Improving the process

[Fleurdelille]

I would love to be able to say I write like Steven King. That I could just pick up a blank piece of paper, start with a couple of words and see where that takes me. I've come to learn through the years that I'm more of an outliner.

Draft 1 is so rough. It's basically just a core idea, some character work and a list of sorts of things or scenes that needs to happen.

Draft 2 is detailing those scenes one by one, occasionally jumping inbetween when inspiration strikes.

In Draft 3 there is a story but I'm working on the voices of the characters, figuring out their progression, making the dialogue human rather than just having everyone say exactly what they were thinking out loud.

By draft 4 and 5, the prose gets polished and the story actually start becoming coherent.

It's not lost on me how terribly inefficient and slow my process is. I wish I could just find a better way to activate my few braincells. Can anyone relate? And if you also are an outliner, what ways have you found to actually improve your process?

 

[StillStunned]

There are various models available for plotters. Save the Cat is probably the most detailed. Have you tried that one? I've never got plotting to work for myself, but I suppose you can mix the outlining and writing phases so that you already have an idea of your characters and their personalities and voices while you're figuring out the later acts and beats.

 

[ClintonBrooks]

I can empthasize.

It's just how the squirrel in my brain cage rolls. I start out with an idea, put some flesh on the characters and work out a few paragraphs where I want the story to go. I usually come up with an end at that point...with maybe 5% of the story done. I don't know why I do that.

I've tried proceeding a la pants...but I can't keep them on.

When I'm away from the story, I think of some dialog or action I want and text it to myself so I can cobble it in later. My mind simply won't pants from A to B to C...

It jumps to T, then back to D and...oh wait, there is something else I want to add to A.

I've learned to accept it, and now outline (a little) to help control the leaps I make back and forth.

 

[BeechLeaf]

If I knew how to move from outlines to finished stories, I would have a lot more finished stories. Those few that came about, I have no idea how I did them.

 

[Duil2]

I'm not an outliner but one thing I have learned over the years is to stick with what works for you.
That's not to say that you shouldn't look to improve your process but if you are getting a full story completed and it is in anyway coherent then you've found the process that works for you.

Personally, I suppose I'm a bit lucky because I do tend to be able to write a story from beginning to end with outlining ahead.
That's not to say that I don't sometimes jump forwards, if inspiration strikes, or backwards if I realise what I've just written needs something from earlier to change.

There is no one true process for all artists to follow. Trial and error bears fruit eventually.

 

[NotWise]

I'm usually a plotter. I first write notes and a detailed synopsis of the story. I don't think of it as a draft of the story, but it defines the story's content. I draft the story once the synopsis is done, and sometimes starting a little before. It goes into the same file the synopsis is in, and I delete the synopsis as the story grows. This is where I work out how the story is told. I edit as I go, and often include notes to myself in the text where things need to be added or adjusted, and I usually take care of those before I go on past the next story break.

Nothing after that is really a draft. It's just edits until I get sick of doing that, then I give it to Laurel. I have done as few as two editing passes.

For me, the synopsis is the key. It means I always know not only what the end is, but how the end is constructed. It saves me from rewrites on the way, and keeps my neatly-conceived story ideas from becoming wandering epic novels, which was a problem before I used the synopsis.

 

[qidniz]

It's not lost on me how terribly inefficient and slow my process is. I wish I could just find a better way to activate my few braincells. Can anyone relate?

Slow, sure, but inefficient? That isn't clear at all. If there were a more efficient way for you, surely you would have adopted it by now? There's no story at all without you, right?

And if you also are an outliner, what ways have you found to actually improve your process?

None. I dither a lot over the details. Filling in that damn outline takes a lot of time...

 

[TheLobster]

I've tried proceeding a la pants...but I can't keep them on.

In erotica that’s probably a good thing.

 

[Bazzle]

Write story, send it to beta reader.

Rewrite story.

 

[ClintonBrooks]

Slow, sure, but inefficient? That isn't clear at all. If there were a more efficient way for you, surely you would have adopted it by now? There's no story at all without you, right?

None. I dither a lot over the details. Filling in that damn outline takes a lot of time...

