Full-grown plot bunnies (and some panster-plotter spectrum thoughts)

[crookedletter]

This never happens. I consider myself just about the pantsiest panster that ever pantsed. I usually start with a vague seed of an idea, maybe some scene I'd like to set up or an idea for a character or relationship, and I don't really sit there and think about it, I just start writing. That's how I figure out what the idea is; that's how I work out if there's even a story in that seed, and what the story might be. I love that process of discovering, of letting the story unfold as I write. I've never really understood outlining -- I just don't enjoy it.

This morning, though, I woke up with a story in my head. I don't know if I dreamed something, or if there had been a seed in there for a while, unacknowledged, slowly sprouting. But it was all there: the characters, the setting, the perspective, the beginning, the middle, the end. I knew my characters and what they want, and what conflicts they'll have to face. Even some lines of prose were there ready to be written down.

So, I wrote an outline. I wanted to get it all down, all the plot points and character notes, before I get down to the act of writing the thing. (We'll see what survives once I do, but it feels pretty solid.)

It felt a bit like seeing how the other half lives. If panster-plotter is a spectrum, and I think it is, I'm usually near the far extreme of panster, and suddenly I've jumped clear to the other side. It's not going to convert me -- it's just not my process, usually. But for this one story that seems to be the way, and I'm going with it.

I'm curious if others have these sorts of a full-grown plot bunnies walk into their lives. Have I just been unlucky to this point, or is this as strange as it seems?

 

[StillStunned]

A traitor in the Pantser Brigade!

But yes, I've had it once or twice (not that I actually outlined, I just started writing). It's a strange feeling, and I need to get the story down straight away before I lose interest.

Good luck, and let us know how the experience worked out for you.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Some stories I don't know what'll happen till I write it, even if I have an idea of what the end'll be like. Others, I know pretty well what everything is going to be like and I write it all down in tell mode as quickly as I can to get it out there. This could be considered an outline, or a rough draft, or something between the two.

I have one right now where the sex scene is just "Sex ensues!" I need to get through the process of expanding the stuff before that so I can find out what type of sex it is. But, my SO just quit smoking, and there's a big smoking scene at the beginning, so I've kinda lost the will to write more on that right now.

Then there's another one with a note of, "Slow down, relax, write a slice of life chapter or two." Haven't been able to think of what slice of life to write about mermen yet, so that one is stuck ATM.

The first one is more of a first draft than an outline, the second one, is more of an outline than a first draft. Mostly though, I pants the hell out of stuff!

 

[NotWise]

The line between a pantser's rough draft and a plotter's outline can be nothing more than the word you use to describe it. You didn't plot it out, you wrote a quick rough draft.

 

[TheLobster]

This morning, though, I woke up with a story in my head.

Oh?

I don't know if I dreamed something, or if there had been a seed in there for a while, unacknowledged, slowly sprouting.

Huh, okay…

But it was all there: the characters, the setting, the perspective, the beginning, the middle, the end.

Uh, I really think…

I knew my characters and what they want, and what conflicts they'll have to face.

Sir, I strongly advise…

Even some lines of prose were there ready to be written down.

For the love of…

So, I wrote an outline.

Alright, that’s it! I’m revoking your pantsing license, effective immediately. Dismissed!

 

[NuclearFairy]

Alright, that’s it! I’m revoking your pantsing license, effective immediately. Dismissed!

But without that he'll have to wear a kilt. o.o

...

On second thought, can you revoke all of the men's pantsing licenses?

 

[anthrodisiac]

I tried plotting a few times, but the story had other ideas, so I went mostly pantser. I've made exceptions for very broad outlines just to keep at least some rails, or map out how the character arc should progress, but the actual details are fuzzy, it's like a toothpick skeleton of a story.

I have had ideas that start with literally two words of dialogue. A couple of times I've had what you had, a fully formed story plopping itself into my brain and screaming, "Write me, bitch!" Which, of course, I did. They tended to be short stories, about 10k-20k, so nothing too crazy.

 

[Stanfield2025]

This never happens. I consider myself just about the pantsiest panster that ever pantsed. I usually start with a vague seed of an idea, maybe some scene I'd like to set up or an idea for a character or relationship, and I don't really sit there and think about it, I just start writing. That's how I figure out what the idea is; that's how I work out if there's even a story in that seed, and what the story might be. I love that process of discovering, of letting the story unfold as I write. I've never really understood outlining -- I just don't enjoy it.

There was a fanfic I started out with pantsing, as I wanted to continue a character's story. But I quickly lost interest in it. Then some other ideas came and I outlined the rest of the story. Before long, it all came together nicely. It's a story I look back on fondly now.

