So, yeah, I discovered that I might actually be a panster rather than a planster/plotter!

The Necromancer's Lair
, , ,
1

God, it feels like I don’t know what to do anymore with these two stories I was suppose to be working on.

I want to redo Red Reign/The Breakers and finish Red Blizzard, but the more I think about it, it feels like a damn chore!

I like the stories fine enough. It is more like I don’t know where I want to go with it since I keep coming up with different ideas for the plot, story, and characters.

It’s getting tiresome! I know I should write down notes and/or plan my stories by making an outline, but I NEVER stick those things. I am seeing that now!

Jotting down notes, making an outline, and things like that doesn’t work for me and never really has.

I make shit up as I go and hope for the best. I thought I’d love plotting/planning, but that is a lie. Whenever I take notes and outline, it doesn’t last and my mind along with attention goes for “winging it/doing my own thing”.

It sucks because I am starting to struggle a bit while trying to figure out if finishing the The Breakers original then moving onto the remake or do the remake while taking bits and pieces from original along with redoing Red Blizzard is better.

So, yeah, me and plotting/planning isn’t or rather never truly was a thing.

I am starting to see that I rather just go into a story with no real clear sense of direction and hope to the gods I grasp it in the long run, then the problem comes when I find myself overwhelmed soon later. It happened with the House of Naivin story yet I was able to finish that somehow.

I thought I was a planster, the reality is that I was always a panster in some way or form.

Ugh! I want to write but got no clue what to do with these two stories!

Help!

NOTE: I will NOT abandon these stories either. I want to see these to the end and I refuse to give up. I am just having a moment that last for a few days.

Suggestions? Advice? Thought?

3 Likes
2

Also, if you suggest for me to jot notes and outline, I won’t do it because planning/plotting doesn’t interest me at all…never did.

So, how do you help a struggling panster who can’t see themselves taking notes and whatnot?

2 Likes
3

@TheTigerWriter
@JohnnyTuturro
@Akje
@NotARussianBot
@J.L.O

Sorry, for calling you guys out like this. I need a bit of guidance.

3 Likes
4

Another thing I’ve noticed about this self discovery, is that I NEVER stick to the plan. I strongly wing-it only to give up in the end or actually succeed.

I have so many notebooks, helpful writing reading materials, and a bunch of other things to help me out.

And it is like I try those things for a bit, then I give up and get bored and too eager to dive head first into the story.

I really see myself as a writer who can’t be tied down by plotting/planning and prefers to do her own thing, then when I stumble on a problem I scrap it or wait to finish.

This really feels bizarre to me!

2 Likes
5

Don’t redo them. Just write, and then that’s that. Come back in a month or two. Don’t start editing until then when your brain has had a break from them. Come back with a fresh pair of eyes.

That’s why I do contests, and stuff like ONC :joy: because I know I can’t do a whole novel. Have you tried breaking down the ideas you like into smaller novellas, and combining those? That could work. And I just take rough notes, tbh. To me, planning and writing a novel is like making a song; you take the best bits, add to it, and make it work. You have to do the composing before you can do the mixing and finalizing.

Making notes to me is like taking song lyrics - little snippets that you can build on, like the melodies too. Eventually, it becomes one song (chapter), and that song becomes an album (story). Just take it easy, and use what works for you to build things up. You don’t need lots of notes, just the important points and some cohesiveness with them, and then just write.

Keep building it up, and adding to it. Just keep writing, and if your mind can’t handle intensive planning and it gets bored, DON’T force it to do that. I have learned that the hard way. That’s the easiest way to make me lose interest in the story. Just go with it. Do what you have to do.

1 Like
6

In my experience, labels like these only hold you back from understanding yourself better.

I like to have a plan in my mind of what I’m going to write before I write it, but actual outline writing isn’t something I do unless I already have an idea of how the whole story will go and need to keep it in my memory

2 Likes
7

So, don’t stick with the word “panster” and “planster/plotter”? I should know what I am without labels and things of that nature, correct?

