(Originally posted in October 2013, but posting again for a refresher as NaNoWriMo 2015 fast approaches! – JF)
SO, you want to be a rebel, eh?!?!
You just HATE outlining, do you??
You just can’t for the life of you figure out WTF is going to happen in your novel past Act 1??
You shudder at the very mention of ACTS and STRUCTURE and turn up your nose at all that “rubbish”??
Think you don’t need to give any thought whatsoever as to the make-up of your novel before plunging into the 30 days and nights of literary abandon then???
BULLSHIT!
GET YOUR SORRY ASS INTO THIS BOOT CAMP AND FIND OUT HOW YOU TOO CAN LET KICK-ASS NANO NOVELS POUR FORTH FROM YOUR FINGERTIPS ACCORDING TO A PLAN – BUT WITHOUT AN OUTLINE!!!!!!! *GASP!*
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PREP WEEK THREE: ESSENTIAL TRAITS OF MEMORABLE STORIES
REQUIRED READING: “6 Secrets of Writing a Novel Without an Outline” by Steven James
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SUPER-SECRET SECRET???
YES???
Well step on up cuz I’m about to lay it on ya! …..
YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE AN OUTLINE TO KICK ASS AT NANOWRIMO!!!!!
What what WHAT!?!??!
THAT’S RIGHT!!!
But you DO still need to have some sort of PLAN!!!!
YES.
Shut up, sit down, do it!!!!!
Even for pantsers, this IS NOT HARD!
Trust me, YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!
And at the end of NaNo you can look back upon your 50k words and heave a great sigh of relief that you do not have to spend the next YEAR editing a mound of CRAP!!!!
So, what is this magic pantser formula??
All you have to do is FIRST, look over the guidelines for key scenes and know how to create empathetic characters, and THEN check off each item on the following To Do List:
Keep your scenes and characters in line with this list and you will probably not get lost off along the brambles! But if you do happen to get lost, explore a bit, leave a marker flag, machete your way back to the path, and then keep on writing!!! If that little meander takes you someplace good, run with it, if not – AXE IT!!!
We only have 30 days here, people!
No time for dillydallying!!!!
If you want FABULOUS, EXPERT advice on writing awesomesauce without a recipe and way more details on all of the To Do List items, READ THIS ARTICLE by Steven James!!
DO IT!!!
“In storytelling, what will happen informs what is happening, and what is happening informs what did. You cannot know where a story needs to go until you know where it’s been, but you cannot know where it needs to have been until you know where it’s going. It’s a paradox.” — Steven James
This made me smile big. Big time. Being a non-repentant pantser (wrote my current WIP in 2 months flat with the support of the Writing Challenge and without an outline) I know first hand how fun it is to vomit words. I also know that the rewrites in draft 2 can be hefty but hey, that’s the life of a pantser. 😀
Having said that, I am not exactly without any idea where things are going. They are going somewhere I roughly know, the characters are going to surprise me big time when I’ll try to write them (they usually tell me: that’s NOT who I am, get real), and the plot may or may not go into the direction I vaguely envision at the beginning.
My biggest asset in this? My conviction that first drafts are smelly and therefore they will need rework and the total happiness of discovering the story alongside my characters. Mostly.
I’m taking part this year for the first time. My username is AuraEadon (without a space). Feel free to add me. 😀
Yes, the reality is that no one really writes completely clueless about the story their undertaking. 😉 Some people just like more details before they start than others! I’m glad you liked this post!
My own writing journey has been varied in more ways than one. I wrote fanfiction for ten years, and after that, I felt like I had to know everything about my original fiction before I started working on it, because I always knew everything about my fanfictions before I started them. So I was used to writing that way, and thought I should apply that to my own stuff.
But that didn’t work at all.
It took NaNoWriMo to force me to throw that idea out the window and JUST START WRITING. That being said, I also am not a great pantser. I tried to pants my first NaNo and got stuck midway through the novel, where I floundered because I didn’t know how to get from B to C. I believe that happened because I really had hardly anything plotted out for the storyline.
Now I try a mix of both plotter and pantser, and it seems to work well for me. 🙂 Whew. I tried to find you on the NaNo site, but your username didn’t come up! I’m jrfrontera there, if you want to try finding me!
I tried searching for you and came up with 0 results. You are the second person I tried that today. Then I tried searching for myself and it came back with 0 results. I don’t exist! Sent them an SOS message and they said their search facilities are under heavy maintenance. I’ll keep trying the next few days.
You know, the part I love about interacting with other writers is that I learn about how everyone prefers to work. This is not in a “I’m desperate to try something that works” way but rather both getting to know people through something we have in common and we love and also learning about and appreciating the beautiful diversity of the human nature in every aspect. I usually try things and if they work for me they get assimilated fast. Resistance is futile.
I am 80% pantser and 20% plotter. I think I fail in plotting if I try to do it in some formal way (paper, computer) and following specific methods (oh that is a total fail). My favourite plotting times are shower and driving. Oh and dreams. When writing I think I know where things are going but I don’t force it if it’s not in the direction I thought it would go. And the second draft is even a bigger surprise (just finishing it). 😀