No, no… I didn’t shit myself, let’s think broader than that.

I’m a Pantster, there’s no danc­ing around it. When I write, I start with a few basic details such as:

• A situation/complication/act to arrive at (note — to arrive at, not to start with)
• A char­ac­ter or two that are con­nected to the story, and with which we can relate
• A begin­ning that can log­i­cally get us to said situation/complication/act

Then, I WRITE. I know some peo­ple think us pansters are insane (here’s look­ing at you, Mer­rilee) but it’s worked for me each time I write, in fact I have sat down and cre­ated out­lines until every lit­tle word I can think of is jot­ted down in a pad, a ran­dom A4 piece of paper, or a scrap of some­thing I found at work in a sparkly light-bulb moment. But each and every time, I have lost inter­est because most of the spark is on the paper and not bounc­ing around in my head — I’ve given myself over to my notes and out­line, and lost all the sur­prise and spon­tane­ity. That’s prob­a­bly a bad esti­mate of the result a Plot­ter comes to, but it’s my experience.

So, where am I going with all of this? Well times change, sit­u­a­tions arise and beyond all my doubts, all my con­cerns and appre­hen­sions, I have had to become a plot­ter. Tem­porar­ily, of course… and I need help. See, I’m going ahead with my web ser­ial and as I’ve never done it before, I’m hav­ing to approach this with a new style. It’s a ser­ial, and it can’t just wag­gle its tail and look cute, it has to have a strong begin­ning, a mid­dle and an end. I have to then plot, do I not? I have to have an out­line — with char­ac­ters and devel­op­ments and every­thing, CRAZY!

I’m very (very) excited to write some­thing new, but I’m hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble nail­ing down a process on how to out­line a ser­ial, how to write a series that doesn’t just get drawn out. I’ve poked around the inter­web, but to be hon­est noth­ing is really mak­ing it any clearer. In the end, I’ll fig­ure some­thing out even it’s a mish­mash of both styles: a Plotting-panster, but what­ever hap­pens, in whichever way, I’m still excited and hope­fully when I start, oth­ers will be too.