Mixing surprise and planning while writing a story

[ColGray]

I would like some clarification from (alleged, self-identified, we-only-have-your-word-for-it) pantsers: You let your characters run amok and the world does what it wants, but how do you get to the conclusion where most of the promises are resolved?

I would challenge the, run amok, characterization because it implies chaos and not-real characters: people want things.

I've referenced it elsewhere, but i use improv rules and a notes document. Nothing exists until it's in the world (on the page) and once it exists (it = people, country, technology, slang, motivation, stake, etc.) then it exists for everyone and goes into the notes document.

It means i write starting with a character and something they want and/or a scene or an idea that I want to explore.

Example: Someone who gives out the Kars4Kids number as their contact info in a serious situation.

The Good

• It's free and it means the story goes where their needs demand. I chalk this up to actively listening to my characters and just being present with them -- what are they saying, vs, What do i need them to say.
  • Please understand that I understand exactly how pretentious that sounds. I want to punch me, too.
  • This tends to eliminate things like contrived misunderstandings.
• It's rare that I create or spend much time with utterly superfluous characters because, if they're on the page, they're doing something related to the POV's needs. They're contributing.
• The flow. When i know my characters and their wants/needs/challenges, the words flow. 15k word weeks happen back to back to back. It's magic.
  • When i'm writing, i'm in it.
• The book/story/novella ends when things are resolved. There are no contrivances to add word count or, I need to do this so i can do that so i can land here because that's where i decided to land before i really knew the character(s)
• The more I write, the more interesting things i find and the more interesting twists occur.
  • Annie Dillard has a line in something to the effect of, Whenever you're writing and find a gem, use it. Saving it never works and you'll think of something later--something better.
  • Unexpected turns happen because I see/hear/read/watch/etc. something that sparks an idea, and then that takes off.
• I don't think i've ever outright remoted a significant arc or thread -- not because, OMG i'm amazing, but because anytime I moved in that direction, it got nipped early because it wasn't relevant

The Bad

• Being organized about taking notes takes time.
• I can hit a narrative wall with a character and struggle because they solved their problem and the next problem isn't clear.
• I write probably 25% more than i really need to because I'm finding the character and their world on the page. This makes editing longer, but I feel like I'm starting from an enviable position of having too much vs not enough
• Covering up the seems can be good or bad -- depends on the seem and if I have an idea
• Too focused
  • Not thinking about the meta-structure of a work means I've had to return and make some significant adjustments to add stakes earlier or change around the kind of stakes/challenges being faced.

The Ugly

• Abandoned work.
  • I wrote about 12k words on Kars4Kids and walked away because I didn't know what kind of story it was. I had kind of found an idea about this being a white hat hacker who does corporate pen testing and some off-the-books gov't work and she runs into something with either an alien or an advanced and contained AI and.... meh.
    • I like the character. I like the bits i have on her and her life/world. But her story isn't here--or at least it didn't speak to me at this point. Maybe i'll return to it. Maybe I'll re-use her somewhere else.
  • This has happened umpteen times
    • Notably, the last time it happened (with this story/character) i tried to outline my out of the hole. I tried to foolscap it. I tried to Harmon story circle it. Nothing.

I really like Will Hines as an improviser and teacher of improv. He's regularly the guy that a lot of incredible actors and improvisers cite as the uber-improviser -- and he literally wrote a book on it.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Not an experienced writer, but I tried outlining the scenes of a novella in detail and the damned thing dropped dead. I seem to do best when I have a very general brief for what needs to happen at this stage of the story, but how it happens is more seat-of-the-pants.

 

[Astro Pen]

I would like some clarification from (alleged, self-identified, we-only-have-your-word-for-it) pantsers: You let your characters run amok and the world does what it wants, but how do you get to the conclusion where most of the promises are resolved?

Okay.
When I wrote Changebringer, (8 years ago now!) it was completely pantsed.
The opening line was just an alternative to 'The cat sat on the mat' to check out a newly installed word processor.
Then a paragraph to check out formatting.
I had never written anything before and it just kept pouring out like magic, my imagination was let loose to create a world.
It was an absolute epiphany for me to discover writing. It was like a drug, letting my 'pen' loose every night. Usually from 10pm till 2 am Eight months later it ended, logically, by it's own process and there it was, a 200 page manuscript. And, oh Lord, I had so loved that wild ride.

