This weekend I hit a mental milestone on THE PEDDLER'S PACK: 20,000 words.
Never mind that I have not yet figured out how to give my hero a life as a peddler. Oh, no--the locals all think he's a knight who's lost most of his gear in a shipwreck off the rocky coast of Cornwall. How do I get him from swordless chevalier to competent merchant? I have no idea, though bubbles of a solution are beginning to form in my brain.
Plotting is always a challenge for those of us who write seat-of-the-pants. What about the rest of you? How do you get your charming characters from point A to point B, and beyond, when you've written X amount of the story, hit your milestones, and you've no idea how to get them to "the end"?
Showing posts with label seat of the pants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seat of the pants. Show all posts
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The Plan and the Challenge
Good interchange of ideas this week with my dear crit partner. Now this woman is one Horking Fine Writer, but that said--we write differently.
She outlines, plans, plots, and generally knows where she's headed with a story before she types "Chapter 1."
I, on the other hand, get the germ of an idea and charge off into Literary Glory with my pants around my ankles.
Both approaches are good. Both are right. Both lead to their own unique speed bumps and detours.
A case in point: my "Huh?" romance (thus named because it's a Christian medieval time-travel romance) is going along swimmingly, but that's not because I planned it to. It's because it is. Years ago I wrote this story and now I'm writing it a second time (from scratch) with a very different briefcase of skills to write it with (and yes, I know I ended with a preposition). It's probably the easiest thing I've ever written; it's virtually writing itself.
Why? Because it's a Horking Good Story, that's why--oh, never mind. Perhaps it's going well because I'm using the previously written version as an OUTLINE? Because I actually PLANNED something (though I thought it was a manuscript, not an outline, at the time)?
Don't get too worked up about this. I am a Seat of the Pants writer (SOTP in the jargon) and unrepentant. And since I don't have a print copy of that earlier version, the "outline" is all in my head.
But it's nice to know where a story's going, for once.
In other news...look for a book-release entry later this week.
She outlines, plans, plots, and generally knows where she's headed with a story before she types "Chapter 1."
I, on the other hand, get the germ of an idea and charge off into Literary Glory with my pants around my ankles.
Both approaches are good. Both are right. Both lead to their own unique speed bumps and detours.
A case in point: my "Huh?" romance (thus named because it's a Christian medieval time-travel romance) is going along swimmingly, but that's not because I planned it to. It's because it is. Years ago I wrote this story and now I'm writing it a second time (from scratch) with a very different briefcase of skills to write it with (and yes, I know I ended with a preposition). It's probably the easiest thing I've ever written; it's virtually writing itself.
Why? Because it's a Horking Good Story, that's why--oh, never mind. Perhaps it's going well because I'm using the previously written version as an OUTLINE? Because I actually PLANNED something (though I thought it was a manuscript, not an outline, at the time)?
Don't get too worked up about this. I am a Seat of the Pants writer (SOTP in the jargon) and unrepentant. And since I don't have a print copy of that earlier version, the "outline" is all in my head.
But it's nice to know where a story's going, for once.
In other news...look for a book-release entry later this week.
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