Tag: Insights into the writing process

Advice for Writing by the Seat of Your Pants

Advice for writing by the seat of your pants

When I give writing advice, I base most of it off my own experience. I’m mostly a pantser–writing by the seat of my pants–instead of a plotter–a writer who works mostly from outlines, some of them very detailed. So it’s difficult for me to give advice on how to plot because a lot of it comes to me spontaneously as I write a scene. But I don’t think it’s fair for plotters to have reams of books to turn to for advice, while we pantsers only have our instincts. So below is advice for writing by the seat of your pants, lessons I’ve learned from writing and publishing three short stories and three novels.

No One is Totally a Pantser

I haven’t met a writer yet who hasn’t thought deeply about his or her story before sitting down to write it. No writer begins writing without a single thought as to what he or she wants to write. One writer may keep all the story ideas in her head until she writes the first scene. Another may make some general notes on scenes he knows he wants to include.

I write characters’ motivations, not in story. form, but like a report.

“John owns ten care dealerships. He likes showing off his wealth. He was no close family. He’s driven to keep adding to his business empire.”

Since I write mysteries I’ll also write in report form how the crime was committed and why.

“John killed Mary because she knew he’d bribed their local senator. He used a gun he stole from his best friend.”

Pay Attention to Your Process

I think a lot of writers are pantsers because they enjoy the freedom of a limited outline and the joy of discovery while they write. I love it when I realize a plot point I’ve never considered:

Wait a minute. Old Man Thompson was seen at the grocery store before the murder, and my amateur sleuth’s cousin works there. Maybe she saw something! What could her cousin have seen that will help crack the case?

But to be productive we need to pay attention to the writing process that works best for us. I’ve tried too many times to change how I write a novel in order to complete it faster. While nearing the end of my third Rae Riley novel, I thought I could outline the rest of the chapters and make the actual writing go faster.

Nothing doing. I had to stick with the process that works for me: sketch out a few scenes in the next four or five chapters, write them by hand, edit while typing them, decide if they’re any good, and then sketch the next few chapters.

No Wrong Way

There are as many ways to write as there are writers. The only wrong way is one where you can’t finish the story. So if you’re pantser, proclaim it proudly, sit down, and take a wild, writing ride.

For more post on the writing process, click here.

Writers, are you a plotter or a pantser or a bit of both?

1

Writing Tip — Favorite Story: “Over Seventy” by P.G. Wodehouse

over 70The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Even in this digital age, when writers can access the world from their couch, we still experience a lot of the problems and pleasures that writers did in the past . Whenever I get down about the pursuit of publishing, I turn to P.G. Wodehouse’s semi-autobiographical book, Over Seventy. It’s semi-autobiographical because Mr, Wodehouse was a humor writer and wasn’t about to let the truth interfere with a good story. From what I’ve learned about him, the basic facts in this book are true — where he went to school, how he got his first job writing, and so on. But the details may be highly fictionalized, such as the reason he was fired from a job in a bank.

Mr. Wodehouse was born in 1882, and his only ambition was to be a writer. So when he began to make a living as a writer in 1900, he did what writers do now. He tried to establish a platform. It wasn’t called that back then, but that’s what his efforts amounted to. He got a job writing articles in a newspaper while trying to sell short stories to pulp magazines. He added to this by writing occasionally for a humor column at the newspaper. Then he was selling humorous stories to well-known magazines. After he moved to New York City around 1909, he became a dramatic critic for Vanity Fair and wrote plays and lyrics for songs in musical comedies.

After all these years of work, he finally sold his first novel, in serialized form, to Saturday Evening Post. The Post was a huge step up because it was a “slick” magazine as opposed to a pulp one. I assume the word means it had shiny pages. Slick magazines were also more prestigious and paid better. When he died in 1975, he had published over ninety books and was working on a manuscript in his hospital bed.

Over Seventy has a lot of funny digressions, running from butlers to manners and the state of American TV in the 1950’s. But I especially like the chapter “My Methods, Such as They Are.” I am fascinated by an artistic person’s creative process, regardless of the art. Mr. Wodehouse wrote that the amount of work he got done in a day hung on “whether or not I put my feet up on” his desk. If he did, then he drifted off into the past. If he didn’t, he settled down to work.

Mr. Wodehouse was definitely a plotter. He always worked from a detailed scenario. This makes sense because his madcap plots were so complicated that I can see how he would have to work it all out before he started on the first draft. I love his quote about characters.

“Some writers will tell you that they just sit down and take pen in hand and let their characters carry on as they see fit. Not for me any procedure like that. I wouldn’t trust my characters an inch. If I sat back and let them take charge, heaven knows what the result would be.”

What stories have you read about writers or any artist and his or her creative process?

 

1

Powered by WordPress.com.

Up ↑