I never plan and don't rewrite because the story organises itself, it is automatic. On the other hand lines often go through several iterations before moving on, so you could call it 'rewriting on the fly'. But the big picture just emerges, that part looks after itself, watching a photo emerging in a developing tray.

The wonderful and sadly missed Ann Rice sums things up perfectly. Through her many videos she became a sort of mentor for me.

 

[msstice]

I never plan and don't rewrite because the story organises itself, it is automatic. On the other hand lines often go through several iterations before moving on, so you could call it 'rewriting on the fly'. But the big picture just emerges, that part looks after itself, watching a photo emerging in a developing tray.

That's pretty amazing. I have to always go back and fix language and delete whole sections and write new sections. I'm not experienced at all, however.

 

[ColGray]

I never plan and don't rewrite because the story organises itself, it is automatic. On the other hand lines often go through several iterations before moving on, so you could call it 'rewriting on the fly'. But the big picture just emerges, that part looks after itself, watching a photo emerging in a developing tray.

That is a bananas useful skill and I can't claim anything close to that level of in-the-moment presence. I find that I come up with fun twists like months later -- taking a shower and then, BAM, oh, if i made this tiny tweak i could do X, which makes Y 10% better! <furiously editing>

And I also just did a whole word count reduction / narrative tightening edit exercise, so, uh, definitely went back and rewrote a bunch!

Did you do anything specific to develop that skill?

 

[Phyrebrat]

This is why pantser is a term I abhor. It’s for an implicit judgemental side and also leads non-discovery writers to make assumptions about the story getting away from you.

If your characters are congruent and real/realised they will act within the story accordingly and navigate to a rewarding conclusion for them (and thus the reader).

But… the term pantsing (just like ‘horror’ <whinge whinge>) is all we have so…

 

[ColGray]

This is why pantser is a term I abhor. It’s for an implicit judgemental side and also leads non-discovery writers to make assumptions about the story getting away from you.

If your characters are congruent and real/realised they will act within the story accordingly and navigate to a rewarding conclusion for them (and thus the reader).

But… the term pantsing (just like ‘horror’ <whinge whinge>) is all we have so…

<raises hand> I'm a pure discovery/pantser.

But i also consistently find that as my characters grow and change with the story, I've got tiny things i can add to earlier bits to either better foreshadow something or make a twist land harder or I write myself into a corner and go, sh*t, I need a ____ to have happened three chapters ago so they can now do X -- it's basically adding support and strength to something I discover later.

If you've got a technique or exercises to help mitigate or outright prevent that, I'd love to learn more.

 

[Phyrebrat]

<raises hand> I'm a pure discovery/pantser.

But i also consistently find that as my characters grow and change with the story, I've got tiny things i can add to earlier bits to either better foreshadow something or make a twist land harder or I write myself into a corner and go, sh*t, I need a ____ to have happened three chapters ago so they can now do X -- it's basically adding support and strength to something I discover later.

If you've got a technique or exercises to help mitigate or outright prevent that, I'd love to learn more.

I’m not sure how much help I can be. I’ll have to have a think.

 

[msstice]

If your characters are congruent and real/realised they will act within the story accordingly and navigate to a rewarding conclusion for them (and thus the reader).

I'll be blunt: this is a tautology. Story didn't work out? Character simulation wasn't up to snuff. This describes a desired end result but not a path to get there.

My own (unpublished, limited) experience has been that I'll write up scenes/chapters and things will seem unsatisfactory, and then at a later time I will decide "Sam, just wouldn't do that at this time." and I will rewrite. I have to write to understand the problem, and rewrite to fix it.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'll be blunt: this is a tautology. Story didn't work out? Character simulation wasn't up to snuff. This describes a desired end result but not a path to get there.

Bluntness is fine; but I think I’m missing what you’re saying. Or maybe my point wasn’t clear?

 

[msstice]

Bluntness is fine; but I think I’m missing what you’re saying. Or maybe my point wasn’t clear?

I'm responding to this statement:

If your characters are congruent and real/realised they will act within the story accordingly and navigate to a rewarding conclusion for them (and thus the reader).

This is a tautology to me. It describes the perfect end state: A perfect story has perfect characters and perfect characters make the perfect story.

