While some people love the structure and order of plotting and can’t start writing until they know every twist and turn of the story, for Discover Writers (aka Pantsers) that takes all the fun right out of the process. But there are ways that you can implement a little plotting and planning without totally taking the fun out of discovering the story as you go. In this episode, we’ll discuss some tips, tricks and strategies to help you shape your story while retaining the freedom to follow where inspiration leads.

Finding the podcast helpful? You can buy us a coffee to help keep us ads free and independent -> https://www.buymeacoffee.com/SAPPODCAST

Resources we mentioned in this episode

• The Creative Academy for Writers
• MurderCon 2021
• Brandon Sanderson Lessons (YouYube)
• Previous interview with Angela Pepper (SAP 024)
• Writing into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith

Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 059: Plotting for Pantsers (aka Discovery Writers)

Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. Welcome to episode 58 of the Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast. I’m Crystal Hunt.

Michele Amitrani: And I’m Michele Amitrani and we are here to help you save time, money, and energy as you level up your writing career.

If you find this show helpful, you can help us keep the episodes coming by clicking to the buy us a coffee button on the website and the show notes.

Crystal Hunt: So today’s topic is part of our series of craft discussions and we’re talking about plotting for pantsers. So if you have no idea what that means, no problem. We’re going to dig into it shortly, but first we’re going to do a quick update as always on what’s new in our writing and publishing lives. Michele, how is life in Italia? 

What has happened since the last episode?

Michele Amitrani: In Italia is great. It’s still very hot and so I’m very excited that in a couple of days, I’m going to spend some times with my family in a slightly higher place, kind of mountain, kind of very high hill, let’s say because in the city is freaking hot.

So I’m looking forward to spend some time there to just unwind a bit. I would bring my MacBook Pro so I will do my stuff, but at the same time, I’m excited that it’s going to be, you know, fresher hair and the less traffic something different. I think I need a few days to just unplug as you call it.

News-wise I … a couple of days ago I got the first version of my designers’ cover for the second mythological fantasy box set. And I love it. You so it, Crystal, I was super excited. This time the guy nailed it. I liked this book set cover even more than the first one.

So I’m just a bit… I’m going to say inpatient because this box set, if everything goes well, It’s going to be released in like 2022. So it’s like, I have to wait five to six months because there are so many other products in between. So I have the cover and I can stare at it, but I can’t really do a lot.

So for now, we’ll have to sit on it. You know, the feeling when you have stuff and you want to show it, but you can’t. Yeah. Welcome to the author world. But at least I’ve got this done. I don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’m also… and this is a pretty new thing that I’ve been doing the past few days, I’ve been checking the sales of my Omnilogos series, a science fiction series in Italian, and I saw that sales over there is starting to pick up at some like … nothing fancy, but at some interesting level. And so I decided to write another story in that world. And I’m actually writing a short story in the Omnilogos series, and I want to make it a newsletter cookie for people that purchase the box set. 

And so it’s going to be just something that is a product that is only available for these readers and hopefully people are going to be more interested in entering the newsletter on my science fiction side. If they enjoyed the Omnilogos series. I finished the first drafter, like five hours ago, I already got the cover, which I’m very excited about. And I’ll just have to now finish the second draft, make it readable and then give it to some beta.

Talking about beta. The second beta reader gave me the Italian nonfiction book number three. I got a good feedback and now I’m ready for the third rewrite of that book and that’s going to go off to my review crew. These, I already mentioned, is going to be a nonfiction series about self-publishing for Italians. And the second book of the series about Amazon Ads (the third one is about the mailing list building), it’s going to be released in a couple of weeks time so I’m super excited. I’m preparing for a launch. I have no idea how many people are going to buy it. I think I, if I sell 10 copies of this book, I’m going to be happy. And I’ll keep you updated on what happens. Also, two of my historical fiction novellas got selected for a couple of Kobo’s promo in the next three weeks.

So I’m looking forward to seeing how things are going to play out on that side. Kobo has been extremely good in the past few months with my historical fiction. So I’m very grateful to them and I’m grateful that we, Crystal, decided to go wide. So that was it for me for now. What happened in your magic writerly world?

