#pantster

[starofthemorning16]

[carasueachterberg]

A Game of Inches

A Game of Inches

I was recently reminded of the value of taking little steps to achieve a big goal. If you’re a football fan, you are probably familiar with the phrase, “It’s a game of inches,” made popular by a screaming Al Pacino in the 1999 film, Any Given Sunday. I truly believe that writing is also a game of inches. That’s how I wrote my very first novel. I had no idea what I was doing and it would be…

[st0rmyskies]

If Champions parents were sheikah deserters, is champion sheikah?? Is the blonde hair and blue eyes a disguise?

I haven't decided, personally, whether Champion's parents were of Sheikah origin, or if they were Hylians who joined the Yiga later in life.

Or, even worse, if Champion was abducted from a family and assimilated into the Yiga at a young age.

[muffinsandpages]

I was happily writing when I realized that I could change a big/small plot point that would solve so many problems but also royally mess up my planning and idk if I want to take that road or not

Problem is, I need to decide what to do before continuing because I'm at a crossroad. It's either this or that

[kevinklehr]

Pantstering my plot

I felt like I was pantstering even though I have an outline. But it’s an updated outline on an excel spreadsheet clearly showing what currently happens in each chapter, and what needs to be changed. And as I created this spreadsheet ages ago, it felt like I was pantstering recently, giving the characters licence to delve into other subtext while I hardly remembered what I planned for them in…

[nanowrimo]

5 Techniques to Help You Write Your Novel

Every writing project is unique, and the methods that help you draft one novel may not work for another. If you’re getting started on a brand new project this Camp, NaNo Guest Vee James has some suggestions for different techniques to help you explore your story. It took a few NaNos before I realized I was developing different techniques each time I sat down to the challenge. I think we all do this naturally, but it helps to step back and observe the process. If you’re strictly a pantster, you’ve been working on the story ideas in your head. If you’re a planner, you’ve set to paper the story concepts, characters, and an outline of what you are about to produce on paper. Some people take a hybrid approach to NaNo. Granted, the basics remain the same: butt in chair, accomplish the hourly/daily goal, and allow yourself to tell your story.

I discovered that each unique novel presented particular challenges, and I had to adapt my style and writing techniques in order to explore the story and keep the production happening. Some of these came from writing instructors and wonderful podcasters. Some came from “how to write” seminars and workshops. Others grew out of a feverish search for “more words.”

Here are five techniques I’ve found that helped me advance writing projects:

1. Research

It was a surprise to me to discover the concept of researching for fiction. I initially thought, “Just make something up.” But there are so many ways to broaden your approach. Plumb your memory, take a course in something related to the story, talk to an expert, and ask lots of questions. You could even become like the character in order to feel what they feel. If you’re writing a western, go ride a horse.

2. Write Scenes Out of Order

If you have a premise, you’ve already got scenes in your mind. Don’t wait until you get to chapter 18. Write that scene now. You can always revise it when you catch up to that point and it gives you something to develop toward. To expand on this technique, when you’ve written the scene, ask yourself, “What happened just before this?” or “What does this scene lead to?”

3. Put disparate characters together and have them have a conversation

Often, we write secondary characters who take a more subdued role in the plot. But what would happen if your protagonist’s best friend had a conversation with the main antagonist? Or if the antagonist’s agent of destruction came upon the protagonist’s love interest? In my experience, these conversations frequently produce more depth in your secondary characters and almost always it’s something you weren’t expecting.

4. Play with Genre Tropes

What have you chosen to write? Urban fiction? SciFi? Fantasy? You already know what your reader expects you to write, and what the plot ahead holds for them. How can you twist it? Sometimes the simplest thing you mentioned in chapter one can be the linchpin of a great plot twist.

