Plotting and Pantsing--When to Plan and When to Write, and Why Both Are Useful as You Build Your Book

Erin, a blog reader who has taken my online book-writing classes, wrote with a great question:  "I'm struggling a bit of time management in terms of planning vs writing. Case in point, I get about 30-45 minutes of writing a day. I feel like this should be used towards actually writing my book. The planning exercises are helpful but they don't feel like real, actual writing. So on days where I'm planning and world building and working on character profiles, etc., I feel like I'm not writing or progressing in terms of my novel."

Erin wondered about the balance between what she called "actual writing" and all the planning and plotting that goes into building a book's structure.
"Right now I feel guilty planning but stuck writing," she said.  "It's a terrible place to be!"

Welcome to the world of structure versus writing, or plotting versus pantsing, as it's known in many writing circles.  Some writers love to know where they're going ahead of time--the plotters or planners.  Others love the discovery process of just writing and seeing what emerges.

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False Agreements and Your Narrator's Epiphany

A blog reader from New England sent a great question, which ties into a discussion happening in one of my online classes right now, about the growth of a character in memoir and fiction.  How that character always starts their story with a false agreement.  How that agreement changes until the character realizes what's true.

The false agreement also happens in nonfiction.  We pick up a book to get new insights, to move from limited knowledge into wider understanding. 

So, imagine what false agreement your story starts with.  What is the status quo?  What does everybody put up with, to get along? 

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Planting Sensory Details--What to Use, When to Use It--for Emotional Impact in Your Writing

Skilled writers use sensory details to bring emotion to the reader.  Oddly enough, emotion doesn't come from fast-paced action.  Our hearts may race, we may read fast, but all we feel is tension and speed.  Characters' thoughts and feelings don't bring emotion to the reader either.  We may relate, but it doesn't hit that part of the brain where memories reside, where our emotions slide past the logical mind.

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How Long Can My Timeline Be? Story Arc Questions and Answers

Many first-time novelists and memoirists struggle with timelines, asking excellent questions in my classes.  Two favorite ones: 

* How long a span of years or months or days can my book cover?
 
* What should I condense, what should I expand (Do I have to relate everything in real time or can it be summarized)?

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What Memoirists Always Ask: How Much of My Story Can I Tell without Hurting Others?

Anyone who has written creative nonfiction (memoir, particularly) has probably run into the question of story ownership.  How much of your experience do you really have the right to write about?  When your story crosses into other people's lives, is it still yours to tell?

I've long admired Patricia Hampl's approach in I Could Tell You Stories.  She discusses the lines she's crossed and what came of it.  Mostly, she lost people in her life.   I remember how angry one of my family members became when I wrote about my very religious grandmother's mugging and loss of faith in God because of it, her eventual death.  "That's not the way it happened," this dear relative said.  But it was the way it happened, from my experience.  And I wrote about it as honestly as I could, to the best of my memory.

Who is right, in terms of memory?  Brain science tells us that memory changes as soon as we remember something.  Just the act of remembering will shift the details. 

And are my stories always my own?  Do I write them without considering the others who were involved?  Sometimes, I do.  Sometimes, not.

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Three Essential Tools for Getting through Any Post-New-Year's-Resolution Slump

Making New Year's resolutions about my writing is fun.  Energizing.  At New Year's, anything is possible.  I look at what I haven't managed in 2015 and set my sights high for 2016.

I ride the high until around mid-February, usually.  Then I need to have three essential tools in place to help me get through the post-New-Year's-resolution slump.

These three tools are the main reason I've managed to write and publish thirteen books in three genres. 

They are:  (1) accountability, (2) inspiration, and (3) determination.   They usually matter in that order.

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Emotional Peaks: How to Make Sure They're in Your Scenes and Chapters

When you read a great story, you don't even notice how you're engaged.  You just are--right?  But skillful writers plant a rhythm into their writing.  Like breathing, there are peaks and valleys of emotion and tension through all great scenes, chapters, even whole books. 

In a class I taught, I drew a diagram of a river on the board to illustrate this.  "This makes it very easy.  I just put heightened moments of tension at each bend in the river," one student noted.  "Maybe a big decision, a change of heart, a new understanding.  Or an external shift, like a move or a marriage or a big loss."  It made a big difference in her book structure to finally understand these "emotional peaks:" to view her scenes, chapters, and manuscript like a flowing river.

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New Year's Goal: Submit Your Manuscript! But First, Learn to Write a Killer Query Letter and Book Synopsis

Is one of your New Year's goals to finally get that manuscript submitted?  Get off your endless revision-hamster-wheel?  

For your New Year's reading pleasure, check out these three great articles--what you need to know before you submit.

How to write a killer query letter.  A guest article for Writer's Digest website, written by agent Barbara Poelle.  Click here.

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Big Magic: How to Keep Writing When You Have NO TIME!

I'm a great fan of Elizabeth Gilbert's articles about writing, and especially her newest book Big Magic.  This week, I'm sharing one of Gilbert's posts from a few weeks ago on her Facebook page.  It's possibly the most inspiring article I've read recently--effectively addressing the hole we all fall into:

I have NO TIME to write!!

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Character Lists: A Great Way to Coax Your Characters out of Hiding

In her book, Write Away, mystery author Elizabeth George talks about her writing process as she begins a new book.  She first writes detailed ideas about the plot.  She also researches the setting, often with trips to the location she's thinking of using.  And she always puts together a character list.

Her character lists are many pages of stream-of-consciousness ideas about each main player in her book.  If you read Write Away (which I highly recommend), you'll see an example from her novel, In the Presence of the Enemy.  She shows the entire character list for one of her main characters, Eve Bowen. 

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