Words.

[feuervogel]

+460, 7190/90000.

I still haven't committed anything like preparation or outlining beyond what I did on Monday. This is also the first I've written since then, which means I'm either worrying too much about process or this thing has started cooking finally.

I really think I'm a lot closer to the pantser end of the spectrum than the planner, and I just can't think in a preparatory fashion for this.

Which is really goddamn weird, because, ask kirin, I'm a compulsive planner for everything else in my life. If I still had them anywhere, I'd show you the grid I made for planning our Christmas trip to Berlin in 2007 or the schedules I made for our trip through Vienna and Budapest in 2010. Though that's a lot more concrete, I think? Making sure you don't plan to go to a museum on the day it's closed (for example) is different than plotting a book.

(I don't even plot short stories! I get a sort of hook, a midpoint (at most), and a sense of the ending. But rewriting 5k words is way different than rewriting 90k words because X didn't work.)

Comments

[luckykitty]

But rewriting 5k words is way different than rewriting 90k words because X didn't work

Yeah, that is why, despite my loathing for all things outline and my own massive inclination to be a seat-of-the-pants writer, I ended up doing a real one for Empire. There were just too many things going on to keep them straight in my head, and I was getting REALLY frustrated with having to rewrite tens of thousands of words in some of my previous novels, or getting completely stuck.

Have you read Stephen King's On Writing? He is 100% a seat-of-the-pants writer and I identify with his writing process so much. I only wish I had the productivity he does! Well, and his fucking loads of story telling talent, but that's neither here nor there.

A compromise I tried with Empire: before I started writing, I thought a lot about the story. And I did related but not-writing and not outlining things, like worldbuild, figure out important moments in history and things about the world. I tried to really get that first scene bubbling and boiling in my head. Once I couldn't take it any more, once I was exploding with the need to write that first scene, I went for it. And then when I had gotten that initial burning bit out of my mind, I sat down and wrote an outline, putting together that initial creative burst of passion with all the forethought I'd been doing while letting everything percolate.

Granted, as usual it's a shit outline that I've rewritten about seven or ten times already, because I can't stick to a plan for crap, being instinctive and impulsive to a fault with my writing, but hey. It HAS massively help with some of the places I'd normally get stuck and backtrack 1000 times, and I do think it's partly why I'm moving through this much quicker than normal.

[feuervogel]

I have a relationship diagram (like the ones from anime magazines, with arrows and things) for this one, and the plot points I posted a week or whenever ago, and the character stuff. Which is more than I had when I started with I&R.

What I *should* try is that modified snowflake method you linked to. IDK. It might help, or it might not.

There's nothing wrong with rewriting an outline! I've heard of published authors submitting a proposal and having half the plot change by the time they wrote it. (And a lot of this angst has to do with the idea of sending proposals to an agent/publisher in future, and not being able to produce one.)

[anthimeria]

Interestingly, I'm the opposite--I like plans in life but I don't need them, whereas I'm pretty tied to having some kind of setup before I start writing. A lot of that is that if I'm writing something long and want to write every day, it works best if I have a roadmap--I don't have to think about what comes next, I just glance at the outline and start writing.

That said, I also don't outline short stories except to maybe write down the endpoint (if I know it!) and some character-evolution stuff. Mostly I just wing it, because as you said, rewriting 5k is much easier than 90k!

[feuervogel]

For me, I'd rather just write the book than write a detailed outline. Plot sketch, character list (and maybe brief sketches), background/politics stuff, then go. But since I like political fiction, I need to have the politics sketched out and logical (or at least believable), or else I end up with a muddle.