Improving the process

[onehitwanda]

Save the Cat is probably the most detailed.

What sort of interest rate can I expect if I Save the Cat?

 

[onehitwanda]

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.

better lore than vore.

 

[StillStunned]

What sort of interest rate can I expect if I Save the Cat?

Total lack of interest until it's feeding time.

 

[anthrodisiac]

better lore than vore.

If you think my 300-page lore book is a lot, well, you're in for a bit of a shock...

 

[Voboy]

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.

Same.

 

[crookedletter]

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.

I think this is where the dichotomy between pantsing and plotting gets muddled a bit. It comes down to a question of what your first draft looks like.

I will call myself a pantser, I do not enjoy writing outlines. If I want to work out what my story is going to be, and who's going to be in it, and what's going to happen, I just have to write it. Sometimes -- when I'm lucky, or in a good flow, or just when my story doesn't end up deviating much from my original conception -- what comes out in that first draft is pretty close to the complete story. It's nice, when that happens. Other times it's an unholy mess and you might as well just call it an outline.

When it's the latter I think the pansting and plotting processes aren't so dissimilar. You write your outline knowing full well it's not the finished product; I write my sloppy first draft suspecting the same but hoping it will be close. Either way, there's often more work to be done.

It might be inefficient. But my goal isn't mass production. I spend as long on each story as it calls for. Sometimes they pop right out, and that's fun. Most of the time, it's a process.

 

[Erozetta]

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!

Not the only ones.

I often don't even have an idea when I first sit down to write. I just see what happens as I start typing.

 

[Britva415]

I think this is where the dichotomy between pantsing and plotting gets muddled a bit. It comes down to a question of what your first draft looks like.

I think you're on to something.

How to meaningfully distinguish between an outline without any first-draft versus a prose first-draft written without any outline? Both of them establish the plot and get fleshed out in subsequent drafts. Who's to say the outline wasn't pantsed?

Unless by "pantser" we're literally and exclusively talking about someone who writes a draft and immediately and unselfcritically just goes and publishes it.

 

[crookedletter]

Unless by "pantser" we're literally and exclusively talking about someone who writes a draft and immediately and unselfcritically just goes and publishes it.

There must be another term for those: “pantsers on fire”?

 

[TheLobster]

The ancient conflict aside, I'm admittedly quite confused how anyone could mistake an outline for a draft or vice versa.

Like, isn't the former simply a listing of what is supposed to happen in a story, as opposed to a draft which is, you know, an actual written story? Aren't we talking bullet points vs. paragraphs? Isolated sentences vs. continuous prose? Mechanical words vs. words with meaning?

Sure, I don't outline much, but each time that I do I end up with something akin to hierarchical list that's nowhere near to real, finished draft. So how exactly can one say that a first draft is just an outline? It doesn't compute in my small crustacean brain.

 

[Britva415]

The ancient conflict aside, I'm admittedly quite confused how anyone could mistake an outline for a draft or vice versa.

Like, isn't the former simply a listing of what is supposed to happen in a story, as opposed to a draft which is, you know, an actual written story? Aren't we talking bullet points vs. paragraphs? Isolated sentences vs. continuous prose? Mechanical words vs. words with meaning?

Sure, I don't outline much, but each time that I do I end up with something akin to hierarchical list that's nowhere near to real, finished draft. So how exactly can one say that a first draft is just an outline? It doesn't compute in my small crustacean brain.

I'm not saying they're the same thing, I'm saying there is an extent to which they do the same thing. I'm also saying "pantsing" applies to anything that's a first "try," including the first draft of an outline.

 

[TheRedChamber]

@Britva415

I'm not saying they're the same thing, I'm saying there is an extent to which they do the same thing. I'm also saying "pantsing" applies to anything that's a first "try," including the first draft of an outline.

Unless you boil it down to 'producing anything anyhow is an iterative process and thus essentially the same,' I'm not sure you are right about this. Generally, for me, an outline document isn't something that I'm using to work out ideas. It's a place to record ideas I've already had so that I don't forget them. Plotting time is any time for me that I'm not actively doing something else (car to work, ten-minute break in a meeting etc.) where I retreat into my head and hammer things out. I might be working on a high concept level ('how does a nice girl get involved in [that deviant sexual act]' I might be working on character and motivation to bring someone to the scene I want to happen (and, before anyone says anything, they can derail it if they come up with a better idea of how they want to act). I might also just be imagining a particular scene and running through dialogue in my head. You could argue that this is all just 'pantsing in my head,' but, since it is very rarely linear and rarely attends to all aspects of a story (e.g. scene setting, description, prose, dialogue etc.) at the same time, I'm not sure it would count.

I do occasionally pants to some degree if I've got a scene that is complete in terms of all those aspects, but which I don't know where it goes later. But I tend to start with a very fixed entry point and end point to each scene with a list of things I want to establish along the way. I've tried to stop doing this for individual scenes as it has led to me having a whole bunch of fragments that never get added to.

 

[Voboy]

Generally, for me, an outline document isn't something that I'm using to work out ideas. It's a place to record ideas I've already had so that I don't forget them.

This precisely.

I occasionally amuse myself, on finishing a story, by comparing the final result to the initial blurb I had written after the idea for the story first caught my mind.

It's usually not really all that close, lol.

 

[SimonDoom]

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?

Yes I relate. Keep in mind that Stephen King has been writing compulsively since he was young. Practice may not make you perfect, but it will make you better. Keep at it, keep improving, and have fun with the process even if the result isn't perfect.

 

[OddLove]

I abandon more stories than I finish. It's not even close. And even the stories I finished, I've had to go all the way back to the beginning and completely shift direction because it just didn't go anywhere exciting. How someone like Stephen King can just crap out books like that is a genuinely mystery to me. Part of me suspects he's just writing very rough drafts and outlines, then shipping 'concepts' off to teams of editors.

But that's just me being super skeptical because I can't fathom that level of productivity along with quality. Maybe he's just that magical of a writer. A prodigy.