Tag: Laurie Schnebly Campbell

To write is to be a pantser #MFRWauthor

Hello. My name is Dee, and I am a pantser.

Honestly, I’ve tried so hard to be a plotter but it just doesn’t happen. The closest I come is to plan things in my head. And maybe a little closer is a class I took on using motivation to plot. (Laurie Schnebly Campbell, Plotting Via Motivation, writeruniv.wordpress.com/classes) It’s a great class and Laurie is a wonderful teacher, but I still haven’t wrapped my head around how to apply it beyond the “classroom.” I think it needs practice, and if IA plotter weren’t a pantser I’d be better at practicing stuff.

I believe my biggest problem with being an organized plotter is that I procrastinate, and I tend toward the lazy. Plotting—actually thinking through the course of the book and characters and sticking to (pretty much) the plan takes discipline and effort.

And me? Listen. I agreed to marry my husband on the spur of the moment while we were driving along the highway. We had a nine-day engagement. When we decided to drive truck, we didn’t check out the company, just finished our lease, sold our furniture, and took off through four states, trusting things would work out.

So you see, I’m not much on planning, and never have been. When I climb in the car, I don’t mind taking a map but I don’t want to plan to ruin the fun Starting point, ending pointof driving wherever the spirit takes me. And like my driving, if I didn’t write by the seat of my pants, I wouldn’t write at all. Being a pantser is for better or worse, just like my marriage.

Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.

Dee
Only a Good Man Will Do: Seriously ambitious man seeks woman to encourage his goals, support his (hopeful) position as Headmaster of Westover Academy, and be purer than Caesar’s wife. Good luck with that!

Naval Maneuvers: When a woman requires an earth-shattering crush of pleasure to carry her away, she can’t do better than to call on the US Navy. Sorry, Marines!

Character Profiles #MFRWauthor

I confess that I used to be a complete pantser. I had an image of characters in my head and that was all I needed. But sometimes I found that I as I wrote, I added bits and pieces, traits and hobbies to the characters and then it was hard to keep things straight. I often forgot what color hair my heroine had or whether the hero’s eyes were green or blue. Once I renamed the hero halfway through the book and only caught it in editing (thank heaven). I knew I needed help.

Creating a character is a little like chemistry: a little of this and a little of that, and you have a character that’s memorable (and keeps the same name all the way through the book!). I found a how-to guide that had character sheets in it, and I adopted it to fit what I wanted to know about my characters. Suddenly, I had a form to fill in for height, hair and eye color, hobbies, education, family members, etc. I added elements for conflict and goals, too. I assigned each major character three adjectives and then wrote three things the character might do that represented those adjectives. I found the character sheets helped keep me in line and on target.

Lately, I took two courses with Laurie Schnebly Campbell through Writer University and learned a lot! Laurie’s help was aimed toward plotting through character motivation.

I ended up with much of the same goals/motivation information I had using the guide sheets, but it’s much easier to come up with. I think I will still use the guide sheets to track physical characteristics but use Laurie’s process to find motivation and apply it to plot. By the way, if you’ve never taken a course with Laurie, I found her to be a real pleasure—fun and helpful.

So, am I no longer a pantser? Well, I haven’t gotten to the point of detailed outlining, but I have found a couple of methods that help me hold my stories together better. I hope…

Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.

Dee
Naval Maneuvers When a woman requires an earth-shattering crush of pleasure to carry her away, she can’t do better than to call on the US Navy. Sorry, Marines!