1 Like
8

More or less, yes, just focus on finding a process that works well for you

2 Likes
9

I mean I can finish The Breakers and continue with Red Blizzard. I had a very good run, it was the matter of coming up with different ideas and wanting to change things around for The Breakers.

Like take the ideas that I wanted to pursue for my novels then place it in a novelette story rather than an entire novel?

You wrote down “smaller novella”, I take that as “novelette” for some reason. Forgive me, if that was totally wrong.

1 Like
10

Winging a novel/going with the flow is the only thing that truly matters to me in the end…

1 Like
11

That is like me in a sense. I have a mental idea and image of how I want my stories to go, but when I write it down, it is NOT the same and WAYS off. So, I try to go on it based off my mental ideas and images rather than an outline.

Or maybe I just have such a vivid imagination and imagery of my ideas that writing it into words for an outline is something I greatly dislike doing/can’t do at all!

1 Like
12

That also applies when I write my stories too.
The way I see it in my mind, I can’t even describe it into words because my mental imagery and vivid imagination isn’t easy for my to put into words.

So, I tell it which makes the story lacking and stale.

13

Churro has the right idea. There’s nothing wrong with pantsing, but maybe you should focus on writing shorter stories. You could create a whole series about this world of yours, but each book in the series only needs to be maybe 10k or 20k long. What’s the longest you’ve ever focused on writing one book without losing interest in it? That could determine how long each book should be. ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯

3 Likes
14

I want to say the House of Naivin, but that was a struggle even though I finished it. I finished that story at over 70K, no joking.

The story I stuck to without losing interest was a short story called Into the Chaos. That was a little over 7k. There was another short story called Shroom Wars that I was able to finish too and I’ve forgotten the numbers far as the word count.

I mean if I wrote a story from 7k to 10k and on a good day from 10k to 15k or 20k, I might be in a good spot.

1 Like
15

Well, there’s more underling stuff going on.

Like for me and @JohnnyTuturro ,we both are very hard to keep on task, so pantsing and light planning ain’t the issue, it’s the focus altogether. For last ONC, since he hadn’t finished a project that he lost the excitement for, before, it was constant conversation about how much it sucked to write the story, with cheerleading of: 1. It’s only 10, 5 more chapters. 2. Here’s this insane thing to do to them since you’re beginning to hate them. Stay on task for this bland part so you can go nuts. 3. Hey, read this bit because I’m losing my mind.

It was pretty damned involved for both of us, and neither of us do that for long without our brain melting out our ears.

In fact, I didn’t write much of a thing after that until now because of how intensive it could be, to keep on track.

4 Likes
16

I feel like I know what you mean, but at the same time I do not.

Explain?

1 Like
17

So, for this part, I’d say that having a partner you talk about things with that has a compatible energy is important. Johnny is just 1 I can talk to all day–I also have a supportive husband.

So you’re kind of doing that up in here already. It’s just more intensively focused for those who have decent synergy and have the maturity to handle it.

The thing is most of us fear being a leech. And if we hang onto others too tightly, it can do that. So we both get in the way of ourselves and have a serious issue of matching up well without being a real drain. That’s a lot of hit-and-miss.

4 Likes
18

In this case I focused on ADHD being a strin6g issue with finishing work.

We have other issues, being nonconformist in writing ideology. I don’t care if I’m hated for it, let me write something awful, you know?

I don’t know how many times we come across some random work that has a bland happily ever after, and he’s acting like someone stole all his oxygen by giving him something so saccharine. I handle that angle better, but I’ve had times where being formulaic has pulled me out of a story so fast that I got whiplash.

So we often get where the other is coming from, beyond just being quirky.

3 Likes
19

That makes sense…total sense.

1 Like
20

But you have sub-groups, here. There’s two others that chronically OP/ask questions about scenarios and reciprocate, on a regular basis. There’s others who are game for it. So you are getting some of that, here, that is a bit closer than just being in a forum.

1 Like