Alec Peche's Blog - Posts Tagged "a-taxing-death"
Exploring my pantser self...
If you have followed my Goodreads blog or Twitter posts or have spoken with me in person, than you know that one of my writing tenants is "writing by the seat of my pants" or "being a pantser" as it is called in the industry. I like the freedom and the excitement of a story that slowly unveils itself in my head. Unfortunately that process has caused me to have days when I couldn't write. Either I was unable to decide where the story was going next, or I wrote myself into a corner, or I ran out of clues to solve the mystery.
It's probably a good thing that I don't tell my stories out loud to children at bedtime as I would have to leave them hanging for days at a time. Of course, murder mysteries are likely inappropriate to the age of children that like bedtime stories, but I digress.
I am an avid reader of The Kill Zone blog. I've saved lots of excellent writing advice from that blog - it's an author focused blog not a reader focused blog. I ran into James Scott Bell, one of the site's bloggers, author of numerous mysteries and writing craft books, at Bouchercon 2014. It was a short conversation, but my take away was that there was a way to become a hybrid pantser that might make my writing better or at least easier. His suggestion was that an outline might prevent me from having miniature writer's blocks or inconsistencies in my story. I believe that by the time I publish my book, that I and my first readers, have cleared all of the inconsistencies out of the story, but I would be the first to admit that when I stumble upon them, it scares my writer's soul. I ask myself how I could have such an inconsistency? How did I not see while I wrote, this hole, the size of the Grand Canyon, in the story; or the fact that I said Trixie was a Chihuahua on page 12 and a Dalmatian on page 30 (if you've read my books you know that
Trixie has always been a Dalmatian).
So for book five, "A Taxing Death", I "outlined" the first 24 Chapters. I chose 24 randomly as that was how many squares fit on the piece of paper. My books have varied considerably on chapter numbers, prologues, and epilogues. I can tell that the book doesn't end in Chapter 24, so as I get closer to writing chapter 24, I'll have to take out a new sheet of paper and outline the final 2-5 chapters. Each chapter is described in a single sentence. That sentence will have to become about 3,000 words or the average size of each of my chapters. I also wrote this book without a prologue, but now I have a new problem. The first chapter feels too long to be a prologue, but I have to change the point of view of the story between chapter one and two which is considered a writing no-no. Again, I'll figure out this transition with some help from my editor before the book gets published
So far, my writing speed has not been any better. I keep a 2,000 word count progression goal on my calendar that I broke by the third day. However the jury is still out as to whether I will feature Trixie as a Dalmatian or a Chihuahua as the story progresses. I'll update my blog in a few months with my experience as a hybrid pantser!
Cheers, Alec
It's probably a good thing that I don't tell my stories out loud to children at bedtime as I would have to leave them hanging for days at a time. Of course, murder mysteries are likely inappropriate to the age of children that like bedtime stories, but I digress.
I am an avid reader of The Kill Zone blog. I've saved lots of excellent writing advice from that blog - it's an author focused blog not a reader focused blog. I ran into James Scott Bell, one of the site's bloggers, author of numerous mysteries and writing craft books, at Bouchercon 2014. It was a short conversation, but my take away was that there was a way to become a hybrid pantser that might make my writing better or at least easier. His suggestion was that an outline might prevent me from having miniature writer's blocks or inconsistencies in my story. I believe that by the time I publish my book, that I and my first readers, have cleared all of the inconsistencies out of the story, but I would be the first to admit that when I stumble upon them, it scares my writer's soul. I ask myself how I could have such an inconsistency? How did I not see while I wrote, this hole, the size of the Grand Canyon, in the story; or the fact that I said Trixie was a Chihuahua on page 12 and a Dalmatian on page 30 (if you've read my books you know that
Trixie has always been a Dalmatian).
So for book five, "A Taxing Death", I "outlined" the first 24 Chapters. I chose 24 randomly as that was how many squares fit on the piece of paper. My books have varied considerably on chapter numbers, prologues, and epilogues. I can tell that the book doesn't end in Chapter 24, so as I get closer to writing chapter 24, I'll have to take out a new sheet of paper and outline the final 2-5 chapters. Each chapter is described in a single sentence. That sentence will have to become about 3,000 words or the average size of each of my chapters. I also wrote this book without a prologue, but now I have a new problem. The first chapter feels too long to be a prologue, but I have to change the point of view of the story between chapter one and two which is considered a writing no-no. Again, I'll figure out this transition with some help from my editor before the book gets published
So far, my writing speed has not been any better. I keep a 2,000 word count progression goal on my calendar that I broke by the third day. However the jury is still out as to whether I will feature Trixie as a Dalmatian or a Chihuahua as the story progresses. I'll update my blog in a few months with my experience as a hybrid pantser!
Cheers, Alec