5. Study Film

It’s no accident that some of the most astounding stories have been told through film. Quite simply, movie companies invest heavily in every aspect of their production and hire some of the best writers around. Yes, it’s a visual medium and has some advantages over prose. But the main lesson with movies is in the structure of the stories they tell. Here’s a good example: when I was writing a fairytale novel, I wanted to stay true to the classic story structure. One afternoon I was watching the comedy, Galaxy Quest, taking careful notes on the structure. I realized the story structure mapped very closely to what I was doing in the fairytale. It was comforting to see this, and it also gave me some ideas on how to approach the ending.

Most importantly: NaNoWriMo is a thrilling if exhaustive experience, and I urge you to immerse yourself in it completely. Write with utter abandon, delve deep for concepts that will give you the next 2000 words, and try new things like you’re a Mad Scientist in a hurry. We all know that what you end up with is a messy creation. But you will find you have given yourself a great gift.

Vee James is a cross-genre author who loves to write comedies, fairytales, and YA supernatural. He participated in NaNoWriMo for ten years in a row, writing over a half-million words, and it led to nine NaNo novels plus two more non-NaNos. Out of this work, he’s published four novels, with a fifth nearing completion. If interested, visit his site at www.veejames.com and leave a message. He loves to talk to writers of all kinds. Vee's photo by A. Roger Hammons Photo by Daniel Álvasd on Unsplash

[alana-lantana-the-writa]

writeblr intro ☀️

Hi there, I’m Alana (she/her)! Welcome to my (mandatory) writeblr intro! This is my first time doing an intro like this so cut me some slack if it sounds a little awkward haha.

ABOUT ME

Have been writing since I was a kid :)

Black 👋🏽

Hobbies (beside writing obvi lol) include drawing, reading, baking, and making miniatures

From ‘Murica 🦅🍔

WRITING

I will be upfront in that I am a tried-and-true pantster and nothing will ever change that, so 99% of the time my stories change a lot from what they start as. But I do have some WIPs that are in varying degree of draft-hood!

WIP 1 🩵🇯🇲✨ My current baby right now lol. It’s basically a historical fiction with magical realism and Jamaican cultural elements. Imagine Encanto but Jamaican lol. Most of the story is set in the 1950s between the U.S. and Jamaica but parts include flashbacks to early 20th cent. Jamaica. It obviously deals with a lot of real-world issues of the time BUT it also includes romance, slice-of-life, and just coziness to break up real-world struggles!

WIP 2 🩵🤰🏼🤰🏾🍼🕰️ The emojis for this one are crazy 😭 But basically it’s another historical fiction story set in the 1950s (that time period for some really weird reason ends up in a lot of my stories 😭) It’s inspired off of those “unwed mothers” homes that were prevalent back then and just how the conditions were really horrible for single mothers/teen mothers.

WIP 3 🩵🧚‍♀️⛰️ Haven’t really started writing this one yet, but the best way to describe it is an adventure story with the main characters being fairies in a fantasy yet still “post-apocalyptic” world. It will make more sense once I actually start working on it 😭

GENRES

Historical fiction, magical realism, fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian

Sometimes subplots of romance

[shantismurf]

"The Mushroom Mine" sign by @shantismurf, with assistance from @tickles-ivory

As part of the celebration of the one year anniversary of the Bagginshield Book Club, we asked the lovely @chrononautintraining a few questions about this wonderful work.

June 2024 Author Q&A with Chrononautical

Q1. What name would you like us to use and what are your pronouns?

A1. Chrononautical or Chrono, She/Her

Q2. How many years have you been writing? 

A2. Most of my life, but posting publicly for about 15 years.

Q3. What do you think of as your writing style - are you a plotter or pantster?

A3. Pantster, primarily, though I've learned my lessons and do like to know where a story is going to end when I start it these days so I try to plot. 

Q4. What’s your favorite genre/trope to write? 

A4. Speculative fiction: stories about magic or science fiction, primarily. 

Q5. Is there a genre/trope you haven't written as much of yet that you're excited about for future writing?

A5. I'd like to do more comedy.

Q6. Was there an idea or scene that inspired A Passion for Mushrooms?

