Pantser to Planner – Who Me?

Yesterday, I completed the outline of my novel, the 5th Man. Big ups for moi. My keyboard has been on fire.

I’ve always claimed to be a ‘pantser’ – someone who writes what comes into their disordered minds with no specific plan. More of a ‘by guess and by gosh’ approach. In fact, I’ve strenuously resisted developing a plot plan. Now, I’m a convert. Hallelujah! Better late than never, I say.

Several months ago, I’d downloaded a template online from a writer named Caroline Norrington.  I found it incredibly helpful. Boy, was that a dumb decision. I’ve discovered that I LOVE planning my book – going through the draft chapter by chapter, highlighting the extra special bits, using all caps to fling in an idea I want to develop further, doing ctrl-c and striking out pages and pages of bumph whose fate will be determined later.

My first draft is 500 pages – much too long, but it represents all that I wrote that seemed to bear some relation to the main story line.My mentor Sam Hiyate said right off the top – chop the first 20,000 words and jump right into the action. Get your readers interested in what she’s doing and why they want to know more about her. The back story may have been fun to write, he said, but the readers will nod off and lose interest before they get to the good stuff. I can edit – my first job after university was as a textbook editor (zzzzzz).

Having to slash and prune doesn’t worry me! I never permanently delete anything anyway. I’ll never run out of writing – my problem is admitting that it’s good enough to see the light of computer screens. I have gigabytes of stuff I’ve snipped from here and there along the way, some dating back to 1999. Those back story excerpts will be posted as prequels’ on my hyacinthemillerbooks.com website. reduce, reuse, recycle. I want to entice people to become excited/aroused/addicted to my books. See, I may cast a big carbon footprint with all of my gas-powered lawn machines, but I’m still sort of saving trees!

So back to my outline….it took me only five days or so of constant work spread over three weeks to get it done. After the first few days I found it easier to slip into the stream of consciousness plotting that I needed to keep moving the story forward. More danger, more sex, more conflict, more setbacks. I became a ‘more’ junkie. I’m building more complexity than a 27 Layer Tuile Torte. Ideas would pop into my head while I was folding laundry or waiting for an omelette to firm up. I’ve learned to scribble notes while making a right-hand turn on a red.

My first steps were to take some of the categories Caroline had included in the Scrivener template and flesh them out. What’s the one-sentence description of the novel? How would your protagonist complete these sentences? Is she right or left handed? What is she afraid of?

Of course I could answer that! I mean, Kenora has been living in my head for seven years or so. I ended up with a 500 page draft because I couldn’t stop writing about her. And partly because I was afraid to finish – just one more scene, one more interaction. But who cares about the minutiae of her life, unless they advance the plot or drive some action event? Every book has to end. Every chapter needs to have a hook.

Of course Sam was right. I knew that but wasn’t sure how to go about it the right way, despite poring over hundreds of blog posts from experts and attending too many workshop sessions to count.
I’d been dithering until his metaphorical kick in the butt got me motivated. Sam is no-nonsense. None of the soft-pedalling that I get impatient with. “Cut”, “edit” “ramp up the action”, “don’t let your character be driven by events, have her in control”, “make what happens bigger and more exciting,” “too much memoire-y stuff is boring”. Okey dokey.

I can do that. I have stacks of notebooks filled with plot and action ideas. Sam is excited. I’m excited. Damn but this is such fun!