Crystal Hunt: Well, I have been plotting and scheming, all of the murder. I’ve been pretty focused on the next few Rivers End stories have kind of suspense elements to them and a bit of mystery as well. And then I also have my other pen name, well, actually two other pen names, which I’ve been working on cozy mysteries for one of the pen names and I have a regular paranormal suspensy kind of situation going on, which is very much a back-burner project that I’m only kind of noodling around with on the weekends or whenever I’m not actively working on kind of the focus areas, it’s kind of my playground project. So that you’ll hear more about that as things get ready to be public, but I’m having a lot of fun with it.

And murder con was a couple of weeks ago, by the time you’re hearing this. And that is a conference that is taught by Sirchie, which is the organization that does a lot of the training for FBI agents and police and, you know, homicide detectives, et cetera. So we had quite an interesting weekend.

I learned about blood spatter analysis and forensic toxicology, which yes is poisoning. There was a class on man tracking, which is how to track people through signs and footprints and things like that. I did homicide scene analysis with a homicide detective. So what happens when you show up on the scene with the dead body?

There was a forensic botany class, which was about plants and vegetation and stuff, and how you can use that to help you figure out if a body was moved or, you know, where somebody was held, if they were kidnapped first, all kinds of interesting things. And also one of the classes was called ‘how to get away with murder’.

So that was, that was interesting. And, you know, I had a moment or two where I was like, huh, I wonder if I should really put all this in my Ical, because if anything ever happens, I’m going to be, you know, prime suspect. But I figured don’t hide it, hiding things is bad, put it out there. And all of my Google searches are going to get me in big trouble anyway, if they don’t figure out I’m a writer quick, so that’s fine. But it has been a very interesting little rabbit hole to go down. I did the conference last year as well, because it was online both this year and last year. And usually it’s in New Orleans or somewhere else in America and it’s not something I would normally be able to get to.

So it was the upshot of the whole pandemic and non-travel situation was that with this being virtual for a couple of years in a row, I was able to actually get to these classes. So last two years learned some really interesting things. I have collated a fascinating reading list of books that the forensic specialists recommend, like if they had one or two kind of handbook things that they recommended, and lots of them actually have written books on the topics, and so we were able to get a list of those, and I am keen to dive further into that over the next few years, probably this, something I’ve always been interested in criminology and things like that. And there’s often suspense and mystery plots that sneak their way into my other fiction.

I’m really looking forward to playing with that some more. So, yes, my house is now littered with books that have like blood spatter and how to do it autopsy and things like that. We should make for some interesting discussion when we have company. On the more professional side of things I have been working on my masterclass stuff for the Creative Academy.

So we have this month was a focus on movement and health. So the masterclass, now available for people, was taught actually by a guest instructor, PJ Bevin, who was a zookeeper for 15 years and is also a trained fitness instructor and has something called zoo fit, which is very cool. And it is all you can learn from the animals and how you can apply concepts that work in animal training to training humans to do fitness stuff as well.

And it was a fantastic session. So if you’re not already a Creative Academy member, it is free to join. I suggest you go there immediately and get your hands on the first two of the three sessions wellness series for writers is out already. And then the third one is nutrition, which is going to happen in November.

So if you get yourself in there, you can come to those sessions, you can watch the replays and be part of that. So in my personal side of things, and as a responsible author have been working on establishing really healthy habits for myself so that I don’t burn out and I’m able to keep writing for the next, you know, 50 years or so. I think it is my plan. 

So getting enough sleep, shifting back to earlier morning wake-ups and making sure that I am cooking fun and interesting and healthy things, and that I am continuing, I have a virtual reality headset, which I have been using to work out, which is super fun. And there’s an app called ‘supernatural’ and it’s kind of like a combination of a game and a fitness workout.

And that hits all the right highlight buttons for me. I was really struggling to get back to fitness and a few months ago a friend, thank you, Mary Robinette, pointed out that this was a particularly fantastic option and I jumped on that bandwagon with a couple other author friends. So we now challenge each other with the leaderboards and it keeps us accountable and make sure that we are, you know, in there killing things as we need to.

So really fun and definitely enjoying the settling back into an actual routine is really great. Love fall. Fall’s coming quicker than we can imagine. And I’m very excited for that back to school energy to kind of ride all those good routines into release season. When I can stop sitting on some of the stuff I’ve been working on it, it’s going to be very exciting.