A6. Passion for Mushrooms is one hundred percent inspired by the quote I used for an epigraph: "Hobbits have a passion for mushrooms, surpassing even the greediest likings of Big People." - The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien. 

When I decided to write it, the fandom already had more than a few stories about Bilbo planting gardens and deciding to stay in Erebor with a miraculously alive Thorin. I was completely here for all of that, of course, but I wanted a story where the garden wasn't special because of gold or rare plants bought with gold. I wanted there to be a treasure that Bilbo could appreciate with the Baggins half of his heart, as well as the Tookish bit. And I know next to nothing about mountains, but I do know mushrooms do okay in caves, so... 

Q7. Did you do any special research before writing the work?

A7. If you're asking this because I go deep on How To Pluck A Chicken In A Medieval Kitchen during the cooking scenes, you're right and you should say it. I am a middling cook, but all of my ingredients come from grocery stores. I had to do a fair bit of research on the cooking aspects of the story that were furthest from my own experience. Fortunately, the professor already put tomatoes and potatoes in Middle-earth, so I didn't have to go Full Historical. 

Q8. Did the story change from how you originally envisioned it? Were there scenes or plot elements you had to cut out?

A8. It absolutely did. Because I am, as previously said, a pantster. I wanted a bigger bang for the ending of the story than I was set up to get. I could have stopped with Bilbo and Thorin getting together and had some simple falling action, but that didn't perfectly tie the subplot of Dis and Tauriel back to the main pairing, which I knew I wanted. Having Doron try to poison Bilbo was actually a late in the game choice. If I'd planned that from the start, I would have threaded him into more of the middle sections of the novel. 

As for cutting things out, the additional stories in the series started as deleted scenes/reader requests that I couldn't find use for. So most of what I cut didn't end up in the rubbish bin. Anything that wound up there really wasn't worth posting. 

Q9. Do you have a favorite moment from the entire series?

A9. I still really like "A Spy In The Shire" a lot. I know it's so self-indulgent to say that about a story focusing on an OC, but if the point of the Battle of Five Armies is to reclaim Erebor for the dwarves, then I want that to mean something. I want the average dwarf to be in a bad place. I want the average dwarf to need Erebor the way Thorin needs Erebor, to be willing to do anything to get back to the Lonely Mountain. Because if that's the case, then all the sacrifice means something. When I talk about this one luckless dwarf on the world's silliest quest to figure out how to help the king hook up with a hobbit, I'm talking about hope for the future. I'm talking about all the people who long for and dream of the home that Thorin was willing to die to reclaim. I think about them going back there and living better lives. It brings me peace.

[redux-iterum]

Writing question, not redux question! Do you or Lynx have any tips for planning such elaborate stories? Every detail of your world and writing has such thought put into it, so I’m curious how you organize or plan your works!

DULLARD: Well, what mainly helps this blog in particular is having two people working on this that specialize in different areas! My main job is to write the story, the characters and the more general lore, as well as answer asks. Lynx works in the specifics of the timeline, history, genealogy and keeping track of all the little details we come up with for future plots. I joke that I’m the blue collar to her white collar, if that makes sense - we have both sides of writing this setting covered. We also have an absurd amount of shared docs to keep track of everything and are in constant communication with each other, presenting ideas and discussing whether they’re worth keeping or not. We do write everything down, but I would be remiss not to note that Lynx’s excellent memory is the only reason half of this shit hasn’t been lost to the ether. 

If I had to give a specific tip, it would be to write EVERYTHING down - every plot point you think of, character note, idea (whether or not you use them), worldbuilding concept and anything else. You never know what you’ll forget, especially if you’re working alone! Having multiple documents organized by topic will help with that (one doc for mythology, another for culture, another for plot points, etc). Don’t do what I do, which is to name my documents and images extremely unhelpful names for the purposes of amusing yourself. You WILL lose track of which doc has what thing.

