Thoughts on the writing process

I'm fortunate to have a number of friends who are professional writers.  Hearing them talk about their struggles with their books and stories has given me a lot of insight into the writing process and made me a better writer.

One concept I've picked up from them is that writers can be divided into "plotters" and "pantsers."  That is, writers who plot out the whole story before they start writing vs writers who fly by the seat of their pants, figuring out what happens as it happens.  No writer is purely one or the other, of course.  Even the most dedicated plotter will change their plan if they get to chapter 10 and see that Y will produce a much better story than their original plan of X, and likely even the biggest pantser will have some idea of where they want the story to go - it's just going to be a sentence or two instead of a 10-page outline.

I'm generally more of a pantser, but I've been making more of an effort to become more of a plotter because I'm tired of not knowing what happens in the next chapter.  I'd love to hear about your writing processes:  Are you more of a plotter or a pantser?  Do you have a story you want to tell about a time you had a plot fully planned out but ended up writing a story that looked nothing like that?  How does your writing process go.

THE REST OF THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR "FIRST WINTER AT FIRE LODGE" FROM CHAPTER 7 ON.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

When I started "First Winter at Fire Lodge," the plan was simple:  The girls from Blackpink would run a ski resort.  Over the course of the fic, guests would come and go, and the girls would pair off romantically, Jennie with Lisa and Jisoo with Chaeyoung.  It was a simple, elegant plan that lasted as far as chapter 6.  That's when it became obvious that the girls never got the memo about who they were supposed to get involved with.  

Which is when it became clear that the blizzard was going to happen early, and not going to play out as originally planned.  The blizzard was part of the story from the beginning.  It was supposed to hit when the girls' relationships were in their early, fragile stages, and to hit at a time when there were no guests at the lodge.  It would end up with 2 girls snowed in at the lodge and 2 girls snowed in away from the lodge, with the major plot point being that the pairs then get snowed in together aren't the pairs that are together (i.e. everyone is snowed in with someone not their girlfriend) and what happens over the next 3 days while they're snowed in and then in the days immediately after.

So the blizzard's coming NOW, while everyone is out of place from where they should have been according to the original plan, and I think it's a good thing.  An event like this has the potential to tear couples apart or bring them closer together.  I'm not sure yet which is going to happen here, but either way we (my readers, my characters, and I) are in for a wild ride.

Comments

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starmyst
#1
Depends on my story honestly. I know one is more pantser while the other is definitely plotter.
jenchaelisa_taeny
#2
You're lucky that you have a bunch of writer friends, in my stories I always think of a situation that I want to experience and add some exciting part in it. I always play a scene on my mind if that scene isn't right then i'll go back to the chapter one. That's why I don't write long stories hehe. My longest is After Promotions.