The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: planning

  • Pantsing Rules!

    Pantsing. Outside of NaNo, it’s not a word you hear in the common vernacular. I looked it up on Urban Dictionary while writing this post, and the definitions you find there are not what I mean. At all.

    During November, Pantsing is short for, “By the seat of my pants,” which means you’re writing your story with little to no plan, allowing your characters and plot to evolve minute by minute, word by word. (an aside: the phrase is apparently rooted in aviation history. Huh! The more you know!)

    I am not a planner. I am also not a pantser. I’m a middle-of-the-road kinda guy, as previously discussed here on Confabulator. If I plan too much, I lose momentum. But if I don’t plan enough, I lose direction. So I dance down the razor’s edge between the two, and see how things turn out.

    My point for this week is that when pantsing works? It’s fucking awesome. Head-exploding, Bill-and-Ted/Jeff Spicoli kind of awesome.Here’s my example from this year’s story:

    Early, I wanted to describe digging through data in an interesting, visual way. Writing SQL queries does not exactly make for interesting fiction. The first idea that struck me was to describe things as a caver, or spelunker. So, I did. My data miners dive into caves of data, and use their spelunking tools to find interesting tidbits of information amongst the various dross of data.

    Not bad.

    Then I thought, how else can I visualize data? Specifically taking encrypted data and decrypting it?

    Weavers.

    The word hit me, and I typed it. Who are the Weavers? How do they work? I had no idea. Not when I typed it.

    Later, it turned out the Weavers are humans that have gene-modded themselves for low-gravity environments: long, thin limbs, big eyes, thumbs-on-feet kinda thing. And their computers use fiber optic cables stretched across vast chambers. The Weavers, floating in zero-gee, constantly rearrange the fiber optic strands to produce different programs in the computer, much like the original computers. They “weave” their programs.

    It’s totally ridiculous and inefficient, but who cares? The imagery is pretty cool.

    With me so far?

    Okay, so an overarching idea in this year’s story is that one of my original Martian settlers takes it upon himself to create huge, incredibly elaborate alien artifacts. The first is so convincingly crafted, scientists and experts completely fall for it. More artifacts are discovered, and humanity’s all: “Awesome! Totally awesome!” Some humans are so excited about the findings, they…genetically engineer themselves to look like the aliens that must’ve created the artifacts in the first place. Weavers.

    Bing! Headsplosion!

    Eventually, the hoax is revealed. Most people are rightfully pissed off. The Weavers, however, embrace their new forms. They even retrofit one of the fake artifacts and create a working Weaver computer.

    One used by my main character to decrypt a super-secret message.

    A message that might prove that her father, the hoaxer that created the fake artifacts, wasn’t responsible for all the artifacts after all.

    That one artifact, in particular, might be real.

    WHOA.

    That, my friends, is the magic of pantsing.

  • Confessions

    Can I be honest with all of you for a couple of minutes?

    I’m terrified about this year’s NaNo. I don’t have a plan. I barely have an idea. And I certainly don’t have time. And even worse? I know what to expect.

    Last year was my first time participating in NaNoWriMo. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. It seemed like a great idea at the time—and don’t get me wrong, it was—but now I do know. It’s an amazing roller coaster ride. It’s life consuming.

    And I’m completely unprepared for it. I’m worried that I’m taking on too many things at once. I’m terrified that something’s going to slip. (more…)

  • A Living Hobby

    “When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.” – Ernest Hemingway

    As a short fiction writer, I have never concerned myself with character development. I start writing, and the character comes out subconsciously. When the first draft is complete, I have gotten to know my character.  I’ve spent time with him and know who he is. During the second draft, I bring him more into focus in the early parts of the story.

    The good side of this is that it is very organic and spontaneous. It is beautiful, like watching a flower bud bloom before me in time-lapse vision. The bad side is that I am flying blind, and significant parts of the story will have to be re-written.

    When I wrote my novel, I felt I needed to do a little more planning. I decided to utilize something closer to my method when writing screenplays. The way I was taught, in order to write a screenplay, you need to do a lot of preparation. You have to know your character before you start the first page because you don’t have the luxury of finding him in that format.  Instead, you write character biographies, as in depth as you can, about the character and his life.

    This is written as quickly as you can write it, much like laying down a short story. You don’t want to over-think the biography. Let it flow.  Let the character speak through you. Don’t speak for him. If you think too much, you run the risk of making your character seem to convenient, or too stock.  Don’t concentrate on the character’s actions within your conflict.  Look at his characteristics away from it.  What was your character like before his life went to Hell?  You may not use it all, but you never know what may become important later.

    If you are a writer, chances are you are a people-watcher, as well. Your mind has picked up various ways of speak, mannerisms, habits, and all sorts of character traits that you aren’t even aware you saw. As you work, these will flow through you. (more…)

  • Pants are optional. Plans are not.

    I’ve tried lots and lots of different things in the pursuit of cultivating story ideas. As an avid NaNoWriMo participant, many of my manuscripts have been an exercise in pantsing, where the story develops while my fingers are typing it. However, I’ve found over the years that a pure pantsing technique doesn’t work that well for me. For one thing, my characters tend to lead me off in strange and unpredictable directions (a phenomenon many NaNo novelists experience in November), but those directions are often dead-ends, and boring ones at that. For another, when I approach a novel with absolutely no planning at all, the ending tends to be…not. No wrap-up, no conclusion, no sense of fulfillment. That’s less than ideal for both me and my prospective readers.

    The alternative to pantsing is careful, meticulous planning. Outlining every scene, detailing every setpiece, crafting thorough background stories for characters and extensive histories for your world. I know many authors absolutely love this process of world-building, and I’ve certainly dabbled in it and enjoyed it as well. I’ve taken online classes that explore theme, and the hero’s adventure, and story arcs, and all kinds of other very important things.I’ve filled a white board with color-coded index cards, and used Scrivener to map out every scene, character, and setting in meticulous detail. I’ve even gone so far as to try rigid plotting techniques like the Snowflake approach.The problem I’ve had with these methods is that by the time I get to the actual novel-writing, I’m bored. All the excitement of creativity is leeched out of me during the outline process, leaving me uninspired and disinterested. Clearly not the right mindset for tackling a novel-length writing exercise.

    (more…)