Seat of pants, gift of gab

It’s customary to divide fiction-writers into plotters (work
it all out before you start) and ‘pantsers’ (i.e. seat of pants, just write and work out the story as you go along) and because I had so many problems with the plot of my first novel, I always considered myself to be a fully paid up member of the pants community. Even when I tried a detailed plan for Ailsa (full synopsis, three columns, four colours!) I found that it bore no fruit. I simply lost interest in writing to the plan and eventually tore it up and started the novel again.  I expect this was due to the plan being deeply flawed, but it still put me off the whole planning exercise so that this time (novel no.3 – lucky for some?) I haven’t even tried.

But I happened to be browsing around the blogs this week and
first of all found another pantser (discovery writer, that sounds better!)
bemoaning her ability to get the plot sorted out, then popped over to visit old
friend Nina who has been talking about ‘plot junkies and characterphiles’.
As a pantser I felt I couldn’t possibly be a plot junkie. Surely the two are incompatible? But shock horror, I think I may be just that.  I start with a situation, a setting or a theme rather than a character. And even if even if I grope around to get the story arc right, I know that this (for me) is what counts in creating a ‘real’ novel. Not that characters aren’t important. I feel as close to my heroes and heroines as any writer and have abandoned plot ideas (reluctantly!) on their behalf, but a single character is rarely my starting point.
And now that I think about it, I always do know where the story is going
in broad terms. It’s just getting there that gives me the headache!

So I’m a plot junkie with a discovery writing habit. Nasty, you may say. But one thing I have discovered – or rediscovered – as I grapplke with a new novel, is that for me the key is dialogue. Because even if I know what my MC is going to be or do, nothing  much happens  until they talk to someone. And when two (or more) people are in a room/railway carriage/lifeboat/launderette/kebab shop/art  gallery, anything can happen. They can argue, fall in love, make a plan, tell  all or reveal nothing. They might also tear a strip off someone else. And who
might that be? As soon as there’s dialogue, there’s life. The characters multiply, the scenes pile up.

My latest WIP, a historical novel, at first seemed a very different kettle of fish (oops!) Much of it involves real people and actual events. The plot, you might say, is predetermined.  But in fact I’m writing it in much the same
way. The characters, in the sense of the main cast, are non-negotiable. But as
soon as they talk to each other, they are alive, to me, to each other, and hopefully
to the reader. If the dynamic is unpredictable, that’s how it should be. We
need to wonder what they might do.  They might threaten to rock the boat.  I might need another character to come to the rescue …  and off we go again.

But this time I am exercising caution. History, as I see it, has provided me with a pretty solid story arc. The main turning points are matters of fact, their significance obvious to me at least. If I’m to make it work, I might need my characters to haud their wheesht  from time to time so I can check
we’re all heading in the right direction.