It felt a bit like seeing how the other half lives. If panster-plotter is a spectrum, and I think it is, I'm usually near the far extreme of panster, and suddenly I've jumped clear to the other side. It's not going to convert me -- it's just not my process, usually. But for this one story that seems to be the way, and I'm going with it.

Hopefully you stick with it. I've sometimes wondered how people pantse an entire story. To me it sounds difficult.

I'm curious if others have these sorts of a full-grown plot bunnies walk into their lives. Have I just been unlucky to this point, or is this as strange as it seems?

The only time this has happened is when I wrote What Grown Women Do, as that spin-off story was birthed from me running through random scenarios with characters in my head. Then the full story just... presented itself to me.

 

[CalBishForNow]

Pantsing is more fun. Plotting gets better overall results. (IMO, of course.)

Writing by the seat of my pants is exciting. I'll often start with a vague outline in my head, or even less than that, just a premise or a scenario to put a couple characters in and almost no idea how, and have 5000 words written before I do anything else. If that can get me all the way through the conflict and resolution of a story, great.

But sometimes it can't. I have a couple files in my WIP folders that are 8000 words or more and I have no idea how to get them from what I have to a reasonable ending. Maybe I shouldn't have started those without more of an outline. Plotting out outline seems even more important when writing something in a series, when stories have to set up (or avoid setting up) stories several installments down the line. Writing to an outline may sap the thrill of it and make it a boring color-in-the-lines exercise, in which 500 words a day is actually good progress, but I can be sure it won't hit a dead end and be stuck indefinitely.

I'm likely to start pantsing again soon. I'm definitely publishing the next two installments of my series before anything else and had planned to finish it, i.e. probably a total of six more stories. But once again, inspiration struck, dammit, and it's for the latest contest. So now I think I'm going to just churn out those two installments and see where this new premise takes me...

 

[StillStunned]

But sometimes it can't. I have a couple files in my WIP folders that are 8000 words or more and I have no idea how to get them from what I have to a reasonable ending. Maybe I shouldn't have started those without more of an outline. Plotting out outline seems even more important when writing something in a series, when stories have to set up (or avoid setting up) stories several installments down the line. Writing to an outline may sap the thrill of it and make it a boring color-in-the-lines exercise, in which 500 words a day is actually good progress, but I can be sure it won't hit a dead end and be stuck indefinitely.

I've sometimes compared my process to a potter sitting at his wheel. You start with a lump of clay, and you draw it up, but then you modify it down as well until the overall shape is pleasing.

I tend to start writing, and keep writing until I reach the point where it doesn't come naturally. Then I start thinking both backwards and forwards: what might be an interesting thing to happen next, and how do I need to reshape the story so far to make that work?

Having half the story already written, with a clear idea of the characters and setting, makes it easier to look ahead at what I want the outcome to be. Going back and making the necessary changes with the outcome already clear is much easier than trying to force an outcome from what I've already written.

And as a "potter" I sits nicely between a pantser and a plotter.

 

[BeechLeaf]

I have a clear sequence of top-down actions. First, decide the non-erotic plot: the beginning, middle, and end that will carry the story. Then add in the erotic parts. Storyboard the actions for each scene. Round about here, fill out characters' backgrounds. And so on down to ever finer detail and coloration.

I mean, I have this sequence. Never used it. And although my normal method of progress in most of my outside writing is pure pantsing, I can't use it here, because the readers here don't know my characters. I have to give them complete stories instead of "their next conversation a week later".

Honestly, I have no idea how I come up with things. Oh yes, children in the first scene, so I can be clever and reference something I wrote twenty years ago but no-one reading this could ever spot. Right, that's a good basis for a story. Um. Puns about music? Why not? Throw 'em in. Sex, sex, gotta get sex into it somewhere... not yet, I'm having too much fun weaving the invisible enchantments. To my surprise, to my enormous surprise, some of these eventually morph into publishable stories. I have no idea how it happens.

 

[liliput1]

This never happens. I consider myself just about the pantsiest panster that ever pantsed. I usually start with a vague seed of an idea, maybe some scene I'd like to set up or an idea for a character or relationship, and I don't really sit there and think about it, I just start writing. That's how I figure out what the idea is; that's how I work out if there's even a story in that seed, and what the story might be. I love that process of discovering, of letting the story unfold as I write. I've never really understood outlining -- I just don't enjoy it.

