Making Stuff Up: How one Author gets from beginning to end before it's too late
What about when the author knows the end before the beginning? We trust our authors to have an end in sight when we start to read. But do authors have to know where they're going before the story begins, or might directing it be part of the craft?
Over to you Eric, and thank you for visiting my blog:
Making Stuff Up: Planning, Pantsing, and Me
by Eric Garrison
In any writing circle, writers, especially novelists, self-identify as planners or pantsers. It seems to be as fundamental a division as eye color, handedness or Star Trek vs Star Wars fandom.
Planners want to know every detail of the story's path
before they start to write. They do charts of story arcs, character arcs, do
questionnaires to flesh out character histories and family trees. The framework
of their outlines is as detailed and solid enough to make a computer programmer
cheer with recognition. It's sensible and has many advantages. The writer need
not keep all those details in her head. She can refer back to it later if the
main character's cousin's dog's breed gets forgotten by Chapter 37. Often, the
book's synopsis can be created with little effort from this planning.
There are many varieties of planner, from simple outliner to
fans of Scrivener software to devotees of the Snowflake Method. I'd only recently heard
about the Snowflake Method, it's intriguing and seems like a wonderful way to
approach a big project by successive approximations, each pass adding and
refining the story more detail until you have a novel. I may have to try it
sometime.
On the other side of the coin are the pantsers. Writing by
the seat of the pants is the oldest form of the art, predating the written word.
I was at a writer's retreat once, and sat in slack-jawed awe, listening as one
of the other writers there spun a story *live* for all of us sitting around.
Just made it up on the spot. No notes, no paper, no computer, nothing but her
brain and her voice. And it was good. Sure, had it been written down, it would
have needed editing and trimming and such to make it more readable and suitable
for publication. But this was a raw, improvisational exercise that held the
room spellbound as the oral story unfolded.
My first couple of novels, including Four 'til Late, were
entirely pantsed. With Four 'til Late, I started out with a concept: an amateur
ghost hunter protagonist and his friends set out on a haunted road trip. I had
no idea what was causing the haunting at first, all I knew was they'd be beset
by supernatural troubles the whole way from Indianapolis to New Orleans. A
couple of chapters in, after the characters interacted with each other, I
discovered what kind of people they were, what the main character's history
with each was, and this made the source of the hauntings more obvious to me.
All I had to do was steer the story toward the hazy ending this suggested, and
with each passing chapter, it became more and more inevitable in my head.
Of course, a pantser isn't free at that ending. No, instead
of doing all the structural work up front, they save it for the end. Having
made up a full story, they can go back and revise and refine the story, hack
out parts that don't fit, build up new parts to better support the ending, and
so on.
Both methods require some form of this. Beta readers help
reveal parts of the story that are clear to the author but not so clear to the
reader. Editing helps refine both awkward parts of the story and the grammar,
spelling/typos, and general language polishing.
I said my first couple of books were pantsed. I have not
become a detailed planner, but I've seen the value of at least a little
preparation before starting down the road to writing the novel. I do what I
call laying down rails for the story to run along. Similar to the Snowflake
Method, I start out very rough, just an idea of a beginning/middle/end in three
acts, then I break those down into smaller pieces, what I think will become
chapters. At the very least, this grocery list approach to sketchy outlining
lets me know what comes next when I find myself stalling out on forward
momentum writing. Pantsing has that risk, and when I wrote Reality Check, my
outline was TOO sketchy and I almost gave up on it. Instead, I wrote a grocery
list outline for the rest of the book and got my story back on rails and
regained my momentum.
So am I a Pantser or a Planner? I'd say I'm still a Pantser
at heart, but I like those rails to run my story on. If it jumps the track,
it's usually because the story seemed too forced. So, I'll stop at the at
point, see where the new direction is taking me, and lay down new rails. I know
my way isn't for everyone, but I thought I'd share to show there's not just two
ways to approach storytelling. There are many, within and outside of the two
broad categories.
Thank you so much for visiting my blog Eric. I suspect I'm half planner half pantser too, and I'm really looking forward to reading Four 'Til Late.
About the Author: Eric Garrison is active in the writing community in Indianapolis, Indiana. He lives in the Circle City with his wife, step-daughter and four cats. He also enjoys gaming and homebrewing beer.
Seventh Star Press published the first of his Road Ghosts trilogy, Four 'til Late, in July of 2013. The other two are expected to come out later in 2013.
Eric's novel, Reality Check, is a science fiction adventure released by Hydra Publications. This book reached #1 in Science Fiction on Amazon's Kindle store during a promotion in July 2013.
Eric's short story, "Drag Show" appeared in the Fall 2011 edition of Strange, Weird and Wonderful Magazine and Volume 2 of that magazine's anthology series. His flash piece, "Dark Reflection", appeared in the Indiana Horror 2011 anthology. He's competed twice in the Iron Writer Challenge with two 500-word flash pieces, "Killer Cure" and "Moby Me".
About the Book: In Four 'til Late, amateur ghost hunter Brett and his friends Gonzo, Jimbo, and Liz are on a road trip with dangerous detours, dreadful dreams and dire warnings. But that won't keep them from reaching their goal: New Orleans. Along the way they discover that some spirits leave you with more than a hangover and regrets. Can they get there in one piece, or will they be stopped and rest in peace? The bags are packed, the engine's running. Turn up the radio and get moving because the road ghosts are waiting, and it's Four 'til Late. Four 'til Late is the first book of the Road Ghosts Trilogy.Author Links:
Blog: http://ericgarrison.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EricGarrisonAuthor
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1978111.Eric_Garrison
Twitter: https://twitter.com/erichris
To find out more, follow the tour:
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9/23 The Dan O’Brien Project Promo Spotlight
9/24 The Flipside of Julianne Guest Post
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9/25 Armand Rosamilia, Author Guest Post9/25 Jess Resides Here Character Interview
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And to buy the book, go to:
Amazon Print Version http://www.amazon.com/Four-Til-Late-Eric-Garrison/dp/1937929221
Kindle Version http://www.amazon.com/Four-Late-Road-Ghosts-ebook/dp/B00E4WO7YA
Nook http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/four-til-late-eric-garrison/1013893134?ean=2940148741527
Kobo http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/four-til-late
iBookstore https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/four-til-late/id691150466?mt=11
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