In the writing world, the great debate is not fiction versus nonfiction, or short story versus novel.

Instead it is: are you a plotter or a pantser?

In other words, when you write a story do you plan it out in advance (a plotter) or do you just start writing and let the flow take you along (a panster)?

Am I a Plotter or Pantser?

With my process, I am definitely more of a plotter.

In the past, when I worked on stories where I did not have a clear sense of where the story was going, I inevitably got lost and could not recover.

Usually the story went another direction from where I thought it was going (a hard left instead of a gradual right) and I could not write my way out of it. This was usually at the 40,000 word mark of a novel, and the amount of rewriting needed to fix things made the project feel too insurmountable. Mostly because I could not align what I started with with where I was going.

Several novels died that way.

My Plotting Method

Now, I rely on plotting to complete stories. In my plotting method, I combine a few different methods I’ve learned over the years until I have my own Frankenstein-ed method. A couple of plotting references I’ve used are the Save the Cat beats, John Truby’s extremely detailed method, Gullino’s structure, and the idea of a five act structure.

With my current process, I start with a general idea for the story and flesh it out gradually during the pre-writing, plotting phase.

I start with the seed of an idea. For example, with my most recent novella Breath, it was the idea that a monster ravages the king’s court and paranoia sets.

From there I play around with some general structural ideas but mostly try to determine who is the main character, and what are their needs and wants. Lot of looser dream work here with ideas being sketched. Central to this early plotting is figuring out whose story this is and why it matters.

The Beginning of a Plot

Then I do a quick jotting down of a beginning, middle, and end (the classic story structure) to understand a simple plot arc. This gives me a clearer view of the story I am writing. Sometimes at this point, I will write the first draft of a book blurb or sales copy. This helps me start seeing the idea as a completed story.

After that I break this proto-plot into a 5 act structure,

• beginning with a question to be solved,

• followed by a positive outcome in relation to the question,

• then a negative turn where the main character is not achieving their goal,

• leading to an even more negative turn (that dark moment in the story where everything fails and all seems doomed), and

• ending with a resolution that circles back to the original question.

But honestly that circling is more like a spiral indicating a transformation often returning to an image or place or emotion from the beginning.

My cribbing for this 5 act structure is: ?, +, -, – -, @

This very easily allows me to see the whole of the work, and gives me a pathway to get from the beginning to the end, a road map where the landscape is not quite filled in.

Building Off the Plot Structure

Then from this skeleton, I add the flesh. I build a spreadsheet of scenes from this framework, setting up a scene goal for the character, obstacles, and resolution. In a novella, it is usually three scenes per act to give me about 15 chapters.

Then I sit down and write and see where we go, led by explorations of characters.

This process has taken years to get to, and is often evolving, and it has been the best way I’ve figured out for me to write. 18 books so far!

Are you a writer? Are you a plotter or a pantser? What’s your creative process like? Send me an email and share how you create.