As Michele said, it’s so hard to do stuff and have it there and you, you’re not sharing it yet. And there’s a really good reason for it, but it is very it’s very stressful. All right. So we are going to talk today about. Plotting for pantsers or the term I really prefer is discovery writer.

What is a ‘pantser’?

I always think pantser is … and a ‘pantser’ for those of you who are like, still don’t know what this is, is when you don’t really write from a detailed outline, you haven’t figured out every nuance of your story, you are writing by the seat of your pants is where that expression comes from. 

But I never loved that I actually, I would have said I was a plotter just to not apply that label to myself actually, because it feels like you’re not thinking it through or you don’t understand the story as well and that’s actually not at all true. I don’t think anyway. I think as a discovery writer, it’s not that you don’t think about or plan things, but you are leaving a certain amount open to inspiration or your instinct, or … I want to say you’re writing more with your instincts and internal stuff than, than your cerebral brain controlling things. If that makes any sense. It’s more writing from an internalized sense of story. And I mean, for me, the term discovery writer really gets at why I love that, which is that I’m discovering the story and the characters alongside the reader, which I think has lots of interesting of side benefits. And we’ll dig into that a little bit, but Michele, do you identify as a discovery writer or a plotter? Like what do you think, or, or a pantser like, which of those labels feels like it’s a good match for you and your writing?

Michele Amitrani: I’ve heard once and for the first time, the term ‘discovery writer’ from one of the lecture on YouTube from Brandon Sanderson and I loved it and I prefer this term to the term ‘pantser’ and I just because I do believe that there is more of a discovery, so it gives more the action to the author.

Actually you are doing things while you are discovering. So it’s, it does seem like there is a system. The name ‘discovery’ suggests that you are doing something. There is a system that you are following. It might not be immediately evident. But since this is the way I see myself as a discovery writer mostly.

I do think that there are a lot of things that can be said for this kind of way to writing and creating novels. And I do identify as a discovery writer for the most. And I say ‘the most’, because I don’t think, or at least I never met an author that was, or identify himself or herself as 100% discovery writer or a what other people call an ‘architect’, which is a plotter.

So there are so many names for things like. I know that there are people refers to discovery writers as a ‘gardeners’. I think George RR Martin used that term in one of his interview. The point is that I don’t think you can put a label on an order and said you are a pantser 100% or you are a plotter I don’t think it’s that easy.

And you know that I like listening to interviews and of course, when I can, speaking with other authors and most of what we do here in the podcast, when we interview somebody, is we want to learn a bit more about this author’s writing style. And I do believe that each and every one of them as a portion of one kind of, of writing and also on the others. 

When it comes to me especially in the last couple of years when I started writing consistently every day I have started seeing some patterns, at least on my way of creating stories. And I answer to your question” do you identify as a discovery writer? with the answer I am mostly a discovery writer because this is the way I was able up to this point to create stories. 

And this is the point not only to create stories, but to great stories, edit them and then ship them. There’s no other way I’m able to create stories so far. We’re going to talk about the pros and cons of this particular way of writing stories that can be very painful and time-consuming compared to the plotter side of things, but I just want to put it out there that there is not a right way to do it. 

And this goes back to something that I believed to be truth in the past, which is plotter are better writers than pantsers.

I do not believe that to be the case anymore. And if you listen to some of the past episodes of this podcast, you will hear me saying I’m not good enough because I can’t plot a story. I can’t know, 100% what’s going to happen to the story. I’m not good enough. And I’ve been reading, as of now, like a dozen different books that were focused on how to plot a novel and to each and every one of them at the end, I tried what was a said in the book. I read all the most famous, most downloaded, the most bought plot-driven books out there. And at the end of each book, I just couldn’t bring myself to create a system that was at least partly based on the tips that these books about blotting were giving. So I thought that I wasn’t maybe intelligent enough.

I was like, maybe these people are just better at creating stories, they just have everything figured out from the first page before they write the first page or at least most of the things. And now I don’t think about that, that way anymore. I just think my writing system is different from that books and I shouldn’t force myself to write that way. That being said, I did learn a lot about story structure on this books. So internally I internalized a lot of things about structure. Like the three stories are, the hero’s journey, just stuff like that. It just, I can’t bring myself to write a plot that is many pages and then follow it.

