Plotting VS Pantsing
My Scorpion Sting serial #fiction series is my attempt to practice—or truly introduce myself to—pantsing.
This story is presented with a moderate level of editing, essentially still a first draft. However, it has not been planned or plotted in any traditional sense. It springs from an idea I once had and is now coming to life, one sentence at a time.
Plotting involves mapping out the story in an outline before the writing begins. At the same time, pantsing entails writing without any predefined plan. Pantsing focuses on discovering the journey as the characters do. I'm not aiming to instruct anyone on the topic; I'll leave that to those who revel in such endeavors. My intention here is merely to clarify these terms.
Plotting exhausts me with any story longer than a novella. I go through numerous revisions, starting with an outline. My process begins with a blurb, expands into a synopsis, then an Act outline, followed by single-sentence chapter outlines, and finally, multi-sentence chapter outlines. By the end of this process, I know the story inside and out.
This method makes writing more straightforward, but by the time I start writing, I've experienced the story multiple times. Even then, I'll produce four, maybe five drafts, before it's ready for readers or editors. At this stage, I've read the story at least a dozen times. By the time it reaches publication, I've gone through the story a hundred times, and I'm not just over it; I'm utterly sick of it.
Pantsing, on the other hand, is too unpredictable without a rigorous method for tracking easter eggs. Stephen King prides himself on being a pantser, and indeed, he seems to have diarrhea of the mouth. My initial foray into pantsing took me on a wild ride, destined for 200k words, far beyond my target of 80k. My next attempt left me adrift at 30k words, making me realize stretching it to 80k would be quite a challenge.
Something needs to change. The growing disdain for my story during the final phase of listening to the audiobook for errors, yearning for it to end, and feeling lost in a sea of words is unacceptable. Thus, I must find a balance—a more manageable approach.
Scorpion Sting represents my quest for this equilibrium. I've realized it's not sustainable to bog down the story with excessive outlining, nor is it beneficial to navigate the narrative completely cluelessly. So, I'm starting with a burst of pantsing, allowing the story to flow naturally. Then, I'll step back and develop character profiles for Matthew, Jack, and Diane.
Next, I'll "mind-map" potential plot directions, exploring various ways I could use plotting to shape character arcs more effectively. This approach aims to blend spontaneity with structure, hoping to keep the storytelling process fresh while ensuring the narrative has direction and depth.
Without the process of publishing chapter by chapter, I would soon give up on pantsing. Therefore, by sharing chapters as they are developed, I am committing myself to writing the destinies of those characters caught in the grip of the Scorpion Sting.