LYNX: I will be the first to admit that I'm far from the best person to give writing advice, considering I haven't published anything substantial and just have a lot of incomplete scribblings which may never see the light of day. Dullard and I also have wildly different ways of approaching our writing; they're more of a plotter/outline writer/architect and I'm more of a pantster/discovery writer/gardener. A lot of writing advice is geared towards architects while gardeners (at least in my experience as an aspirant writer) have their methods of writing left largely untouched, and so get the idea that writing as you go along is "bad writing" (ignore the entire body of works of Stephen King, Hayao Miyazaki, and Terry Pratchett, all written more or less on the fly). 

Yeah, so that's how I have barely written anything since I was a teenager :D 

I'm still relearning how to write myself; I just discovered I'm a gardener last year and I have years of ineffective writing advice to unlearn. I'll parrot some advice I've been told.

Keep documentation on-hand for easy referencing. I use the app Obsidian to make myself a personalized wiki for characters, worldbuilding elements, and suchlike. It's not built for having writing in it, but I can wrestle it into working for my needs!

It's okay to leave some elements ambiguous and open-ended. It means less work for you and more mystery and fun for your audience (even if that audience is yourself!)

If you're a gardener like I am, treat your long-form writing like each chapter is an episode of a TV show. You might have the season finale sketched out, so find ways to get your characters there and what complications arise in their path!

Your characters are tools. You may be attached to them, but they are here to serve a function in the narrative. If they are serving their function poorly, that's when they're a bad character.

The only wrong way of writing is one that stops you from writing.

[writtenonreceipts]

Ate lunch, went for a walk (for some reason I get so anxious walking around outside that it makes my walks super short) and am now gonna settle back in.

Getting into chapter 4 where most of the set up and foreshadowing needs to happen which, while I'm excited for and nervous about being able to pull off.

Originally when I planned this book it was a short 50k novella companion to a bigger series, but then as these things go it finished at 85k. So I decided to flesh it out a bit more and push it closer to 90 maybe 95k.

Writing time! I have the day off so we're gonna write as much as possible today!

Right now I'm editing the first chapter of my og book and need to be held accountable for it 🤣 so you get my ramblings.

Notes pulled up, caffeine acquired and specific playlist ready.

Block the tag writtenwrites if you don't wanna see this/updates ❤️

[negative-speedforce]

Talk Shop Tuesday:

Who would you say is your most complicated character overall? Whether that be character traits, physical appearance, power sets, or anything else? By contrast, who do you think is your simplest character?

Can you describe your process for creating your characters? How do you decide on those deeper details once you've come up with the basics - do things just fall into place, or are they targeted choices?

Probably Siv, for my "most complex character". If you come from any angle, they're definitely complex- morally, personality-wise, in their design, her powers, etc. As of yet, my simplest character is probably Kelsie, her role in-universe is basically to be a therapist that specifically works with metahumans.

Then, for your latter question, they kinda just... come to me. I often have vague ideas for characters who sound cool. Stuff like little concepts, a power set, maybe a relationship. Then, once I have a vague personality and/or backstory down, I'll usually make a playlist for them, and from there on out, everything just falls into place. I'm way more of a pantster than a planner.

[halestrom]

hey hi hello, i am a massive fan of your writing style and your fic cockblock in particular, the way you write is just so expressive and emotional????

anywhizzle, i'm currently writing a novel for my creative writing class and i am Struggling To Find My Writing voice and i keep coming back to your works, do you have any tips or tricks or special magic spells or potions you do to write Like That?

sincerely, a struggling writer who thinks you're really cool :)

Oh wow, hi!! Thank you so much for this it was so sweet to get. I’m going to try and hopefully say something useful, esp since this is a hobby and I have ZERO formal training on anything aside from a few posts I’ve seen floating around/a lot of time since I’ve been writing fanfiction since I was 13.

The quick answer is just time. I’ve been writing for a long time, and I’ve got some of the stuff I wrote when I was thirteen/fourteen and then also from my early 20’s to 30’s I can see how my writing has changed and developed just from writing more. I learned what I like to do, and what I don’t like to do, what I don’t like to see.