It does not speak to the process of getting there.

 

[ColGray]

This is a tautology to me. It describes the perfect end state: A perfect story has perfect characters and perfect characters make the perfect story.

It does not speak to the process of getting there.

Put another way, it's impossible to disprove because it is intrinsically self-fulfilling and unchanging: If your story is perfect you have perfect characters because perfect characters make perfect stories, ergo, if your story is imperfect, it is because characters are imperfect, or vice versa. Perfect = Perfect is a closed loop, as is, Imperfect = Imperfect.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Sorry guys. I haven’t a clue what you’re saying.

My point is about authenticity. Congruency. If you write characters who act authentically then your end will be authentic to them. I don’t see the problem here.

 

[msstice]

Sorry guys. I haven’t a clue what you’re saying.

My point is about authenticity. Congruency. If you write characters who act authentically then your end will be authentic to them. I don’t see the problem here.

The way to break a tautology is by analysis.

How can I write characters who act authentically? If you say "When your story ends authentically, you will know." I will hunt you down and remove the Zen Buddhism from your <CENSORED>.

 

[ColGray]

The way to break a tautology is by analysis.

How can I write characters who act authentically? If you say "When your story ends authentically, you will know." I will hunt you down and remove the Zen Buddhism from your <CENSORED>.

what is the sound of one story perfecting?

 

[The Big Peat]

But… the term pantsing (just like ‘horror’ <whinge whinge>) is all we have so…

There's discovery writer, and Martin's gardener/architect divide where the pantsers are gardeners letting things grow, and doubtless other things...

... so there


Re The Thing About Characters And Stories

a)

But i also consistently find that as my characters grow and change with the story, I've got tiny things i can add to earlier bits to either better foreshadow something or make a twist land harder or I write myself into a corner and go, sh*t, I need a ____ to have happened three chapters ago so they can now do X -- it's basically adding support and strength to something I discover later.

If you've got a technique or exercises to help mitigate or outright prevent that, I'd love to learn more.

My own (unpublished, limited) experience has been that I'll write up scenes/chapters and things will seem unsatisfactory, and then at a later time I will decide "Sam, just wouldn't do that at this time." and I will rewrite. I have to write to understand the problem, and rewrite to fix it.

I think any author who is telling you that they have a foolproof technique that means you'll get it right first time everytime and never discover that they have a better version of it later as they write more, regardless of general approach, is either a liar, never shown a complete work of length to others, incredibly easily satisfied, or an inimitable freak of nature. The vast majority of us find that, regardless of what we try, we find the idea warping as we go to the point where I think we have to accept it just goes with the territory. Mitigation, saving time on it, is nice, time saving, sanity saving... but I think you've got to accept that, sooner or later, you've just got to deal with it like the rest of us.

b) I don't agree that pB's line here

If your characters are congruent and real/realised they will act within the story accordingly and navigate to a rewarding conclusion for them (and thus the reader).

Is a tautology or talking about an end state.

To me, it is describing an end goal - a rewarding story conclusion - and a primary tool for getting there - congruent characters.

I don't agree with these either -

This is a tautology to me. It describes the perfect end state: A perfect story has perfect characters and perfect characters make the perfect story.

It does not speak to the process of getting there.

Put another way, it's impossible to disprove because it is intrinsically self-fulfilling and unchanging: If your story is perfect you have perfect characters because perfect characters make perfect stories, ergo, if your story is imperfect, it is because characters are imperfect, or vice versa. Perfect = Perfect is a closed loop, as is, Imperfect = Imperfect.

For one thing, you can have perfect characters (to the creator) without a perfect story (just ask any any RPG player); you can also have perfect stories without perfect characters (there are novels high in my personal canon where I do not believe the characterisation is spot on every time). Perfect stories can come from many sources.

For another, since I've already said I see pB's statement as providing end goal and tool, I don't think it describes an end state without process or a closed loop.

