Plotting or Pantsing? -- A Middle Way?

 Writing your Novel

Plotting or Pantsing?  -  A Middle Way?

In yesterday's post, I talked about the two best-known methods of how to write your novel, Plotting and Pantsing and I said that for the second book in the Agathan trilogy, The Silver Child, I was going to use a hybrid method. So today I'm going to explain the method I'm using so you can see there are other ways to go about writing your novel.

First, a disclaimer. Using any of these different techniques does not guarantee your work will be published, nothing, not even good planning, can make up for an uninteresting protagonist, unconnected story arcs with weak emotional and action plots, and badly written dialogue.

That said, you can overcome all of the above if at least your story is well constructed and it doesn't matter how you do it, just do it! 

So, The Silver Child. How is that story being planned?

First, I had the idea for this part of the trilogy just after I started Return of the Burning Man so it's been on the back burner for a couple of years or so. The second thing to say is that, despite knowing that the antagonist from RotBM makes a comeback in TSC, I only have a vague idea of the plot of this novel.

So, that's where the Hybrid system comes in. With only a vague idea of the plot, I can make index cards for the main plot elements 

• Inciting Event
• Quest Begins
• Quest Continues
• Reversal One
• Reversal Two
• Reversal Three/Rug Pull
• Climax
• Resolution

I can write out a few ideas on each card for each element. Once I have an idea of where I'm going I can start writing in a Pantsing way using each card as a Wayfinder for the story. 

So far so good. But what if a situation arises such as the one I described with my main antagonist? Well, as I'm writing, I will write a card for each scene with a brief description. 

So when I'm writing the section with a card Inciting Event the card may say "Lewis makes a date to meet Debbie" and I write that part then I have Lewis meet Sandra and arrange to meet her at the dance that night, I'll write out a card "Lewis two-times Debbie with Sandra. and put it in the system after the Inciting Event card and so on, and so on. It may be that I decide the section with Lewis and Sandra makes no sense and cut it from the manuscript, then all I have to do is take it out of the system.

The filling system can be very large and detailed, like the one I did for Return of the Burning Man, and need to be stored in an index box or it could just be a few dozen cards and you can keep them all together with a bulldog clip.

I hope this has been interesting and you've got something out of it for your writing. Leave a comment and let me know.

Next, I'm going to show you a chapter/wordcount spreadsheet that I use to give balance to my writing

Thank you for reading this.

Stephen

Angrydad Creative Writing