Plotting by the seat of my pants
Enough ink has been spilt on this topic. Possibly even real blood. I'm so uninterested in 'discourse' on the subject. On any subject. But I've got stuff to say.
Traditionally I would put myself much more on the pantsing end of the spectrum. Though I recognise one person's planning is another person's pantsing because these things mean different things to different people.
We all have to do what we have to do. I believe in trying all different approaches and keeping the bits that work for me.
The thing I'm working on at the moment is by far the most plotting I've ever done. It's time travel, so it feels like I need to know what's going on.
I'm also still banging my head against a story that I fully, wildly pantsed and now, trying to make it make any sort of sense, trying to give it structure or theme or even basic coherency feels impossible. It's a story but it's not in any sense a story.
On the other hand, the story I had the most fun writing in recent years had a list of twelve chapters with the month and year they occurred and two or three sentences on what happened. I had a blast writing it and was posting as I went at the rate of twice a week. Fun times.
Perhaps one's place on this spectrum changes as a person changes - gets more experienced, gets older. Or as conditions change. How much time one has to write. How one feels generally. I really do believe it changes depending on the project.
Though I say the time travel story is planned and plotted that outline might look incredibly barebones to other people. An 'idea of some scenes that probably need to happen' looks like vibepantsing to others - to me that's the pinnacle of plotting. There's certainly no checklists, scene breakdowns, or any of that.
It's possible I will plot myself into oblivion. Nothing makes sense and the more I dig into it the less sense it makes. I'm convinced there are plotholes and paradoxes. It might get abandoned before it even really starts.
Even when I say I've plotted I've got a bad habit of not really having plotted. I'll put 'and then they escape' in the outline. But how, Fran? How do they escape? I need to do less of that. It's these devil details that get me.
Ultimately, mad respect to anyone doing this in any form. Because I'm certainly not finishing anything. And ultimate respect to the people who figure out how they best work, no matter what anyone else has to say about it.
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