Check-in post, days 12 & 13 + Weekly beta-seeking/snippet-posting/general chatter

[lola_mento]

Long time no seeing you. (Yesterday was one of Those Days when nothing gets ever done, including posts.)

Making any progress lately? Feeling like murdering someone already? Got completely distracted from whatever you were doing? Wait, that's me.

Today's discussion subject: are you more of a plotter (someone who has to know beforehand how the story goes) or a pantser (someone who makes it up as they go)? Plotter or pantser? describes some different types of each. I've seen these terms mostly from pro-writing novelists, where it's used as a thing of outline-or-no-outline, but for fannish writing, a more general planning-or-no-planning works better, I think.

And! This is also the weekly post where you can:

-Make a request for a beta reader/someone to bounce ideas from/something else you may need

-Post a snippet of your WIP

-Chat about anything else

Comments

[curuchamion]

I am such a pantser. I used to think that was because I wrote tiny pieces of fic too short to plot - I'd start with a single mental "snapshot" of an important moment in the story and build the intro/ending framework around it, most times - but now that I'm writing a 50k-word novel where I started with a few character ideas and a general setting, I guess I've got to accept it. *g*

(I do like it. My biggest talent in fiction writing is letting my characters run away with me... and with 50,000 words, 35 years, and the entire North American continent to do it in, BOY, are they ever running away! *still loves MCs* I can't imagine having this ride be any other way.)

I plan, of course, but not about the plot. I'll do a lot of jotting, whenever I'm stuck or even when I'm not, about my characters - I'll sit down and scribble "okay, somebody did such and such. Who? It feels like Mort. Why? What does that say about him? How does it jibe with the other things I know about him?" Etc. I'll answer the questions as I think of answers, and wind up with a couple pages of typed jottings that give me a clearer picture of my character. The plot grows out of that information, with a whole lot of input from my subconscious.

[raletha]

Those kind of snapshots are often the way my stories start, too: some vivid image, emotion, or atmosphere I want to capture and develop.

Asking those kind of questions really does help develop plot points, and it does it organically, too, which works really well for me, too. I don't like imposing an arbitrary plot on my characters and setting; I like it to flow more naturally from that starting concept.

Hope the 50K is going well! *shakes pom poms*