Also, ngl. I love fanfiction, I really really do. But we are reading stories of characters we already love so there’s an inherent positive bias towards the story. So, I highly highly recommend reading original fiction and paying attention to why a story in particular resonates with you.  Because you don’t go into the story already loving some aspect of it, so you need to love it as you learn and that can help you figure out your voice better.

But, for me, personally, it doesn’t matter how interesting or unique your plot is, your characters need to be the main focus. You gotta know what you wanna do with your characters within a story, because their actions are what tends to drive a lot of the plot. Finding out what happens to them is why we often want to finish a story/movie/tv show. And when it comes to writing you gotta know where you wanna end up.

I tend to consider myself a panster, as in I don’t plan shit, I just write. But one thing I make sure I do is set what my end goal is for a story, also so I have something to focus on and I get that it’s easy to be like “well im a pantster I don’t know where Im going” which is valid, but also know what you want to tell in the story, why you are writing it. That will help define the ending as well.

Personally when it comes to a love story you gotta figure out how they fall in love and why they should be in love. (ngl a lot of issues I have with modern romance is just bc two people are in the same space and are attractive doesn’t mean they work together. So, figure out why they work. 'Just because' doesn’t work imo and readers are smarter than people realize, even subconsciously)

All genres are the same way. Figure out the reason and a lot can be figured out from that. Even if you don’t have all the minor details yet. Those can be figured out along the way, as well as edited and fixed at the end. (also why I tend to only post wips im almost finished with bc I will go back and edit)

So, for Cockblock specifically, I had the beginning, Jake was gonna cockblock Bradley and someone misunderstood leading to fake dating, but the ending could’ve been a whole variety of things depending on what I felt like. This ending was easy, I wanted Jake and Bradley together, which then started to help me develop the plot. How would I take these two men, who were antagonistic during the movie, and get to them a place where they could be together. So, it was competitive.

And I set the tone in the second chapter with Jake telling Bradley “…work on maybe seeing if we can be friends, which to the rest of the world is gonna look like dating.” Because of their competitive natures they had to get rid of the antagonism which led to a true friendship and without that overarching ego it was easy enough for the friendship to develop and turn into more. And everything else was to push it towards that realization and taking from fake dating to real dating.

The main story I’m working on right now, I have a beginning and I know where I want them to be at around the mid-point of the story, I know what I want the climax of the story to be, and I know where I want them to end up at the end. And because I know that I know I can write the emotions I want out of the characters. And once I know what, I find it a lot easier to focus and just write.

At the end of the day it's just gonna be spending the time writing a lot of shit no one else will ever see for a variety of reasons and that doesn't make them bad, or not worthy, it just means you're learning how to make something work for you. But you can look at those things you don't share and figure out what you do like from them. What you loved about those snippets and use that to help yourself grow.

[st0rmyskies]

I feel personally victimized by the revelation that Champ was yiga, there will be a class action lawsuit pending against this /silly

Seriously tho I’m just stunned that you kept it under wraps that long

~🐹

You are all welcome to sue me and take part in my massive debt with me.

Yeah I am BAD at keeping things under wraps. That's why being a pantster is great: the secrets I keep from y'all are typically something I've kept from myself, too.

Not in this case, though.

[doyouknowhowtowaltz]

💥🌻🚀 ?

💥 What is one canon thing that you wish you could change?

I’ve said it before! And I’ll say it again! It’s a damn travesty that they cut Sara’s response to “Be careful, there are a lot of creeps out there” because “Thanks- but don’t be so hard on yourself” is so funny.

🌻 How often do you read your own fics?

Mmm, hard to say. When I do reread my fics I usually reread huge batches of fics at once, but I maybe only do that 3 times a year. Recently reread In for a Penny, actually, it was cute!

🚀 Do you like to outline your fic first or create as you go?

