#writerscoffeeclub June 30: If you're a pantser, have you tried plotting and vice versa?

Not sure where I fall on this spectrum. Writing usually goes best when I discover the story as I'm building it. This is probably because that way, I am closest to the reader. If I'm getting bored with the story, the reader surely is as well.

However, I also get very motivated when I come up with some big event in the future that I can write towards. At that point it starts to feel more like plotting.

Of course, for the kind of idea-based speculative fiction I usually write, there is also a certain amount of post-draft plotting, which gets very sterile and spreadsheety.

Perhaps plot-debugging is the right phrase. Checking that the dates and distances make sense, that all the arithmetic works out and that the science isn't too easily disproven.

This is pure plotting without any sense of story. It's not the most fun, but it needs to be done.

@ptmesis

I do this too, all those little details that could pull the reader from the story if not correct

@ptmesis I've always considered myself a pantser. Wrote my first novel without any idea where it was going — just let my characters lead me there.

Started a few more in the same way, but didn't complete them for various reasons.

Recently started a new novel where I plotted out the outline first. Not the full story, but the structure of it and this actually helped me write much faster because I knew where I was going. I still let the characters lead me to the destination and so the overall structure might change a bit as the story evolves, but knowing where I'm headed helps me write faster. If that makes sense?

But yes, I do the "fixing" as I write too 🙂 My characters might suddenly decide to zig instead of zag and that upsets what I'd written before. So I'd go back and fix things as the story moves forward ...

@f True, if you want to write fast, it really helps to know where you're going. I think what turns people off is when plotting becomes different from writing, somehow. When it feels like you're algorithmically designing a plot rather than telling a story.

For me that's not what plotting feels like. I'm still telling myself the story, just on a higher level, in my head.