This morning, though, I woke up with a story in my head. I don't know if I dreamed something, or if there had been a seed in there for a while, unacknowledged, slowly sprouting. But it was all there: the characters, the setting, the perspective, the beginning, the middle, the end. I knew my characters and what they want, and what conflicts they'll have to face. Even some lines of prose were there ready to be written down.

So, I wrote an outline. I wanted to get it all down, all the plot points and character notes, before I get down to the act of writing the thing. (We'll see what survives once I do, but it feels pretty solid.)

It felt a bit like seeing how the other half lives. If panster-plotter is a spectrum, and I think it is, I'm usually near the far extreme of panster, and suddenly I've jumped clear to the other side. It's not going to convert me -- it's just not my process, usually. But for this one story that seems to be the way, and I'm going with it.

I'm curious if others have these sorts of a full-grown plot bunnies walk into their lives. Have I just been unlucky to this point, or is this as strange as it seems?

I have ADHD but that also comes with some really good epiphanies, and I'm never entirely sure if the entire story is really there in my head or if the cascade is simply inevitable from the initial conditions of the epiphany and thus everywhere you 'look' you know exactly what has to happen. Because it's the only sensible thing that can.

I figure it's a bit like watching a rock slide start. You see that first rock bounce down from above, you see the hill begin to slump, and you know that everywhere you look below it you'll see the rock slide. But was it already sliding before you looked, or did your eyes arrive as the pressure wave did? Regardless, you should get out of the way because shit is comin' fast.

 

[ElectricBlue]

So, I wrote an outline. I wanted to get it all down, all the plot points and character notes, before I get down to the act of writing the thing. (We'll see what survives once I do, but it feels pretty solid.)

The only time I've ever written an outline was at the bottom of the story that had stalled. I thought, maybe some detail will assist. It didn't. A week later I almost deleted the file, but deleted the outline instead. A week after that I finished the story, and not a single one of those outlined plot points occurred. Writing down plot points is a complete waste of time for me, it's as if my subconscious rebels - don't you dare try to tell me what I'm going to do!

 

[Duil2]

I haven't written an outline in a long time, because I finally accepted that if I tell myself the story - ie in an outline - I completely lose interest in it because well... I know the story.

I'm not sure I've ever experienced what you describe and had a fully complete, characters and all, story in my head ready to just be written.

I tend to begin with an idea or premise that I think is cool, or a character I think is interesting and then I ask - okay what happens now?

I am often happily surprised by where the writing takes me and sometimes horrified and sometimes disappointed as I'm in a cul-de-sac with no way out except to delete and change course.

I do keep every version of the story, however. Especially if I get the feeling that it's likely to go off course a few times before I find its true path. As soon as I think, 'no, that's not working' I save and then save again with the version number added. I've been glad of this on occasion when the newer version has gone even more off course than the previous version and I can roll-back.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Then there's another one with a note of, "Slow down, relax, write a slice of life chapter or two." Haven't been able to think of what slice of life to write about mermen yet, so that one is stuck ATM.

Did you mean to leave a writing prompt here?

Treat them like dolphins mixed with hunter-gatherer or herder humans?

So they spend part of the day making tools (bone tridents, nets?), part getting food in some way (spearing fish, stealing the catch of dolphins ["sea rapists"], etc.), most of it socializing (like real hunter-gatherers). I imagine merfolk are amazing singers, maybe they have athletics involving something like a dolphin's spy jump?

Do they enjoy tempting sailors (with the plan to eat the ones who jump in the water)? You could make your fantasy world have mixed-gender crews, so both mermen and mermaids could participate. (I don't know if you want scary merfolk, like the original real-world legends. In my own WIP, the mermen are friendly to the heroine's nation, but other sailors are less safe.)

 

[AStrangeDesire]

So, you've discovered a different way to start. Run with it, see if runs away with you.

That's what always happens to me when I make an outline. And I like making outlines. The structure, the logic, the infallible path that will lead to an amazing story.

Then, when I write, I get the joy of saying, "Well, that wasn't in the fuckin' outline" when I look at where the characters actually went while I was writing, which is it's own kind of joy.

To quote some old, long dead, guy, "No plan survives contact with the enemy."*

*Deliberately slightly misquoted.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Did you mean to leave a writing prompt here?

Treat them like dolphins mixed with hunter-gatherer or herder humans?

So they spend part of the day making tools (bone tridents, nets?), part getting food in some way (spearing fish, stealing the catch of dolphins ["sea rapists"], etc.), most of it socializing (like real hunter-gatherers). I imagine merfolk are amazing singers, maybe they have athletics involving something like a dolphin's spy jump?

