I’ve always been a front loader when it comes to work and well, anything I do. I like to be neat an organized to the point it is probably slightly obbessive. I’m real good at coming up with great story ideas. But idea isn’t story. I’ve also been known to write great antagonists, but somewhere in the process I tend to neglect my protagonist and this is bad. So bad that it is “painful”. This is what I am working on right now. Focusing on my protagonist. Starting with her, who she is, what she wants. This is real hard for me. I rely too heavily on my antagonist to the point he takes over the story and usually these guys (or gals) are not very likable which leaves me with a book that is well, a little on the dark and twisted side. Not that is necessarily bad, except I’ve forgotten a very important element — the payoff to the reader.

I am currently bleeding out on the page. It hurts, but it’s good.

I realize I’m frontloading my weak area as well, although flipped issues: I don’t have much trouble seeing my characters and getting them on the page, but for the plot I get out the tables and charts and make sure I have something concrete rather than vague notions.

In my A.B. world (After Bob), I’ve taken some muddled, but fun, steps toward plotting and character development. I write short scenes of interviews with my characters or scenes from parts of their lives outside of my novel’s storyline, yet that are relevant to it. (These often become postings for my blog.) And I have 4×6 cards with character descriptions that I admit are very handy. And I’ve taken a few pathetic stabs at storyboarding.

But in my heart, I guess I’m a pantser. Little is more fun than coming up with a character, putting them in a difficult spot, and just hanging on for the ride — yeehaw! So what if that doesn’t make me a bestseller? At least from 5:00 to 8:00 every morning I’m in my happy place, even if there are stabbing pains shooting up from my pants. The true test will come with manuscript number two. Will I pants? Or will I plot? Sigh … I may need another Bob session.

But I took a class recently with Judy Duarte, and she showed us how to write a character-driven synopsis first, and then create the story from that — which is basically plotting but with a heavy emphasis on character development. I thought the whole concept was brilliant and am excited to try it. So I may end up becoming a plotter after all. : )

I guess you could call me the ultimate masochist then – I do both. I don’t really “outline”, but I use Holly Lisle’s method for coming up with a plot and developing many of the story’s scenes before I start writing. I know a lot about my characters, what they want/need, what they’ll do to get it, and many of the situations they’ll find themselves facing throughout the story. If I start running out of scenes while I’m writing, I’ll plan more out, three or four at a time.

But I don’t plan all of the scenes. And I don’t completely plan how my characters will move through a specific scene either – which still results in occasional corners to get out of and plot revisions as I’m writing because my characters made a decision that was unexpected. I never know the end before I start writing – I know vaguely how I think I might want it to end, but never exactly how things will wrap up. I like it that way – I like leaving myself things to figure out during the process of writing, and leaving the end open to whatever curves the story takes to that point.

I guess I choose the infliction of a sharp, painful injury that creates a wound to fester for the duration of the draft, sometimes feeling better, sometimes throbbing and making me miserable, but ultimately healing in the end. 🙂

I just write the first five or six pages…and if the character is getting interesting to me, then I work out what’sabout to happen in the rest of the story, but if the character is boring–then no big cheese.

I think some of my best ideas come from the pants though. (You can quote that, I respect your need to do so.) I think it’s important to see where the story is going to take us, and not be married to the plot we came up with in the baby stages of the novel.