Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

I just ended up pantsing a story

Can you fall into pantsing by accident? 

Pantsing for those who may not know the term is where a writer does not plot their story per se and instead sits down with nothing more than a general sense of what the story is going to be about, but essentially writes ‘by the seat of their pants.’

I’ve just finished the second story in my original series and wow did I just pants that!

I plotted first.

I had a plot.

There was a plot.

I lost it.

Metaphorically speaking, of course, because I still actually have the Excel spreadsheet which is how I usually plot.  The plot still exists, it just didn’t want to be written.

I always plot.  I am a planner.  Those of you who’ve read my past Writer’s Logs will attest to the fact that I plan.  You can take the girl out of project management, but you can’t really prevent the indoctrination of many, many project management courses, articles, books, mentors, etc.

I like plotting, especially when I’m writing a mystery story.  There is a large degree of working out how the crime happened, who did the crime, who are the other viable suspects, how the detective works it out, what clues do they get, the red herrings and so on.  There is a lot of thought that comes with writing a mystery and I really like having those details pinned down before I write.

That said, I am also a big believer in not sticking religiously to the plot.    

As a young adult, I read a historical romance book by an author who shall remain nameless, but who I adored and read everything they had ever written within the space of a couple of months. 

One of their novels had the heroine run away from her husband at a critical point.  The heroine was smart and funny, an Elizabeth Bennett-type character who had essentially fallen into a forced marriage to save her reputation and keep her family estate with her version of a dark and brooding Mr Darcy.  The two protagonists started out at odds (but were of course deeply attracted despite themselves), before slowly falling in love with each other in a very Belle and the Beast kind of way. The running away moment came about two-thirds into the story and was based on a massive misunderstanding. It was clearly the Grand Complication very typical in a romance.

But, and this is a very important but, I read the chapter where she gets fooled into thinking her husband has done something awful and being ‘convinced’ into running away from him, and I just did not believe it.

The heroine was smart.  She and her husband had already overcome miscommunications and misunderstandings, and she knew she loved him.  She trusted him.  The character as written up to this point, having gone through previous events and their relationship growth, would not have run away from him, she would have gone immediately to him and demanded to know the truth.

The last third of the book was the journey of them getting back together after her trust fail, but although it was as well written and emotive as the rest of this particular author’s writing, I just couldn’t enjoy it because I felt so strongly that the character would not have acted the way she did at the critical moment.

I’ve made it a point since to listen to the characters as my own story develops in the writing of it.  Characters are for me the reason why the plot moves in a certain way.  They have motivations to act and react; they have curiosity and habits; they will question one thing over another because of their background, their family situations, and their friends.

Sometimes I’ll start writing a story and think it’s going to be from a split point of view, only for another character to go, ‘nope all me, thank you very much!’ and I go with it.  The Case of the Missing Werewolf was meant to have a countering Tony DiNozzo POV to make it more of a fusion, but Stiles insisted on being front and centre.         

Occasionally I will have that experience of hitting a point in the plot and the character turning around in my head and going ‘yeah, I would never do that.’  At which point I go back to the plot and rework it, because if the character wouldn’t go there believably then I’m not going to force it and make a reader feel like I felt with that historical romance.

Perhaps my characters are ultimately the reason why I ended up abandoning the plot for The Case of the Missing Witch (working title – I may yet change it) and fell into pantsing – not quite making it up as I went along, but certainly having to work harder to think about how I got the story told since the way I had thought to tell it wasn’t going to work.

Part of the reason for that is that I’m still learning my original characters.  They are brand new and shiny, just out of the box.  I have a character background for each of them but putting them in scenarios is in many ways an experiment.  I think I’m going to have them learn about this clue by asking X, but actually when I start writing it, the character is adamant that they would never ask the question.

In many ways this is why original writing is more of a challenge for me to write than fanfiction.  Fanfiction provides me with a fully baked character complete with idiosyncrasies that I as the fanfiction writer can utilise – Jack O’Neill is sarcastic, Tony DiNozzo has hidden depths under his masks, Harry Potter reacts a lot of the time in the moment.  Setting out on a fanfic, I usually know how the characters are going to drive the plot.  Sure, if it is an Alternate Universe, fusion, or a fix-it where I’m changing something to do with the character, I can get thrown a curve-ball with a ripple I didn’t anticipate, but most of the time, the plot will not be diverted too much.  

I had originally planned for the original story to take me a week to write, maybe two weeks given other commitments.  I’m aiming for these original stories to be around 20-25k and I know I can write around 5k a day when it’s all flowing.  That seemed doable.  Until the plot went sideways.  It took me a good three weeks to get this first draft down because I had to stop and work out what direction the characters were going in and how did I use that to solve the mystery. 

The good news is that there is now a draft.  The better news is that I feel it is more authentic to the characters than the Excel spreadsheet plot.  I’m going to leave it now until next weekend before I edit and redraft for publication on Halloween.  

For this coming week, I’m tackling the projects which have been delayed because of my stumbling into pantsing.

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