Do they enjoy tempting sailors (with the plan to eat the ones who jump in the water)? You could make your fantasy world have mixed-gender crews, so both mermen and mermaids could participate. (I don't know if you want scary merfolk, like the original real-world legends. In my own WIP, the mermen are friendly to the heroine's nation, but other sailors are less safe.)

All amazing suggestions, most won't actually work for this pair. XD It's just two adult mermen, and a bakers dozen of young mers. A pod of dolphins is a terrifying prospect right now. One of the mermen has been horribly traumatized by his mate, which is why they're off alone. Right now they're getting settled into a sunken ship that's grown a bit of a coral reef on deck.

 

[Stanfield2025]

I haven't written an outline in a long time, because I finally accepted that if I tell myself the story - ie in an outline - I completely lose interest in it because well... I know the story.

I'm not sure I've ever experienced what you describe and had a fully complete, characters and all, story in my head ready to just be written.

I tend to begin with an idea or premise that I think is cool, or a character I think is interesting and then I ask - okay what happens now?

I am often happily surprised by where the writing takes me and sometimes horrified and sometimes disappointed as I'm in a cul-de-sac with no way out except to delete and change course.

I do keep every version of the story, however. Especially if I get the feeling that it's likely to go off course a few times before I find its true path. As soon as I think, 'no, that's not working' I save and then save again with the version number added. I've been glad of this on occasion when the newer version has gone even more off course than the previous version and I can roll-back.

I low-key want to try this method now. That sounds fun as hell.

 

[Stanfield2025]

Did you mean to leave a writing prompt here?

Treat them like dolphins mixed with hunter-gatherer or herder humans?

So they spend part of the day making tools (bone tridents, nets?), part getting food in some way (spearing fish, stealing the catch of dolphins ["sea rapists"], etc.), most of it socializing (like real hunter-gatherers). I imagine merfolk are amazing singers, maybe they have athletics involving something like a dolphin's spy jump?

Do they enjoy tempting sailors (with the plan to eat the ones who jump in the water)? You could make your fantasy world have mixed-gender crews, so both mermen and mermaids could participate. (I don't know if you want scary merfolk, like the original real-world legends. In my own WIP, the mermen are friendly to the heroine's nation, but other sailors are less safe.)

A bit off-topic but... man, idk when this "dolphins are all just a bunch of rapists and demons" thing started but it's gotten so out of hand.

 

[anthrodisiac]

A bit off-topic but... man, idk when this "dolphins are all just a bunch of rapists and demons" thing started but it's gotten so out of hand.

Yeah, sometimes they just like to get high. Pufferfish and pass, you know?

 

[NuclearFairy]

A bit off-topic but... man, idk when this "dolphins are all just a bunch of rapists and demons" thing started but it's gotten so out of hand.

I had a beta reader who could not believe that dolphins might be a threat to merfolk who are if nothing else their direct competition. So, if it's gotten out of hand, it's because of how hard it is to convince those that were raised with the notion that dolphins are the next best thing to angels, that maybe they're not.

 

[Stanfield2025]

I had a beta reader who could not believe that dolphins might be a threat to merfolk who are if nothing else their direct competition. So, if it's gotten out of hand, it's because of how hard it is to convince those that were raised with the notion that dolphins are the next best thing to angels, that maybe they're not.

It ultimately comes down to both extremes being wrong and problematic. Dolphins are just wild animals with nuanced behaviors, not angels or demons. Just like how sharks aren't sea puppies nor are they the next installment of Jaws. They're just wild animals with nuanced behaviors.

 

[NuclearFairy]

It ultimately comes down to both extremes being wrong and problematic. Dolphins are just wild animals with nuanced behaviors, not angels or demons. Just like how sharks aren't sea puppies nor are they the next installment of Jaws. They're just wild animals with nuanced behaviors.

No, they aren't angels or demons. What they are is, large, extremely intelligent, oftentimes maladjusted, predators that, like humans, don't have a breeding season.

 

[Stanfield2025]

No, they aren't angels or demons. What they are is, large, extremely intelligent, oftentimes maladjusted, predators that, like humans, don't have a breeding season.

Why maladjusted?

 

[NuclearFairy]

Why maladjusted?

Because humans. Humans hunt them, and save them, separating pods, and throwing unrelated animals that speak different dialects together. Humans put them into zoos, and theme parks, lure them near beaches, and feed and play with them. Very likely the most harmful thing people do is to interact with "wild" dolphins at resorts and the like. As sad as it is, next to simply filming them, probably the least harmful thing humans do to them is to hunt them for food.

I'd like to stop hijacking this thread now, if you want to discuss it more, my DMS are open.