I recently published my first short story They Watch From the Trees on my website hollowmortes.com. It was a very exciting time. I’ve been chipping away at this short story for a while and to have it complete and available for people to read gave me a great sense of accomplishment. But it is only the first step on the journey of world building and storytelling that I have set out on and I am far from the finish line.
I’ve been thinking about the process by which I made They Watch From the Trees. I sat and listened to music, imagined the characters, the monsters, the setting. I broke out the old spiral notebook and pen and began a lengthy outline while heavy metal music blasted through my headphones. I filled page after page with details and ideas, not all of which made into the final copy. But it was exhilarating when I finished. I think the outline was about 6 pages long.
I’m usually a planner when it comes to my short stories. Most of the ones I write are planned with an outline from start to finish. Although sometimes, such as with the one I have just started, I not planning. I’m pantsing.
For those unfamiliar with the term, pantsing is a term the means “flying by the seat of your pants”, or in this case, writing by the seat of your pants. I’m essentially making it up as I go. Skipping the outline and going right for the rough draft. There are pros and cons to both of these techniques. Planning allows me to think the whole thing through and to have a map of what I want the story to be if I ever put the story away for a while before picking it back up. But it also can give me a sense of completion that prevents me from turning the story into something more than an outline.
Pantsing allows me to jump right to the rough draft. It can be quicker at times and more fun. But it can leave me stymied if I’m in the middle of writing and then get slammed with writers block. Then I’ll end up putting the story aside until the block breaks or, as this has happened before, I’ll forget about it until years later when I’m going through old notebooks and realize I have half of a short story written and I can’t remember how I wanted it to end and the fact that it’s written and not in outline form makes it harder to remember how I wanted the story to go. So I either scrap it and move on or start over.
So, it’s clear I am more of a planner than a pantser. I prefer the former. So why do the later? The answer, I like pantsing sometimes. Sometimes I just want to write and let the story flow and be created naturally rather than meticulously. Sometimes I just want to get the story on the page because the battle scene I envisioned is too epic to contain or the scene of my character joyriding through the city streets is too fun to leave in my imagination and needs life outside on the page.
When I was in college I would carry a pocket notebook around with me and I would fill them with stories that weren’t planned. I just let them happen. I’d like to make another story like that. I have a good feeling about this one. It doesn’t have a title yet, but it is set in my world of Hollow Mortes and is one of the ideas listed on my Works in Progress page. If you’re interested, I recommend checking it out. I’m excited and interested to see where this will take me. I’ll keep you posted.
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