Nano Day 3 & Pantsing 101

Writing group Thursday night, which was the time I normally write.  I wasn’t planning on writing at all, but managed to grab some words in about 30 minutes at lunch.  I have a Surface, so I can take that with me.  Weather was really nice, so I did it outside on a picnic table.  Surprise, surprise.  We still have a few turtles that haven’t gone into hibernation.

Pantsing 101

One thing I’m loosely keeping track of is the timeline.  I’m not talking about the timeline of the events that happen in the story, which is what everyone usually talks about.  If I let the story flow out organically, the timeline will work like it’s supposed to.  It’s the timeline of past events that get mentioned in the story that I’m tracking.  Those are easy to forget and get wrong!

So it looks something like this:

20 years ago – Space Cruiser built
5 years ago – Space Cruiser visited Planet X
2 years ago – Space Cruiser refitted

It’s nothing fancy.  No complicated spreadsheets or software to do it–that takes time away from writing and makes it harder for me to track it.  My Rule 1 of writing is “Never make more work for myself!” So simple as possible is best.  I created a page in the Research folder in my Scrivener for Windows project, called it timeline, and typed in the first event.

Day 3 Word count: 500

Story Total: 3100

Filed under: Writing Tagged: pantsing, story timelines