Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Writerly Wednesday: Pants or no pants?




Yeah you know you just clicked on this post because you thought I would be talking about going pantsless.

Okay, well it is sort of like that. I'm talking about pantsing a book.

As you all know HOW TO BREAK UP WITH AN ALIEN is out to reviewers and the official release date is May 22nd. What was so different about writing this sequel is I found that pantsing doesn't work as well as you would like for a sequel.

Why not? I pantsed the entire first book, why couldn't I do it for this one? *lesigh* It turns out that somehow when you write a sequel you have to still combine it with the first book so you dont' start throwing out random facts and if your first book hasn't been out for awhile, you do need to catch people up.

*groan*

So for book three I decided to outline. Susan Quinn uses a nice bulletin board and a spreadsheet...mine was written on a scrap piece of paper that I found in the hotel. My process may not be as precise and I still might be a pantser at heart, but just by writing down a vague idea of how I want the order of things to happen I am now 40K into book 3 (the monster may end up being around 80K).  So in other words you may get Book 3 sooner than October.

What say you? Are you all pantsers? Plotters or doing the no pants dance?

4 comments:

  1. Funnily enough I am sitting in my pants and eating Super Noodles while reading this. I'm having a bit of a slob day.

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    1. I'm not even wearing pants, but I am wearing a skirt.

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  2. For me, it depends on the story. If it's a complicated mystery then I need outlines to help me keep everything together, but if it's an adventure story then I like to know a few key scenes and how the story ends and then just sit down and type away. I fill like I have more fun writing when I don't have everything plotted out. I like surprises.

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    1. Sometimes my characters surprise me no matter what I do. When I was proofreading How to Date an Alien for the last time I actually gasped at one scene becauase I forgot it happened.

      That and I'm a complete nerd.

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