Plotter and Pantsers

Here on the other side of the bright line of demarcation that is the post-2024 election decision I selected outlining the plot of my poor neglected novel “Sniper” as this morning’s project.  Last night was a long planned and greatly enjoyed family party celebrating Princess Sack of Potatoes’ sixth birthday.  It was a good-sized gathering of about thirty people and featured the Princess’s food of choice; multiple versions of pizza.  Now I personally do not believe that something called “mac and cheese” pizza could actually be considered pizza.  It is an abomination in the same league as anything called pizza that contains pineapple.  But I am a tolerant man.  If the children demand mac and cheese pizza then so be it.  I found a giant box that contained something that was garnished with sausage and pepperoni on it and so I was content.  And I even managed to introduce the grandchildren to a small snippet of the classic W.C. Fields movie “It’s a Gift” before it was drowned out by the torrent of talking that erupted when their parents followed us upstairs after the majority of the guests left.  Well, I’ll just have to wait for an opportunity during the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays to screen that cinematic gem for their viewing pleasure.

And because that gathering ended late, I had no time to look around for a theme for last night’s post.  And honestly, I was exhausted.  And if I had tried to post something in that state it would have been stale and derivative and a waste of everybody’s time.  And in this new regimen of mine that is anathema.  I’ll write when I have something I want to say.  And when I don’t, I’ll work on my projects.

And getting back to the theme of this post, my project for today is to review “The Sniper” holistically and identify plot line and character development and quality issues that need to be worked on.  And come up with an outline for the whole story and an outline for the series of stories in this “universe” and then a plan for completing this novel this winter. And then scheduling this work to be finished by some reasonable date.

And this is exciting for me.  It’s an intellectually interesting process that I’ve never tried before.  Up until now I’ve been what’s called a discovery writer or more colloquially a “seat of the pantser” or just a pantser.   This is the opposite of an “outliner” or a plotter.  A discovery writer just sits down and starts writing based on some idea or even just a gestalt of a story and keeps writing and let’s the story write itself without any direction from the author’s conscious mind.  I’ve always done this.  The positive side of this process is that the author’s natural creative instincts are in control and many exciting characters and plot events bubble up.  It is the natural method for producing realistic dialog and emotional insight into the characters.  The negative side is that the story direction is kind of random and you very easily can paint your story into a corner that can only be fixed by a massive re-write which is lethal for story-telling and for the morale of the writer.

And as someone who has run up against this dead-end scenario several times, I have decided to make the effort to do a formal outline and learn the skills it takes to plan my story in a disciplined way so that it won’t fly off the rails at the end and cause me massive mental anguish and confusion.  If I find that working on this outline is interesting, I’ll probably write more about and might even consult some of the sci-fi fans in the audience for their opinions on some of my story choices.

So here I go.