Also the words perfect and imperfect probably aren't helpful. No story is truly perfect to everyone; it's possible no story is truly perfect to any single individual. But that's a little besides the point.

c) As such, I believe the better question to what pB said is

"How do you get these congruent characters prior to writing the story, or through writing the story without drastically altering the story as you work out who these characters are"

To which msstice has added while I write this lengthy tome

"How do you work out that these characters are real enough without writing the whole story and going 'yup, that worked'"

To which the answer is... well, I'm not 100% sure, but the obvious answers off the top of my head are

1) Obsess about the characters for a long time before, planning the characters even if you don't plan their story (that much)
2) Stick to the sort of people, characters and archetypes you know very well and can judge very quickly
3) Study people, characters, and archetypes obsessively so you know a lot about them and broaden the range of 2 a whole lot.

Experience, practice, study, and natural gifts in other words. I'm sorry I can't be more useful but as with so much of writing I am

i) Making up my answers as I go along
ii) Bound by the flaws of the answer to every general writing problem being very general

If you are looking for some general ideas of questions to ask your characters to test whether they are truly congruent and real, I shall suggest the following

1) "What is your character's flawed perspective about reality" - do they always think they're the only grown up in the room? do they think people will only love them if they win? do they think everything will be alright as long as they follow the rules?

2) "What two goals of your character will conflict the most" - are they idealistic and ambitious? do they want a quiet life but miss adventure?

3) "How are they like their archetype/upbringing/other people like them and how are they not" - do they rebel against their upbringing? do they follow the ideals further than others? do they sham it?

But there's probably a ton of others, and plenty better, and in a way I think I'm going off from an angle as to what pB was saying as I'm talking dramatic core more than verisimilitude.

But the point is, you're looking to quickly establish what the character wants, needs, normally does, does under stress, and will never do. And from there you can find a path. You stick them in dramatic situations, they do stuff, their stuff leaves unresolved ends so they do more stuff, and at some point through doing stuff they come to their big want and/or need and either achieve it or doesn't, creating a resolution.



Incidentally, having got this far, I disagree with what pB says as a failsafe method for everyone. It's led GRR Martin far into the weeds. I know I personally do better for stepping back and thinking about what the story needs rather than what the character would do from time to time. But! Everyone has their own methods. And I know having fully realised characters is a huge, huge difference maker for me in terms of writing.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I feel like words and meanings are being put into my post that aren’t there.

There’s nothing zen about what I believe and I’m posting my practice, not a solution — I just mean that when the focus of your writing is the character, not a contrived plot, these things don’t seem to come up. Not for me at least.

Arthur C Clarke has great tales but there is no characterisation there. They are there to support his concept. What would’ve happened in Rendezvous if he had? How rewarding is the ending if we’d been invested in the character instead of the idea and mystery of the object appearing in our Solar System?

The amount of preoccupation with world building in fantasy is a good comparison: if we spent that much time developing a character I suspect some of these issues wouldn’t arise.

My best example from my own practice is the character of Nissy in my latest novel. There was no plot, just the idea of a bricky preteen matchgirl living in Victorian London. I just began to write strictly from her eyes and things began to accrete around her.

Maybe there is something about my practice you don’t like, but to call it Zen is reductive and dare I say a little disrespectful?

I wonder if this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a ‘pantser’ or discovery writer is? It’s an imprecise and loaded term. Also, I’d put money on the fact that there’s no such thing as a total pantser or a total plotter. We’re all really hybrids aren’t we (question mark).

I’m also aware that I may be coming across as snobby against planners — which is not the intention. I’m very envious of people who can plan. I need the dopamine reward hit of discovering the story or I’ll lose interest and have an unfinished wip.

Writing is full of little serendipities — in our recent Chronscast chat with John Langan he mentioned the strange things that one writes that later somehow take on a far greater significance; Stephen King has also commented many times how he has to discover the story as if he’s a reader.

He gets criticism for poorly ended novels sometimes so maybe there is a drawback to this kind of writing.

Which makes me consider if certain genres lend themselves better to pantsing and others to planning. Horror is about existentialism so I guess the character is front and centre and their take on things and experiences are crucial. I wonder if that applies as strictly in other genres.

I’ll tell you one thing, though: if it weren’t for Scrivener I’d never have finished anything! That helps me track my process and organise my scribble of a brain!

ETA just saw @The Big Peat response after posting this.

 

[The Big Peat]

The amount of preoccupation with world building in fantasy is a good comparison: if we spent that much time developing a character I suspect some of these issues wouldn’t arise.

To a certain extent, setting in that sort of fantastika is virtually a character in its own right; but that's another story.