I’m in the middle of a gruesome metamorphasis from pantster into plotter right now so kind of both. I usually never have a full outline before I start actually writing. But I do outline scenes as I come up with them.

[acmoorereadsandwrites]

Some things that have helped me (so far) on my journey to writing a novel

Caveat that I am not agented and am still writing. I'm just sharing what is helping me in case it might help someone else.

Writing a query after 10k. Nothing sucks more than getting 40k in and realizing that you don't actually have stakes. Or character motivations. Or a throughline. Or worse, all three are missing. If you are a pantster/gardener like me, it really pays to write until you've had a bit of time to get to know the world, plot, and characters and figure out what they are and what they are doing and then write a query. If you struggle to write it, you might need to pivot, especially if you realize all you have is events and characters passively doing things.

Be willing to let projects marinate. I'm not gonna talk about how many WIPs I have because that's a really embarrassing number. The amount of ideas marinating in the back of my head is even longer. When a project is just not working and you cannot force it, set it aside and give it more time. Come back to it when you're ready to tackle it; maybe you'll have new ideas and better ways to handle the subject matter or characters.

Writing short stories can be a great way to try things out. Want to improve your descriptions or combat scenes? Or maybe you really just want to get a better grasp on word choice and sentence variety. Maybe that idea can be developed further or maybe it's only meant to be a short story. Either way, the idea has been exorcised and you have a new project to develop your editing skills on on top of having worked on your other skills.

Do a reverse outline as you go. If you are not a plotter/architect, the idea of the outline can either be really scary or it can be counterproductive. If I write an outline before the work, I feel as if I've written it. The journey matters more to me than the destination and I lose all motivation if I have a finished, developed outline. Instead, I write a chapter and then jot down what the audience learns, what the characters learn/are revealed to have known, and the contents of the chapter. I also keep notes in a spreadsheet on characters, motifs, potential changes, themes, and worldbuilding details.

This is to my fellow pantsters: do not let yourself become too inspired by your New Favorite Thing when it comes to the WIP. Do not do it. Do not let the themes of infertility in the Witcher invade your retelliing of Snow White if you never had plans for it to be there without seriously thinking it over. Make a note, let it sit, and decide later when you are no longer as inspired. Sometimes it really can work and is the right choice. Other times...no. Mermaids do not belong in every project no matter much you love The Little Mermaid. Save yourself the grief of taking hard pivots you have to undo at a later date.

Not keeping everything in my head and writing it down. Things still in your brain are beautiful and perfect and are still so very malleable. You cannot possibly keep track of every aspect of your WIPs if it's only in your head and, worse yet, if you're anything like me, you cannot edit what you cannot physical see on the page. When it's on the page, then you can do the real work of figuring out if it actually works.

Regularly consume media from a variety of cultures, genres, and voices. Netflix has an incredible catalogue of works ranging from a Nigerian legal drama to a South African conspiracy teen drama to an Irish comedy about the Troubles and life under normalized violence to a South Korean historical zombie horror series. For books, there is a growing wealth of translated works from many different cultures and a sharp rise in diverse authors. Australia has it's own literary movements as does Japan and Brazil. There are more and more books by and for Queer and neurodivergent people. Even listening to music can help. It's important to see what groups outside of your own are doing in media and art, how they represent themselves and their identity/culture/history, and the kinds of stories they want to see and make. It might inspire you, but it's also a great chance to learn and help uplift other voices.

Reading. This is tied to number 7, but reading really cannot be understated. Read the age category and genre you want to write in. Read short stories professionally published online. If you do better with audiobooks, listen to audiobooks. Thankfully, more and more authors seem to be getting them.

Resources:

[feelingthedisaster]

can someone explain to me what is a pantster (there is probably a spelling mistake there) is in writing? i've seen 'are you a planner or a pantster?' and i dont know what it means

im kinda new to the writing community online so all these terms are confusing (plus english is not my first language)

are there any more words in the writing community that should i know the meaning of?