A New Approach

WOW: Weird Old Words Thanksgiving (No, Not That Thanksgiving)

A New Approach

Hi friends and happy Wednesday!

I have been an avid pantser. Meaning, that I don’t plot, don’t plan my story out, don’t do character worksheets or interviews, or anything of the sort. I just have a “what if” scenario or question in my mind and I’d sit at the computer to write—just letting the story unravel and the characters come to life.

However, I should change “don’t’” to “didn’t.” I can’t believe I’m saying this as I was a super staunch advocate for pantsing. I couldn’t fathom planning a book out in any fashion. I feared it would take all the fun out of getting to know the characters and seeing how the story unraveled. But going that approach left me working through multiple drafts as I stumbled my way through the story in the dark—only focusing on what scene was in front of me and not the larger picture.

My first draft was an exploration draft and looked nothing like a novel. I had to go through that draft and figure out where the story was, which meant a second draft just to put it in a full story draft, then a third to revise it, and a fourth to polish it. And, when I say a second, third, or fourth draft—each of those drafts got several rewrites within the draft. For example, I often rewrite chapter one over and over until it feels right. I go by instinct.

On the plus side, it’s fun seeing the story come to life. On the downside, my process means taking a long time to write a book. I write one a year with all these drafts. And, it takes forever to make it a really strong story. So, I’ve been trying a new approach which encompasses a number of different aspects.

First off, thanks to my friend and prayer partner, Becky Wade, I’ve started playing with dictation. I’ve learned that I talk a lot faster than I can type. As a side note, I’m a horrible typist. I even took a typewriting class to get faster and more accurate, but, while I got decent grades in class, I still can’t type for anything. So dictation allows me to speak the story out at the pace my brain is thinking it so I don’t lose track of thoughts and ideas before I can type them out.

Secondly, I’ve learned to fast-draft my novels. I do writing sprints with friends. What are writing sprints? I learned the idea from our very own Jody Hedlund. I get on Zoom with writing friends and we set a timer for fifteen minutes and write as fast as we can. We don’t stop to think, and we never look back over what we’ve written during sprints. At the end of fifteen minutes, we calculate and share our word count. Then we strive during the next fifteen minutes to increase the word count and so on until we’ve met our daily word count goal. I often dictate my sprints. When we wrap up sprinting for the day, we can go back in and edit and rewrite what we have. Then we start again in the morning. It’s amazing how fast the writing goes through this method. Plus, it’s fun getting to spend the morning on Zoom with your friends and cheering one another on.

Thirdly, the biggest change is now I’m no longer a pantser. I haven’t turned into a full plotter, but I lean more that way. I don’t do an outline or plan every scene in the book or do character interviews. But I do write out the events that happen throughout the story in what is called a “step outline.” It’s what screenwriters primarily use. It describes each of the events in a sentence or two for all the events I know and has them in sequential order. It is like a stone footpath where I can step from one to another, all the way down the trail. This is the first time I’ve included this in my process and I’m viewing it as an experiment to see if it helps cut down on drafts and if it helps form a stronger story from the start. I’ll have to let you know how it goes. I’m using it for book two of my Jeopardy Falls series as book one, One Wrong Move, is finished. I just signed off on the last set of galleys. I so can’t wait to share the MacLeod family and their adventures with you.