I tried several times. I could not do it, Crystal. I could not do it. It just wasn’t for me. 

But at the same time I did publish books up to now. So I think I am developing at least the system so far and since this is what I think I am at this point. A mostly discovery writer, what do you think … Do you think Crystal Hunt as a label that she identifies with or do you think you also are a mixture of different things?

Crystal Hunt: Well, it raises kind of an interesting point. So Crystal Hunt is the one who writes the nonfiction and Crystal Hunt is definitely an outliner. Our nonfiction books are outlined five ways to Sunday, we break everything down into little sections. We know exactly all the points that are going to get included.

I know anecdotes go with which sections and how to communicate that information. It’s very structured, very logical and very detailed outlines is definitely the key. But I think a couple of pieces there, a lot of them are co-written and when you’re working with other people that discovery writing process is a little more challenging to do on a large scale, you can have discovery writing within a section or within a chapter, but particularly with nonfiction, you really need to know what you’re going to say and where you’re going to say it and which person’s going to do the sayings.

So I think in that identity I’m very much a plotter that, that is extremely focused. On the fiction side it’s quite different. I have some books that I have fully plotted to the nth degree, and I don’t think I will ever write them because I am not interested anymore. I know how it ends. And I know, I know exactly what happened, so I don’t need to write it because I’ve already experienced that story and sorry, readers. It means you don’t get to play along, but I can’t justify spending all that time writing if I’m not going to have the fun of figuring things out as I go. So for my fiction identities, I definitely do identify more as that discovery writer.

And so there are certain genres though that bend me in certain directions or times when I need to lean a little more heavily on the structure. I’m working on a linear series for the cozy mysteries, which is not something I’ve ever done before. My Rivers End books are all totally intricately interwoven.

And there are literally hundreds of characters in that world and I know how roughly and where they crossover with each other and the timelines all overlap. And it’s really like a tapestry that’s woven pretty tight. So I can do a certain amount of flexing and pulling in there, but I can’t really just pull anything out of the air and make it work.

Sometimes I can but there are restrictions because of what I do already published in that world and committed to publicly. So the series Bible gets to be the ruler there and say, ‘yay or nay’. This is possible, or this is not possible based on what has been shared or have to come up with really clever, you know, you know, on the soap opera, there’s always some really weird or daytime television, I suppose, I should say. Sorry. On those daytime TV dramas, there’s always like these crazy twists and it’s because you might have 40 years of that show being on air and you have to stick within canon, like what has been committed to, but you still need those interesting twists and stuff happens like an actor leaves the show or whatever and you have to just write that in. So that is a challenge I have to say in terms of being a discovery writer and managing a series, and it’s also a bit more challenging in terms of predicting timing for the next books that are going to come out. When you are a discovery writer, there often is a little bit more on the editing side that has to be done because you have been figuring things out as you go.

And so when you change gears in the middle or you get to the end and realize it’s not quite how you thought it was going to be in the beginning, then you may have to go back and clean everything up and you may end up with an extra pass or two through the book than you would if you had already plotted out all of those structural details before you dive in.

So I know some people say, oh, well, if you’re going to be like a professional working writer and you’re going to work to publish your deadlines and all of these things, you really have to become a plotter or you, you know, you have to figure out a process and a timeline. Maybe you release less books a year or whatever it is, which is fine. But my challenge over the last few months has been okay, how do I get the best of both worlds? How do I give myself the structure of a little bit of plotting but also have the freedom to still pursue the story in the way that is going to work better for me, because trying to make yourself something you’re not, is not the same as growth. And I think Michele, you really hit on that earlier when you talked about how, you know, we’re always trying to be better writers and we’re reading books on craft and books about other people’s process, and we’re listening to podcasts and interviews with other authors and we’re hearing how they do it.

And then we’re testing those things in our own writing life to see, okay, is that going to work for me? And I think 99% of the time, what we hear is just that someone else does it differently. And it is easy to think, like I’m broken, there’s something that’s wrong with me or that I’m not getting here because this works so well for those other people, but it really is about trusting our own process and knowing what is working for us. Granted, there’s going to be potentially years of experimentation or multiple books.

