To plan it or pants it?

[MColton84]

I have a question for the self-identifiend pantsers.

How do you write a story without a plot?

I always have a plot. Someone meets someone else and they have sex. I try to have a rough idea of how everything goes down, but ultimately I just follow my characters.

 

[Omenainen]

I have a question for the self-identifiend pantsers.

How do you write a story without a plot?

There's been good answers to this and I second all of them. I just want to add that it helps that my plots aren't all that plotty. This is probably not the approach that would work to writing a series of complicated sci-fi novels, but for writing short stories of (mostly) two people exploring their relationship dynamics, it works well enough.

 

[ElectricBlue]

...but for writing short stories of (mostly) two people exploring their relationship dynamics, it works well enough.

And even with sci-fi world building stuff, it's that dynamic that matters most, I reckon. My most "off world" story featured an alien angel and a human astronaut, but it was the dynamic between the two that came first, and was most important. The story followed the characters without a pre-conceived plot.

 

[KeithD]

My life had a few intended plots (actor or spy; couldn't decide, but a screen test put actor on the back burner, but not entirely absent) and then the plot that unfolded (very interesting and a bit unusual. Only a few regrets). There most certainly were plots in my life, though.

 

[SamScribble]

A few years ago, I interviewed a chap for a magazine piece. The chap had grown up in an upper-middleclass family, gone to a good school and, both at home and at school, had been taught that ‘those who fail to plan plan to fail’. And so he had planned. But even before he left school, his plan had come off the rails.

He wasn’t too worried, he told me. As he saw it, his life was just taking a bit of a detour. He would get back to his plan in a year or so. But the bit of a detour led to another bit of a detour. And another after that. And he woke up one morning to the realisation that he was kind of successful, but successful in a field that he hadn’t even known existed when he had made his plan.

And then, as sometimes happens, his world came tumbling down. Time to get back to his original plan? Probably not, he decided. The world had changed. Many of the things that he had been taught were no longer true. In fact, they may never have been true. So he made a new plan. And, for a couple of years he followed it. But then there was another detour sign.

By the time that I interviewed him, he had just celebrated his sixtieth birthday and he was onto his fourth successful career.

What advice would he give to someone starting out, I asked him. He thought for a moment, and then he said: ‘Be careful whose advice you take. Including mine. And remember that nothing quite works out the way you expect it to.’

Make of that what you will.

 

[KeithD]

Good advice, I think. And, now well beyond that sixty and with a couple of interesting and, I think, successful careers under my belt, I can say that the paths I originally was contemplating--actor, singer, artist, writer--all became so much freer and more enjoyable when I could do them on the fringe of an entirely different job that paid very good money and took me around the world a couple of times and I didn't have to rely on any of them to put food on the table.

 

[Athalia]

Life doesn't have a plot.

Of course it does! It's a succession of infinite tiny things that happened because they had to have happened because something else happened or didn't happen... It's the grandest plot we have, and it doesn't stop.

What we're constructing are artificial plots, which can be structured any which way to make something happen or not happen. But the most successful stories, for me, have a flavor of the Eternal Plot, in varying forms. Things happen because they had to happen. Which makes something else happen. The more the stories look like life, or some plausible imitation of it, the better they'll do.

Note that the plots don't have to be real life, they can be the crudest of stereotypes.

I rammed her with my ten-inch rod, the diameter of a beer can, inter her tight, wet, cunt, eventually tearing her hymen as she screamed in pain, and her 38DDs bounced with every thrust.

It's certainly not life, Jehoram, but it is A life. It's the live that we have constructed for our characters. And they're the ones who are thinking in stereotypes. It's like stepping into a cartoon, almost.

 

[jehoram]

It's certainly not life, Jehoram, but it is A life. It's the live that we have constructed for our characters. And they're the ones who are thinking in stereotypes. It's like stepping into a cartoon, almost.

I think I understand what you and others are saying. If it's within a universe that the reader feels comfortable in, it will work, regardless of whether it reflects reality in our everyday world.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

I've never been a pantser.

Some of my stories have detailed plots with outlines that run into hundreds or even thousands (okay, 1K to 2K) words. My current Valentine story was one of the longer ones, with the prologue and epilogue written early around a nearly 2K outline. Parts changed along the way, of course, but it basically followed the original plot. Really short stories usually have a start, end, and a few points in between, but that's still something of an outline in my mind.

 

[gordo12]

I have a question for the self-identifiend pantsers.

How do you write a story without a plot?

I often start with nothing more than two names. I will research those for period appropriateness. Other than that, it's like a video starts playing in my head. I have no idea where it's headed. It will often stop and I have to put the story aside. A nap can sometimes revitalize the idea and as I sleep, the various permutations play themselves out in my head. I get up and write the results.

Begin at the beginning and keep on going until you reach the end.

Exactly.

 

[MColton84]

I have a question for the self-identifiend pantsers.

How do you write a story without a plot?

I follow the characters. If I want Julie, a devoted and abstinent nun to give Jerry the biker a blowjob in the Waffle House, I have write out a convincing scenario for that to happen. What could make Julie do that, and how did Jerry pull it off? Typically once I have that figured out, the plot along with the rest writes itself.

 

[NotWise]

It's a coincidence not associated with this thread, but about two weeks ago I was inspired by a French erotic film and decided to jump into a story head first. I had a setting. I barely knew the characters. I didn't have a plot. By the time I started writing, my ideas where completely different from when I started thinking about it.

I'm coming down to the final scenes now, and it's been an interesting experience. It wasn't a very efficient way to write a story. I had to rewrite dialogue (the non-sex scenes are nearly all dialogue) over and over as the characters and their plot shaped up. It was a wide-open door for creative thinking, and it's been fun to write.

Finding a good category for it could be a challenge.

 

[MColton84]

It's a coincidence not associated with this thread, but about two weeks ago I was inspired by a French erotic film and decided to jump into a story head first. I had a setting. I barely knew the characters. I didn't have a plot. By the time I started writing, my ideas where completely different from when I started thinking about it.

I'm coming down to the final scenes now, and it's been an interesting experience. It wasn't a very efficient way to write a story. I had to rewrite dialogue (the non-sex scenes are nearly all dialogue) over and over as the characters and their plot shaped up. It was a wide-open door for creative thinking, and it's been fun to write.

Finding a good category for it could be a challenge.

I just went through the same thing with my story. I just sent it in for editing. I started out with a well laid plan, but 6000 words into it, the story took on a life of its own. I spent more time tweaking dialog and expanding on ideas presented by the characters than I did laying out the plot. It’s an enjoyable exercise, but an exhausting one. Post a link when your story gets published.

 

[NotWise]

I just went through the same thing with my story. I just sent it in for editing. I started out with a well laid plan, but 6000 words into it, the story took on a life of its own. I spent more time tweaking dialog and expanding on ideas presented by the characters than I did laying out the plot. It’s an enjoyable exercise, but an exhausting one. Post a link when your story gets published.

I mostly stopped posting links to stories when that became an invitation to trolling.

The story won't go up for a while, anyway. I have something else I need to publish first.