More like a plodding pantser, actually, but I couldn’t figure out a way to express the pun in the title, so score another point for pantsing instead of plotting.
I’ve been trying to figure out why, despite my best efforts, all my attempts at plotting a novel seem to expire after after the first 1/4 of the plot is figured out. I mean, this is great for planning the first 20,000 words, but then I just stop. (I’ve already discovered that if a book isn’t working for me, it’s usually around the 20,000-word mark that this becomes apparent, and that’s even if I haven’t outlined at all. It’s happened every time I’ve had to abandon a book, or start over.)
I have one theory: At some point, I can’t go on unless my characters tell me what happened next.
There was a survey of authors that found the majority hear their characters’ voices in their heads. Somehow, people thought this was odd; obviously they’ve never tried to write. But it’s not that I hear their voices in my head so much as it’s they write their stories through me. I can’t count the number of times I have written a sentence that I had no idea was lurking in the back of my head until it came out on paper. And I’m not talking about, “I didn’t know how to express that thought so I just threw something at the page,” I mean to say that, “I didn’t know that about that character!” or “I had no idea he was going to do that…,” and then I have to determine if what the character did advances the plot and should I go with it. (Generally, the answer is yes.)
So how can I outline an entire novel? How can I figure out character motivations if they won’t tell me how they feel? I don’t create stories, I write down the stories other people in my head tell me, so how can I map out the characters’ arcs if they refuse to let me know ahead of time what happened to them? (It would also go faster if they didn’t take so many coffee breaks.)
It’s tough to blame all of your creative problems on other people when you’re the only one who can see and hear them, like Mrs. Kravitz trying to convince her husband that Samantha is a witch. Nobody believed her, either.
At least in my case, I’ve found a way to profit from my paranoia…
#SFWApro
Graffiti on the Walls of Time 