I mean I’m 40 books and or something under various pen names, different genres, granted, but I’m still learning what kind of writer I am. And every time I switch genres, I have to reevaluate that process. I’m writing cozy mysteries right now, and you need to know what your clues are and your red herrings and who your suspects are and how all those pieces fits together.

It’s a really different kind of a puzzle and I’m definitely in the experimentation stage with that planning process, because this is the first one, that’s specific cozy mystery genre. And so I don’t have a blueprint of exactly how I can go about this. And I think that is both very fun and exciting and also a little unnerving, but I think just accepting that we might write different kinds of books in different ways or that we might use a different writing process at different times of our lives as well is also very useful.

We don’t have to stay static. All of the things we have learned and internalized are very useful. I mean, definitely some things are going to be…well, in theory, there’s some genres that are going to be harder. I think if you are a discovery writing and I don’t know, I’d be curious to hear Michele do you think, do you think some are suited better than others of the different types of things you’ve tried to write? Have there been some that you’ve struggled with more than others because of your process, do you think?

Are you always a ‘pantser’?

Michele Amitrani: Yeah. I think that there are some factors that can influence the difficulty of the project.

So I don’t personally know anyone that wrote epic fantasy of over 100,000 words without plotting something. I think the length is definitely a factor. Now I’ve been publishing several different kinds of lengths of books. From books that were 200,000 words or more to my current mythological fantasy series is … the shortest one is 13,000 words and the longest one is 24,000. So for these projects that are shorter, I do find that it’s easier for me to just discover my way into the plot and the characters. I don’t necessarily think that if I start to level up and write something like an epic climatological fantasy, if there is something like that, I can just simply write my way into the story.

It might be way more challenging, more difficult. There are simply more pieces to the puzzle that you have to keep track on. Now that being said, I did write four books, the Omnilogos series is a four books series, and the shortest of these books is 90,000 words. The longest is around 200,000 words and this project was made way before the mythological fantasy novellas.

And if you ask me how I did it, I don’t really have an answer for you. I was checking my notes. I have like block notes and stuff where I had notes, several notes of the story, but I don’t remember a day in which I actually sat down and I plot anything. So my answer to this project would be, I discovered, re-wrote my way into the Omnilogos series, which is a really big chunk of a technological series of books. So I don’t actually … I didn’t have the skill that I have now. I don’t exactly know how I wrote that story, but I do remember that whenever I had an idea that seemed to fit into the puzzle of the craft and creation I tried it and if it didn’t work, I toss it aside. 

I waited a few days and I got another idea. I put it there. It made sense. I went over to the next chapter. So it was a process of trial and errors and the Omnilogos series was finished in 2017 and I was still very early in the writing process, but I pushed myself into writing it. And so I want to say that it is possible to discovery rewrite the very long series, but it took me three years and a half of constant writing and rewriting a lot of things. And so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing it that way.

The other thing is that the Omnilogos series it has some it has several flaws and I can see them re-reading it. I was lucky enough that I was, am very interested in that particular science fiction genre. So in some way I internalized most of the tropes and I hit some of them, but I did not hit all of them.

Hence why I think the series is flowed, even though I love it. I still love it. Even. Even if it’s basically my really first big writerly project. So there are challenges and definitely length of your story it’s something you have to factor in when you’re writing anything. If you’re writing a novellette, a the short story or a novella, sure. You can try to discovery write your way into it. It’s what I do. But epic fantasy an 85,000 and 90,000 words, thriller, that’s different. Like you have to know stuff at the beginning, I think, in order to make things make sense. 

So I think it depends on the length of the story on the genre and on the tropes and on the familiarity that you have with that particular genre. I would never, ever discovery write a cozy mistery.

I have no idea how the write one I don’t have enough experience on that genre. But at the same respect, even though I love epic fantasy (I’m reading Brandon Sanders’s a second book in the Stormlight Archive series) I will never attempt to just discovery write a big fantasy of 200,000 words or more.

Never ever. Because I know it will be a mess and it will just give me a big headache. So I would say at this point, know your strengths. Know your … Not only know your strength, but also try and learn what the market is doing. And please be very mindful. I’m not necessarily saying write to market, but I’m saying write something that you are interested in because readers are going to feel that you’re interested in something when you write it.

