Brandy
In terms of pantsing and plotting I don’t think there is a right or best way. It’s all about what works for you!
I am a pantser with caveats. When I began writing I was a straight up pantser, but I found that it took me a really long time to finish my stories and I had to rewrite and modify pacing a ton. Then I decided to try an outline. The outline was beautiful, but I lost my joy for the story and stalled.
Now, I do a hybrid method. I free write all the scenes that come to me and use scrivener to put them in order in the story (sort of a zero draft). When my creative flow is tapped, I go back and use a story structure outline (three act, hero’s journey, whatever works best), and slot my pieces into that. That also gives me a sense of what I need to do to get from my beginning scene to that amazing middle piece to the end.
Even when I’m using the “outline” structure I always free write my scenes. So, there may be a placeholder that says, “Things get even worse,” but I usually don’t have any idea of what happens to make that true until I sit down to write it. I also don’t write chronologically, so if a great idea occurs to me for the 75% mark of the story I’ll write it, then go back and do the fill in.
Books like, “Save the Cat Writes a Novel,” to help me make sure my pacing is on point, and I have a companion excel sheet that breaks that down to word count, but the tightening of my pacing usually happens at the rewrite stage. At that point the whole story is pretty much an outline and I fill it in and pretty it up. As long as I’m having fun and it’s working, it works. If not, I mix it up and try something new, until I find the best method for me, for that story, for that day.
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Amren
I am 100% a plotter. I absolutely have to have everything planned out before I start writing, or I descend into decision paralysis at the slightest provocation. It's so bad that "What is this character's middle name?" absolutely destroyed me one year during NaNoWriMo. However, I previously didn't have a good way to plan things out. I'd write out a messy outline that usually disintegrated around the plot's climax, and there was almost never a satisfying ending already in the works. So despite my absolute need to have things ready ahead of time, I couldn't figure out a way to do that.
A few years ago, a friend introduced me to The 90-Day Novel. This book was a godsend for me, with its 4 weeks of story planning and plot questions. I first used the outline for my NaNoWriMo 2018 project, and never looked back. Well, except at my outline. I'd never been able to write so much so quickly, and with so little self-editing. I found that this method really helped me get into my characters' heads, particularly that of the antagonist, who I'd been having trouble with. I loved the method, I won NaNoWriMo, and I wrote the manuscript that got me signed with my agent.
With The 90-Day Novel method, I start my planning in early October every year and go through the 4 weeks of questions leading up to writing my yearly manuscript. (Most years, I only ever write a fresh manuscript during November and spend the rest of the year revising.) I've found that spending the minimum of 30 minutes a day musing on my ideas has made me more confident in my writing, and given me a great resource to go back to when I'm stuck. So if you've ever been in the situation where you suddenly come to and realize that you've just done a 4-hour deep dive on the name "Samantha" to make sure it's a good middle name for a character who's only going to be in one chapter, The 90-Day Novel method is for you.
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