Pantser converted to plotter
I’m a pantser not a plotter. I wrote endlessly about my characters, developing them, loving them, coddling them, realizing I’d have to break them eventually. Then I got stuck and couldn’t quite figure out how to continue. For the life of me I couldn’t quite see where my story was going except in the most ephemeral ways. It was getting difficult to pin down the details, which made it impossible to write the details.
I thought about some fan fiction I wrote (different Tumblr, sorry guys) and how I wrote one story out of spite. I had the entire story in my head, wrote it in three days, and edited each chapter as I posted it. This work has become one of my most popular, has grown to include several more parts, and I have a small following asking for the next installment.
It hit me then: I plotted the fan fiction but am trying to pants my original work.
Then I remembered I have a program called Scapple, so I loaded it up and started making thought bubbles. Before I knew it I had the whole damn plot scappled out in bubbles (you can make the bubbles look like note cards too, if you prefer). Many of the bubbles have connection lines to show where they’ll go and whatnot. Some are colour-coded as the beginning of a new section of the book. All are short - only a sentence or two, even a phrase here and there.
Now all I have to do is expand the thought bubbles into blurbs of a few sentences or more. It can be all telly instead of showy, full of random words, whatever, as long as the bubble is expanded to a blurb that properly explains the phrase in the bubble. Once I’m done that I can go back and write the blurb as the actual chapter/scene. Then my first draft will be complete. With a plot. What the fuck? Who knew plotting was good? Oh, right, all the plotters out there :)