And I think to go back to the example of the Omnilogos series. One of the ways that the series wasn’t a failure (it wasn’t a success but it’s not a mess either). It’s because I really love that kind of story. So readers can see that I put a lot of time and the research, in the way I crafted the characters.

So there was that component. So even though the story is flawed: pacing sometimes it’s not good, some characters are a bit flat, but still there was the love of the writer that keeps everything together. So I think that’s a component that is important that you can see that whatever you’re plotting or discovery writing something.

So these are definitely some of the challenges that I see: lengthy, genre, what is the market doing? And also knowing your strengths. 

You mentioned some of the challenges for you Crystal, but I don’t think you have even scratched the tip of the iceberg on that side. Would you like to add something more about that?

Crystal Hunt: I think it’s more interesting to talk about how we solve those challenges. So I think for the next section, we’re going to dive into some tips. So let’s say you are somebody who is kind of instinctively more of a discovery writer, but you are writing in a genre that could benefit from a little bit of plotting or planning and you don’t want to paint yourself into a corner, write yourself into a corner and realize that you, you know, have to completely redo everything you did. 

Ways to plot as a pantser

So one of the ways that I have been resolving my internal struggle between the plotter and the pantser is to do an outline, but keep it very high level and keep it very flexible.

So that really boils down to for me. I actually start with the characters. I don’t even start with the plot. Usually there’s some kind of spark and sometimes it’s a character that I’m working from and sometimes it’s a scene that I can see in my mind. Sometimes I hear a conversation between two characters.

The voice has come in different ways, different times, but I think having that overall sense of what could happen gives me enough of a handle on it to kind of dive in. But it has to come through the characters. I am a characters-first writer. And so the tip that I would have is if you get to know your characters really well, then you have the flexibility to throw any situation at them and understand how they will react and to do that in a convincing way. 

Now it doesn’t mean I know everything about the character. They do constantly surprise me. And I do have that same sense of discovery about the characters and their relationships as I do about what happens in the plot.

But I do not know the core of those characters before I dive in. So what is their emotional wound or the hole in their soul? What traumatic thing happened to them that has defined who they are, at least as far as I know and they know at the time. Sometimes there can be another layer of things going on that you discover part way through the book and that’s great, but you don’t end up with a hole, it just becomes an extra layer comes and makes it extra interesting and gives it more depth. It doesn’t leave a gap if you don’t have it at all. So that is, I think really important is to make sure you know who your people are and that is one thing that has helped me kind of move through that.

Another tip is that… and this comes Bob Digoni or Robert Digoni is a great writing teacher and he said in one of his workshops, you know, you need to, write like no one is ever going to see that first draft. And he said, don’t ever show anybody your first draft. And that is true. You know, once you, once you can remove yourself from worrying about whatever other people will think it does free you up to try things and not be so worried about how it’s going to come together, which I think actually helps unlock the more interesting options that your brain will pour out onto the page.

Or your feelings will pour out onto the page. Some people will … everybody writes in very different ways. We did an interview with Angela Pepper on our first season of the podcast. And if you haven’t listened to that, I would highly recommend you go back and take a listen because Angela’s process is fascinating and she writes in layers of things. And she said she can’t actually see the story in her head until she has written it, that it’s only in putting it down on paper that she can actually make sense out of any of it. And she describes herself as having no imagination, which is I think awesome and hilarious as a writer because she’s managed to write so many books, but if you listened to her talk about her process, it’s really interesting.

And I think breaks a lot of the stereotypes of what we think of as the traditional writing process. So that’s definitely worth checking out, but certainly the first draft, not counting. In the sense of you don’t have to show it to anyone or be accountable to it. No one will judge you by it. Just give yourself the freedom to really play and go for it.

And that is really interesting. Michele, what about you? What have you kind of come to after doing many, many books this way that you think would be useful for people to know?

Michele Amitrani: I think one of the most important things is as you learn how your writing process works, you’re going to be more confident on what you’re doing.

So at the very beginning of my 12 by 20 challenge (writing a short story every month for a year) I did not have a process. I had no idea how I wrote, especially in English. What was the start? The beginning? The middle point? Now, flash forward a year and a half after that I now wrote seven mythological fantasy stories and I do know there are things that don’t scare me as much as they did scare me at the beginning, simply because I know how my writing on this particular genre works now. So for example, the last story I wrote, it took me less time… when I got stuck, it took me less time to get unstuck. 

