How I'm Learning To Plot

Plotting vs pantsing. It's the age-old debate among writers, and most of us know where we fall (pantser to the core here). So how does a pantser (also known as a discovery writer) learn how to plot?

With difficulty. And tears. And lots of hands-dragging-down-face moments (seriously, I need to stop that).

I pantsed my first novel with a single scene in mind and 140,000 words of wandering garbage. Okay, it wasn't all terrible (I play to my strengths, which is prose, not plot), but I went into it with very little knowledge and came out of it with even less knowledge. How was I supposed to fix THAT? *waves hand vaguely at the seven notebooks under my desk which comprise my first draft*

The first draft meandered through realms, wove through interactions with gods, wandered around in a thousand aimless directions until I wrote the final three words. Turns out, I was able to fix it. I just fixed it wrong. I made it so, so, so much worse. My prose held up (yay!) but characterization fell flat. Characters got dropped, added, dropped again. Gods, who? I still cried at the end of the second draft, because it went through so much more than the first (nothing good, obviously, just more). But it still wasn't right.

I started and scraped and restarted the first ten chapters countless times. I write chronologically, so even though I knew where the story needed to go, I had to nail the first few chapters before I could move on. And that was a whole struggle in and of itself. I switched tenses, POVs, changed the entire first half. It was a mess.

It's still a mess, but it's getting better. I'm learning to plot or outline a few chapters at a time, so I know where the story is going. I had the bare bones; now I have a skeleton. After a crisis last summer, I put aside The Fallen Star for months, but I'm back at it with a fresh mind. I've written 49k words since January 1st, following the new outline I've written (taped to my wall). I bought Save the Cat Writes A Novel and it has helped immensely. I'm reading more and more about the craft, about storytelling. I dived headfirst into a revision that was really a rewrite, but I'm confident in this draft. It's talking about things that were missing from other drafts. It has a more solid plot, more solid motives and goals. I'm doing something I've never done before, and I'm excited to see how it lands.

All because I started writing short outlines for each chapter. I kept all the original beats from previous drafts, but added new scenes, and an entirely new second half. This part is the scary stuff. I'm treading new territory here. It's something I haven't seen done in books I've read, so of course I'm nervous. But, like Nova, "I'm ready."

If you're a pantser and you want to become a plotter, start small. Really small. Chapter by chapter. Scene by scene. Most of my "chapter outlines" actually span several chapters because once I start writing, I find out I have more to say than I outlined. I'm just focused on getting to the next big scene or plot point. Sometimes when I'm writing, something happens that isn't in the outline, but it streamlines everything (an off-handed comment by a character might cut down ten pages of blather, for example). And once I get the hang of the small outlines, I'll move to big outlines. Outlining whole novels. Whole series.

For now, me and my bullet points are content with the next scene.

As always,