For me....I can convert the outline into the story. So it doesn't add so much time. At least it doesn't feel that way to me.

 

[Britva415]

Are you on a deadline? What is the objection to taking as long as it takes?

 

[NotWise]

Are you on a deadline? What is the objection to taking as long as it takes?

Getting bored with a story is one downside of taking a long time.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Honestly, the more I see it, being a pantser, a plotter, or a plantser is less of a definitive binary and more of a spectrum between the two options since every plantser is different.

On one side, some people are like the King of the Stephens, they can just sit on their pants and operate on vibes only.

On the other side, some are like Just Kidding Rowling, and they either suffer from Worldbuilder's disease, or are so obsessed with knowing the backstory of every grain of sand their story has that they end up planning things that won't ever end up in the final product.

Authors jump around the corners between Esteban Rey and Rowling corners, and I like to think that people claim they're either one of the two, but they're just consuming grade A copium with that. In my experience, being a plotter or a pantser depends more on the project at hand instead of your method.

I'll say this: a lot of my catalog is just pantsing, but with the justification that the shortest stories aren't exactly deep plots that require explaination, they're just strokers. However, No Heroes in Love required some plotting because I like to plot my nanonovels. But, Nightcall, I sat on my pants for the whole thing, which is usually how Ian Fleming wrote his novels. Not exactly like Esteban since Esteban prefers to snort some white powder and attempt to write EPIC™ SENTENCES, but rather Ian was more in the camp of saying "but Bond escapes somehow and then in the next scene Bond is now driving his car with the lady giving him a blowjob," or something.

However, I did manage to sit on my pants for 85K words in Spanish. I did it 10 minutes at a time, and many times I had to correct course as I moved forward because the only reason I moved back is to see where the hell I was. The first time I did NaNoWriMo like ten years ago I also sat on my pants. Actually, most of my NaNos were pantsing.

It helps to just relax, not take things seriously, and be aware that revision and editing are there for fixing stuff up. Overplotting is usually a symptom of fear. The way I see it some projects are required to have plotting, and some can be sat on pants. But the majority of them will always fall somewhere between the two, because the extremes mean either ending in disappointment, or not finishing your work.

 

[Voboy]

Everyone's brain works differently. I can happily tell you how my process works, OP, but that won't have much impact on yours unfortunately.

I don't "draft." I just write, and 98% or more of what I initially write remains completely unchanged in the published piece.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Everyone's brain works differently. I can happily tell you how my process works, OP, but that won't have much impact on yours unfortunately.

I don't "draft." I just write, and 98% or more of what I initially write remains completely unchanged in the published piece.

I suspect you and I and Kitty might be the only ones like this. Most AHers seem to outline and plan, make notes, do character boards, edit until the story is there (or edit it out of existence). I also suspect they might not quite believe us when we say editing is only to catch the typos!

 

[anthrodisiac]

I would love to be able to say I write like Steven King. That I could just pick up a blank piece of paper, start with a couple of words and see where that takes me. I've come to learn through the years that I'm more of an outliner.

Draft 1 is so rough. It's basically just a core idea, some character work and a list of sorts of things or scenes that needs to happen.

Draft 2 is detailing those scenes one by one, occasionally jumping inbetween when inspiration strikes.

In Draft 3 there is a story but I'm working on the voices of the characters, figuring out their progression, making the dialogue human rather than just having everyone say exactly what they were thinking out loud.

By draft 4 and 5, the prose gets polished and the story actually start becoming coherent.

It's not lost on me how terribly inefficient and slow my process is. I wish I could just find a better way to activate my few braincells. Can anyone relate? And if you also are an outliner, what ways have you found to actually improve your process?

I'll echo the sentiment that the process is the process. Everybody writes differently. I'm a pantser who occasionally gets a rough skeleton upon which to traipse, but otherwise I'm just following the path of least resistance with the characters, seeing where they're going, living it with them, writing as if reading (those delicious plot twists you didn't see coming but you'd actually been building in without realizing it for thousands of words, just the best feeling). For me, the reason I'm able to do this, I believe, is because I have pretty decent ideas about how characters ought to behave in order to remain internally consistent and have their own drive for doing things, rather than me making them do stuff. I'm flexible, I don't often write with a super tangible end goal in mind. More like little beacons I know I need to aim for to get things going, but the path to them, well, that's just whatever the path is.