It just because I already went there, I already had those problems and I was able to overcome them more quickly. It’s like, I think, any kind of activity that you do more than once. The first time is going to be a hassle, is going to be painful and it’s going to take a long time.

But if you do that dozens of times, eventually the time that you use to do it is going to be somehow improved. The quality of time is going to be better. And I’m not comparing writing a book to mastering Amazon Ads. I’m not saying it’s the same, but I am saying that there are some pattern in the writing that repeats themselves.

And this is something that you can just learn the more you write and the more you get familiar to the way you write. So it can’t be taught in any course in any podcast episodes or in any books. It’s just a question of you doing it like a muscle memory, do it, do it, do it, do it every single time. Like you go to the gym the first time you finish the first session, those muscles, they’re going to be sore. You’re not going to be able to sleep, but after a year and a half, you’re going to have muscles and hopefully you build it up on those muscle more weight more strength. I do believe that there is a connection to make between this kind of exercise, the muscle exercise.

And the writing muscle exercise, you just repeat and you do it and you do it once more. Hence why this brings me to the second point, which is consistence. Now, we spoke many times in this podcast about the different way writers write and there is no right way to do it.

Or you can be a binge writer, you can be a writer who writes every day. It does not matter, but both Crystal and I, who are different in this regard, do believe that the more you stay with the story, the better it’s going to be with you. The better it’s going to be for you. It’s like the Muse is looking at you and it’s putting something in your skull. And so she’s seeing that you’re making the effort. And so she’s giving you something. 

So I do believe that staying with the story consistently, even for a timeframe, a specific timeframe, like a month, like NaNoWriMo. It is a way for you to learn more things faster.

And I do encourage you if you can, if you have the time to keep it consistent, just because I, I found it, at least for me, it works and it can be just 15 minutes, 20 minutes. So we already discussed about that in another episode, but I do think consistently is another thing that you can try and that you can apply to your writing habits.

The other thing that I will say that can be useful as tips for both discovery writers, and writers that plot, every single chapter, scene and sentence of the book is just start with something that is interesting for the reader. And you can do it in a number of different ways. You can make the character likable or flawed the just to give you an example, (spoiler alert) about The Maze Runner. If you ever watched the movie or read the book, The Maze Runner starts in an amazing way. It’s like an amnesiac teenager that is brought into a huge maze and he doesn’t remember think about himself. I’m interested in this guy.

I’m interested in the danger, he finds himself in. I want to know how we got there. So in just a few pages, the author was able to get my interest. You can do that regardless of you plotting your story or discovering writing it. So I think start with something that is interesting for the reader, and then you can build up on that.

So an idea can start just with something interesting, and if you are a discovery writer build upon it. And this is another thing that is connected to all this speech and is actually something that helped me understand that plotting wasn’t necessarily the best way to craft a story.

It was just a way. I was watching a video, a tutorial my Dean Wesley Smith, which is the author of Writing Into the Dark. And he said something that blew my mind basically. He was describing the way of writing in the dark, meaning discovery writing, and he was saying think about this: when you are a reader what do you know about the story that you just picked? You know, zero. You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen on page 74. You don’t know what’s going to happen on the next page. So you are pulled to read it. You want to know what’s going to happen to the characters. And so he said after this, just think to be a  writer who doesn’t know anything about what’s going to happen afterwards. You’re going to be more interested in writing, in exploring what can happen. The difference between the reader and the writer is that the reader is passive. They can just absorb the story. They can enjoy the story. The writer can create and build up on that story.

And that’s the way I am writing my mythological fantasy novellas. Probably they’re simple and have not a lot of twists but I do find the process of writing them more enjoyable, because I have no idea what’s going to happen on the next page.

And I’ll just finish this with: it is not really important how write the story as long as you write it. And if you are a discovery writer, as Crystal was mentioning, you will have to rewrite it probably more than once. In my case, I know that my first draft is basically my plot (I meant outline), that’s where I begin.

