of @the-wip-project’s 100 Days of Writing
73. Are you a plotter, a pantser, or a plantser? Would you like to be different than you are?
I have seen these terms. I have discussed them at length with writerly friends. But they never mean what I think they mean. I hate pants, for one, but I still put them on most days. And I really am winging it about 85% of the time. Most of my favorite writing happens spontaneously when I’m trying to write something else. But I also love outlining whole plots around those mostly-pantsed snippets, and my detailed outlines very easily become first drafts as I keep filling in the parts of them that interest me (always out of order, mind). So I guess I’m a plantser? I do like plants.
74. Share a dumb line from an old WIP.
Oh. I have A LOT of these. How will I choose?!
Here’s a bunch of dumb lines prompted from a Discord convo about members of the Inquisition playing DnD (of course, Dagna would DM) that I’ll probably never get around to finishing (this is how Cullen finds out and then subsequently asks to be allowed to join...):
“Who has been moving things around on the War Table?!”
“Cullen…!” Josephine squeaks, looking uncharacteristically surprised. And a little bit guilty.
He narrows his eyes at her. “You see everyone who goes in or comes out of there…right?”
He begins to loom over her desk and Josephine leans back in her chair.
“So...who was in there last night?”
“I promised not to tell.”
“Ambassador, please!” He throws his hands up into the air. “This is a matter of Inquisition security!”
Josephine laughs. “I assure you, it is not.”
“Cullen…” Leliana strolls into the office with three cups of coffee balanced next to a stack of reports. “There’s no need to interrogate her.”
“So you are aware? That she’s been allowing people into the War Room at night?”
“Just some much-needed recreational fun for several members of the Inquisition.”
“Recreation...? On the...the War Table?” Cullen looks less angry now than he is somewhat horrified, and perhaps a bit intrigued.
“Yes. They needed a large, flat surface.” She smirks, handing him one of the cups. “I was the one who suggested the War Table for their weekly...appointments.”
“I can speak to them about leaving things the way they found them if that would be more agreeable to you, Commander?” Josephine offers, smiling slyly and winking at Leliana as she grabs her own cup of coffee.
But Cullen doesn’t even seem to hear her, his whole face reddening as he considers Leliana’s words. “W--weekly?”
“Tell me, Cullen...how often do you play chess?”
“That’s entirely different!”
“I don’t really see how chess is that different from Dagna’s tabletop role-playing sessions…”
75. Do you write in past tense or present tense? Why do you prefer one?
I do both. I think I used to prefer past, especially for DA because of the ‘historical record’ vibes it allowed me to play with, but then I switched to present by accident one day (probably in a frenzy to write down some dialogue or some smut that just devolved into stage directions), and now almost everything I’m writing is present. It’s hard when I go back to work on WIPs that are in past. I really do think the different tenses take your brain into different spaces, and there are also times when/where mixing tenses can be very effective, like to signal some kind of shift in the narration or the POV character’s voice or for flashbacks or flash forwards, etc. I firmly believe that tense, like almost every other aspect of language, is something to be played with!
