's started inking? Yeah...no.

But for whatever reason, I don't mind plotting the webcomic at all. Don't know if that's because it's a collab, or because I'm just as eager as all the other readers to see my concepts coming to life in pictures. :)

Pantser or Plotter or...

My post it a little late this morning because the calls for Golden Heart and Rita finalists went out this morning. After the butterflies and angst over whether Enemy Within was good enough or not good enough, the phone rang once at 8:02 and then again at 8:09. :)  The book finaled in Best First book and in Paranormal. I'm still shaking. Now, however, I'm supposed to think clearly and work.

My answer to the panster or plotter question is: yes. I do an odd amalgamation of the two. There's another question that I have to ask in order to explain what I do. Are you a character driven or plot driven writer? If you're plot driven, what happens in your story defines who your characters are. If you're a character driven writer, who your characters are defines what happens in your story. I totally made those definitions up. But it really is how I think about story. I'm distinctly a character driven writer and up until the start of Enemy Within, I was 100% pantser. Which is to say, I had no clue where a book was going or why. I knew where it began and I know vaguely how I wanted it to end, but everything in the middle was a mystery. The result was a series of events that happened to my characters simply because I said so, or because I thought 'hey, this would be cool'.

Not a one of those books is publishable, much less published. By coincidence, just as I began Enemy Within, I took a Break Into Fiction workshop given by Mary Buckham. That's where I realized how very character driven I am and how desperately my storylines need to come from the strengths and failings of my characters.

So. I'm a plotter in that there's a huge set of templates (directly from Break Into Fiction) I work through for both hero and heroine before I can start writing. This puts me directly into their conflict and dilemma set. I have a good grasp of their emotional start points and of the arc necessary for each of them if they are to achieve their HEA. That, then, leads to situations and scenes that must occur to challenge the pair. But you'll note there's no actual plotting happening. That's because like several of my fellow Word Whores have already said, if I know too much about what happens, why should I write the book?

On the other hand, I can't know too much about the characters. The more I know, the better the book becomes. The more I know my hero and heroine, the better the chances that they'll start running scenes in my head without any input from me. Usually at night. As I'm trying to get to sleep. That's when I know a book has taken on a life of it's own. When it begins spontaneously generating, the characters and their story have begun living and breathing in spite of me. But I still don't know what's going to happen. I do sometimes wish I could be a plotter. I'd like to be a faster writer. This driving off into the fog thing isn't the most productive method around and I have a twisted desire to be insanely prolific.

So there you go. Panster? Yep. Plotter? Kinda - from a character arc standpoint. But now, to accommodate my wish to be prolific, it's time to go to work.