I’ve written three novels (two of them good), a novella, and several short stories. None of these have been professionally published, so I have felt a little silly doing a blog post on craft. Nevertheless, my friend and YA novelist A.M. Root encouraged me to do so, and I trust her judgment that others might be able to learn from my experiences, un-credentialed as they may be. So, I’ll give a bit of insight into my process. I hope it helps some of you, especially if you find yourself, as I have, somewhere between “plotter” and “pantser.”

“Plantser”—apparently—is the term. I had never even heard the term pantser until I joined Twitter (writing “by the seat of your pants,” as opposed to plotting things out, for those unfamiliar), let alone plantser, but I did start to notice a few years ago that if I over-plotted, sitting down to actually write felt pointless. Sure, I would have a finished piece at the end, but what had started as an artistic endeavor now just felt like work. There were no surprises left, no opportunities for my brain to develop anything new, and I positively live for those new ideas that come to me as I write.  

But, neither could I “pants.” Writing without a goal in mind, without knowing I could finish the story, felt like my earliest forays into writing that ended after a page or two, or at most a few chapters, because they were directionless. I needed a general idea, but I couldn’t let myself go too far with it. To do so was certain death of my creativity and my motivation.

Any of this resonating with you? Any plantsers out there?

I wrote two novels without knowing any of this about myself. I think knowing it is important. If you don’t know how you work best, if you force yourself to fit someone else’s mold, I think you’re doomed to fail. Creativity is fickle, especially for those of us on the pantsing end of the spectrum.

That said, don’t be afraid to use what helps from the other side. As I near the end of my books, every single one, I have plotted out the final chapters. By then, I know that my creativity will carry me through, and I just need to work out the appropriate pacing and tie all the pieces of the plot together.

Before that, I have to keep things vague. As I go through my life, I allow that plotter part of me to think up scenes of conflict, turning points, confrontations, etc, and I play them out over and over in my head. If they resonate with me, they become points for me to hit along the way. That way, when I sit down to write, I’m not turning a detailed outline into a narrative form. I am allowing my pantsing brain to find a way to get my characters to the scene I’ve been growing more and more excited to write. Every step of the way provides opportunities for flourishes of world building and character development and more story, things that feed my pantsing heart and add depth to the work. The more my pantsing side adds to the story, the more I can plot out the end without fear of losing steam.

So how well does this work for me? I would love to say it works perfectly, but I have been writing “seriously” for ten years now, and that time has been riddled with long stretches of intense writer’s block. When you rely heavily on pantsing at the beginning, a lack of muse can stop you in your tracks fairly easily, and your resistance to plotting at that point keeps you on page one for what feels like forever. As of now, my two novels that I am proud of each took me two years to write, and my novella started as a month-long novelette, which was extended into a novella over the course of another month seven years later.  That’s about 4.2 years of successful writing over the course of 10 years. That’s not great.

My advice for getting past this is multifold, and I’m still working on it myself.

First, get a critique/creative partner who likes your work, whom you trust, and who is honest and helpful. Work with them often. I work with mine on a two hour video chat every Monday night, and nothing has been more helpful than this. With your CP, I recommend chapter-by-chapter edits. You finish a chapter, you send it, you get feedback. If you have something glaringly wrong/bad/plagiarized (unintended, of course), you can get feedback immediately before you’ve invested 80k words or more into an idea. It’s also hugely motivating to have someone to write FOR. You have an audience in mind, and that can focus you. Even just getting feedback is motivating for me. I know what works, what doesn’t, what can be changed, and the dreaded typos my own eyes miss because I’m the one who wrote them. Make sure you have a CP who tells you what works WELL, not just what doesn’t. Both are essential pieces of feedback, and it can be demoralizing and de-motivating to hear only criticism of your work.

Secondly, find another goal other than word count. Finish a scene. Solve a problem. Create a conflict. Resolve it. These are attainable goals that do not sound as sexy as being able to tweet “I wrote 6k today, you may now worship me as though I were a god,” but an emphasis on word count can discourage us from thinking critically about what we’ve written and lead to a reluctance to delete what isn’t working. It can also make you feel needlessly awful about NOT getting a “good enough word count” for the day, when what you did accomplish may be worth lauding. I once spent two full days of writing on a single description comprising a single paragraph, and it was entirely worth it in the end. You are creating art, not word counts. Focus on the art.

Thirdly, get comfortable deleting things. My pattern of writing (pants first, plot later) can leave me high and dry a lot. It means I write, and delete, and start over. A lot. I wrote maybe forty first-pages to my latest novel, and it only took one time, one opening line, to get me on the right track. Try different angles, different perspectives, different points in the action. Try again. It may be better than grinding away at something that feels wrong.  

Finally, trust your instincts. Hand-in-hand with the “delete things” idea, is that pantsing/plantsing requires that you love what you’re writing. If the words aren’t coming, something may be wrong. Maybe your character has the wrong motivation, the wrong attitude, or the wrong conflict. Maybe the story isn’t going where it really should. If you can’t bring yourself to write that next scene, don’t. It may not be what is supposed to happen. I write on instinct, especially at the beginning, and I always let instinct win over plotting. As far as I am concerned, it has never steered me wrong.

When your muse is with you, it can be like riding a burning wind of imagination. I wrote my latest short story in 24 hours, and it left me exhausted and exalted. I will be publishing it here soon. When your muse leaves you, it is absolutely crushing. You doubt whether you’ll ever write again, wondering whether you’ve lost it for good. It’s awful.  

All I can say is keep trying. Keep writing. Keep deleting and writing again. And more than anything, keep thinking about your world and your magic systems and all those things that make your ideas yours. The more you live in your world, the more you can imagine characters and conflicts within it. Stuck? Think up a new country, a new problem, and new social dynamic, a new threat. Let your mind wander about and imagine wonderful and horrible things.

That’s what I do, and it’s served me fairly well so far.

Thanks for reading. I hope some of this helps.

Until next time,

Paul R Monarch