Which isn't remotely helpful, perhaps, but have you tried getting to know the characters prior to writing their story? This is also dependent on if you have a heavy character focus; if you're more plot-focused, then that's where being a plotter is helpful. Maybe what you need is to move draft 3 (defining the character voices and characters) to point 1, before you even draft anything. Get an idea of who they are before you start, that way, when they're following the outline, you can let them guide you along the path they need to take to get there.

 

[TheRedChamber]

@ElectricBlue

I suspect you and I and Kitty might be the only ones like this. Most AHers seem to outline and plan, make notes, do character boards, edit until the story is there (or edit it out of existence). I also suspect they might not quite believe us when we say editing is only to catch the typos!

Didn't we do a poll a while back which leant slightly more pantser than plotter (with lots of middle group)? Although that might just be me mis-remembering because one of the things about the Great Plotter-Pantser War is both sides seem to think they are the underdog.

For what it's worth, I'm actually trying to return to my original method of writing where I hammered out one story in my head at a time and only wrote it when I had the whole thing. Being more flexible about writing to inspiration has actually tanked my output of finished work (along with a whole bunch of other stuff that's not helping)

 

[anthrodisiac]

Didn't we do a poll a while back which leant slightly more pantser than plotter (with lots of middle group)? Although that might just be me mis-remembering because one of the things about the Great Plotter-Pantser War is both sides seem to think they are the underdog.

Yeah, it leaned more pantser than plotter, that's my recollection as well. A bunch of hybrids as well.

 

[TheRedChamber]

@anthrodisiac

Yeah, it leaned more pantser than plotter, that's my recollection as well. A bunch of hybrids as well.

Found it - 13 pantsers, 4 plotters and 5 fence-sitters or comedians as of the last time I tallied it up.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/plotters-v-pantsers-pick-a-side.1652409/post-102608072

 

[ElectricBlue]

@anthrodisiac


Found it - 13 pantsers, 4 plotters and 5 fence-sitters or comedians as of the last time I tallied it up.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/plotters-v-pantsers-pick-a-side.1652409/post-102608072

There you go! Could have sworn it was the other way around.

 

[StillStunned]

@anthrodisiac


Found it - 13 pantsers, 4 plotters and 5 fence-sitters or comedians as of the last time I tallied it up.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/plotters-v-pantsers-pick-a-side.1652409/post-102608072

Was this only last May? I could have sworn it was last year!

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Most AHers seem to outline and plan, make notes, do character boards, edit until the story is there (or edit it out of existence).

AH plotters do be like

 

[anthrodisiac]

AH plotters do be like

View attachment 2680164

I feel so called out and/or seen. I'm not even a plotter, I just pants an ungodly amount of lore for no reason but my own amusement.

 

[ronde]

My process isn't for everyone, but it works for me.

1. Figure out the ending, or at least how you imagine the ending will turn out.
2. Decide what main characters will interest readers and still get to the ending you want.
3. Let those characters tell you what they're doing along the way and write that down. That's the plot.
4. Add minor characters as required and then mercilessly kill them off when you're done with them.
5. Wait a week, read what you wrote, and see if it's plausible.
6. Change as required.

 

[Writer61]

Usually, I have a rough idea of the plot and the main characters before I commit a pixel to screen. When I do, I list key points at the top of a Word doc, then add headings for key parts of the plot, followed by the first chunks of text. Often I will also have a second Word doc with research notes, a PowerPoint file with images mostly of people and places that help me write descriptions, and an Excel file with lists such as names and timelines. For example, one of my current WIPs has a list of beer types along with fictional names.

However, 'no plan survives contact with the enemy,' so restructuring and rewriting are inevitable. Actually, I welcome this because, as the story takes shape, I see ways to improve it.

All of which puts me somewhere between a pantser and a plotter.