Barbara Neville's Blog - Posts Tagged "pantser"
The shotgun method
I'm not a linear writer. I'm a pantser. As in seat of the pants. No outline. I have a scrap of dialogue, maybe one line or two. A state of weather, like a gunmetal sky. A character personality exposition, maybe four or five lines. I make each of these a chapter. I fully expect to shake and stir. The timeline is nebulous, it ebbs and flows as the work goes on.
The characters run my plots. As I write their dialogue and actions, they constantly surprise me.
Instead of saying, wait I wanted you to end up at 'x'. I say, 'Fuck it." and let them lead me to 'y'.
I start with no perceivable idea of plot, other than the thin thread of genre, and even that isn't set in stone. My characters play in two genres now. Western Sci fi and historical western fiction. The two series are separate if you don't think that the mix of western and science fiction is a possibility, but they flow together if you do. I mean, aren't cowboys smart enough to pilot a spaceship? Or perceive of the future?
Okay, I'm off on a tangent. But, my books get out there too.
I have a preorder (Hell to Pay) on Amazon that goes live Feb 9th. Hopefully. The plot is unfinished, unmiddled, too. But it is evolving. Ideally, I need another 16,000 words, too. Or it can be shorter, if the ending works out okay. Preferably better than okay. This novel is my NaNoWriMo work from November, but, the 50,000 plus words I wrote, crossed genres about 50/50, so I decided to split them into two books. My historical western fiction, which I thought would be covered in a chapter, took up almost half of the 50,000+ words. So, two books, one 80% done and due Feb, 5 for the Feb 9 launch. The other about half done. Wish me luck.
The characters run my plots. As I write their dialogue and actions, they constantly surprise me.
Instead of saying, wait I wanted you to end up at 'x'. I say, 'Fuck it." and let them lead me to 'y'.
I start with no perceivable idea of plot, other than the thin thread of genre, and even that isn't set in stone. My characters play in two genres now. Western Sci fi and historical western fiction. The two series are separate if you don't think that the mix of western and science fiction is a possibility, but they flow together if you do. I mean, aren't cowboys smart enough to pilot a spaceship? Or perceive of the future?
Okay, I'm off on a tangent. But, my books get out there too.
I have a preorder (Hell to Pay) on Amazon that goes live Feb 9th. Hopefully. The plot is unfinished, unmiddled, too. But it is evolving. Ideally, I need another 16,000 words, too. Or it can be shorter, if the ending works out okay. Preferably better than okay. This novel is my NaNoWriMo work from November, but, the 50,000 plus words I wrote, crossed genres about 50/50, so I decided to split them into two books. My historical western fiction, which I thought would be covered in a chapter, took up almost half of the 50,000+ words. So, two books, one 80% done and due Feb, 5 for the Feb 9 launch. The other about half done. Wish me luck.