My best example from my own practice is the character of Nissy in my latest novel. There was no plot, just the idea of a bricky preteen matchgirl living in Victorian London. I just began to write strictly from her eyes and things began to accrete around her.

I'm going to riff on this and what I was talking about.

David Gemmell was very much a discovery writer at times. His Jerusalem Man stories started with a stray line while writing something else. His Sword in the Storm started, I believe, with the image of a young child cutting free a thorn-trapped fawn in the woods. He just went out there to explore both things.

I don't know how much he did after that but it's very noticeable that Gemmell had a well defined emotional interest niche and never strayed from it. The main characters of both named books fit very much in it - men with outsider qualities who struggle between their instincts and learned beliefs about good, and their instincts for violence and anger - and ergo, I suspect he never had to really think about it. It just came instinctually. Most of the best writing does. A lot of us study craft to fill in the gaps, but craft is at its best when it becomes intrinsic and instinctive.

Or to share something a friend shared with me about coding:

The top right box is the goal. We all get to skip a few steps on the circuit somewhere, and some of us a lot, and there's things were most of us never get beyond green... but that yellow 'Unconsciously Competent' is the goal.

And that's what enable discovery writing really. Unconscious competence.

And where that comes into this is and congruent characters is that in many ways, we are at that old chestnut "write what you know".

Gemmell wrote what he knew. Violent people, ordinary people, conflicted people. He also shamelessly stole characters from the people around him.

I can vouch that elements of Nissy's emotional core were pB writing what he knows. Obviously there's a ton of elements that he didn't, but emotional core, yeah.


And I know this is part of my own character process. I use elements of myself, I use elements of the people I know, I use elements of characters I love... and I'm always, always trying to create a core of the character where I just know them intrinsically because I've met that core before.

Your characters will still surprise you, because people surprise themselves. But as a quick easy unconscious way to make characters congruent and able to bear the weight of big stories -

Write what you know into them.

 

[Astro Pen]

Let's get this out of the way.
The Pantser thing is horrible for British people because pants is is our word for underpants. I know the pantaloon origins, nevertheless to us these are pants, not the second picture which are trousers. See also feminine fashion - Pant suit (US) vs Trouser suit (UK)

Pants

and these are trousers

 

[Baldanders]

Oh, I also thought about artificial pushing a story to an unexpected turn and how it ruins the scenario.

One famous movies reviewer (6 M subscribers, but unfortunately his videos are not translated to English) said that the best unexpected turn is when the turn puts together details, given to the viewer earlier in a different vision. When an unexpected turn happens, but the reader understands that nothing earlier hinted on it, then it doesn't impress the reader. I thought about this statement and came to the conclusion that I agree. There must be details that hint on the turn, but they must be given in such a way that the reader doesn't understand them correctly too early.

Of course, here one must be careful. With all my respect to Dune, I believe Herbert wrote it in a very bad manner - he gives a hint with just 3-4 tiny words, and then, about 900 pages later, this hint gives a shot. It's quite easy to just forget about it or leave unnoticed. Reader's attention must be attracted to the hint, they must not miss it.

So, my opinion, when writing a story, one must give hints and attract reader's attention to them, but these hints must lead the reader astray.
A couple of examples of how to do that:

Spectral - in this movie the author holds us on the POV of a scientist, who's trying to explain an anomaly with his scientific approach. But side characters appellate to religion and superstitions to give an explanation to the same. And when the end turn happens, and the scientist citing a superstition, you think: wo-a-a-a, all of those things were said for a reason, they align the story, but to the very end you weren't able to understand how they'll align, if align at all. So, the author, by exploiting a subjective point of view of the main hero, makes us consider the given details as a simple superstition, but in the end, it appears that actually it has validity, but in unexpected form.

Another example is The Sixth Sense. Again, we see all the hints on the truth, but because we observe them from the POV of the main hero, we don't understand them right until the final twist.

So, I'd say one of the main approaches to making the turn really unexpected and interesting is to show the reader the hints, make them see a harmonic explanation based on subjectiveness, but under the hood lead these hints in a parallel line. When two lines - one expected and one hidden, both align the hints well, and the hidden line comes out in the end, filling the whitespaces, this supposed to give a strong emotional resolution.