And I know if that’s a short story and it starts with the first draft and it ends up being 3000 words, on the second and third draft that word count is going to be increased probably double or three times. I don’t care, because I know that’s where I am beginning and I’m not afraid to explore more of the characters to enlarge the story.

So just get that thing down and then you can always rewrite something that exists. But you can’t rewrite nothing. So I think this is important for everybody to keep in mind and remember to enjoy writing because that’s what it should be. It should be an inactivity, they actually make you more interested in the world itself and that in the process you are in the entertainment world, you are trying to entertain people, first and foremost, if you’re writing fiction. So I believe that in order to entertain people successfully, you are the first person that needs to be entertained.

Crystal Hunt: Absolutely. And anything that’s going to take away from your enjoyment of the writing process, there’s always a risk that that’s going to bleed through, into the enjoyment of the reading process for people as well. A couple more little tips that I find really helpful. You don’t have to plot your entire story to bring some structure to your project.

I like to structure my books very specifically. So I know roughly how many chapters I want to have. I know how many words I’m targeting. I know what the beats are in whatever genre I’m writing, so that I know kind of the shape or the feel overall, the highlights that I need to hit. If I’m writing a romance, I know that there are going to be certain story beats or things that need to happen in that story to make the reader feel satisfied when they get to the end of it. I know those parts inside out, and I make sure I build those into the template that I use. If I’m starting a romance, I have a romance template for stories of different links and I’ve broken down how many beats, how many chapters? I don’t, I don’t know exactly how many scenes, but I have a rough idea. And then I write into the structure. So that whatever I come up with in the moment is going to fit that. And so that’s one way of doing it is when you structure the container will say, and then you put the story into that container.

Now, for some people that that’s too much like that doesn’t really work, especially if you’re learning or you’re new or whatever, maybe you just want to write whatever you can write to keep that flow going. But you can use a process called reverse outlining, which means you write that messy first draft that no one’s ever going to see.

And then you take a story structure and you map your story back onto that story structure and you analyze, okay, which beats are missing from this, or does it make sense that something needs to happen in the first act instead of the second act? Or, you know, you can go back and you can analyze what you do have in light of a structure that you’re trying to use, or a beat sheet that you’re trying to follow, or a method that you’re hoping to kind of cross check your work against.

So that’s something that does work for a lot of discovery writers is to have that process as part of their editing process where they’re just doing a cross check to see, okay did my, my gut in my brain… how I had, I internalize that structure so much that it’s in my head, that that process is happening and you may be writing to form already.

You may already be doing that just as second nature. If you have spent 40 years reading, whatever, mystery novels, then you have internalized a lot of that. And so when you’re writing that, that structure is going to be built in to what you’re writing, whether you’re conscious of it or not at least to a certain extent.

So that is definitely a thing. I think the one last like critical piece that we have not really touched on is to trust your own creative process and try to get out of your own way as much as possible. Like when Michele said writing more is how you get better at it. And yes, you can absorb lots of interesting things from books and you can hear about how other people do stuff and what works for other people.

But ultimately practice is what’s going to get you there and I’ve heard a stat, and I can’t remember which of the millions of writing books I’ve read this was, and they were talking about how you don’t really know your own voice as a writer until you’ve written seven to 10 books. And I think you don’t really know your own process as a writer until you’ve written about the same. You know, you are still questioning yourself so much until you hit that milestone, that, and every book you’re writing, you’re learning so much and you’re trying new things, but you don’t really know how much is you and how much is other people until you get to the point where you trust yourself and your own process enough to really move that forward.

So that would be for me, my final piece of advice and something I am working on daily is to get out of my own way and just trust the kind of writer I am and trust the process that I have and give myself permission to just do things my own way and keep going. And if I’m not getting results, then, okay, it’s time to question that and see if there’s something I could tweak or change, but if I am getting results, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right? Leave it alone. Keep going and just keep writing more books.

We hope you enjoyed today’s show. Remember to hit the subscribe button, wherever you’re listening to the podcast and to visit us as strategicauthorpreneur.com for show notes and links to the books, resources and tools that we mentioned in today’s episode. And feel free to hit the Buy Us a Coffee button, if you find the show helpful. Every contribution helps us keep the shows coming and keep our productions ads free and independent. Until next time happy writing. 

Michele Amitrani: Happy writing everyone.