I remember an author saying she didn’t like that term and she thought it should be something else, something more eloquent, but for me, that’s appropriate. I write by the seat of my pants. I was reading an article by an author about how she writes–she says she’s a pantser. She figures out the opening scene, ending scene, and several plot points in between.

That is NOT how I’d describe a pantser. To me that’s a plotter. 🙂 <3 Maybe not a plotter that outlines the whole book, but that still describes a plotter.

Picture I took of the alpha wolf at the wildlife park near Omaha, Nebraska.

A pantser figures out the opening, or even some other scene in the book first (sometimes my opening scenes end up being later in the book) and then from there, keeps going, maybe scenes coming to mind that are out of order–in other words, they really are later in the story, and then need to be written and finally tied in with the earlier ones. Maybe the end scene comes to me before some of the rest of the story and I’ll write that. But as I’m writing, I’ll come up with interesting twists and turns. It happens as I’m writing a scene. That scene prompts it. Not any other. Not the beginning. It evolves from whatever I’ve learned about the characters up until now. Like going full circle. I was describing the entryway to the castle in Heart of the Highland Wolf and near the end of the book while I was trying to figure out the end, suddenly, I had it! And it all had to do with the beginning and describing the castle entryway. It’s just as unexpected for me as it is for my readers. Which means, I couldn’t have plotted it if my life depended on it. And yet, it seems seamless.

Sometimes I think weirdly. I do it in games sometimes. Game designers try to come up with a lot of different scenarios, anticipate what gamers are going to do, and plan for it.  Ha! They didn’t plan for me. Sometimes I get stuck in a game because of that. I locked myself in a dungeon cell once and had to go to an earlier saved game and restore, because the gamers hadn’t anticipated I’d do something so dumb. 🙂

This does not mean I don’t think about my stories. I think about them ALL the time. But sometimes my mind wanders to another story, and I want to start it. Sometimes I ignore that urge because I need to write the story with the more current deadline. But sometimes I’ll write the scene because later, I won’t remember it and if I don’t, those characters will continue to take up space in my head. Which is why I wrote the opening, very brief, of Jaguar Jingle Bells.

Picture I took at the Cameron Park Zoo, Waco, Texas.

So off to do some more pantsing! They say that you can get more easily sidetracked with your work if you are a pantser, because you don’t plot it out. And that means more rewrites. But that’s okay. Because for me, the fun is in the discovery. If I could, which I can’t, but if I could plot out my book from beginning to end, it would kill the joy of writing the story, and discovering all the twisting paths the hero and heroine take to reach their HEA.

Oh, and this was what I was thinking about, and so AFTER I got my word count for yesterday on Billionaire, I wrote a tiny bit of an opening. One-hundred and forty-three words. Told you it was a tiny bit. But got to start somewhere! This is Dr. Kate Parker and Leyland Hill.  Already he’s in trouble, and she doesn’t suspect a thing–just that she’s going on her vacation after she finishes some paperwork at the clinic when she gets sidetracked–in the worst possible way.

Picture I took at the Cameron Park Zoo, Waco, Texas.

Have a fun and frisky Friday!

Terry

“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality.”

Connect with Terry Spear: Website: http://www.terryspear.com

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