Side-Hustling By the Seat of My Pants

In the great “debate” about pantsing it versus plotting things out, Rune Skelley is solidly in the plotters’ camp. That doesn’t mean we never do anything spontaneous, though. In fact, sometimes we (or, Kent at least) even write stuff without plotting it out first at all.

Only on side projects, of course. His current extracurricular fiction exercise is a short story called Pearl, which he’s very much making up from scratch. The premise and the main character popped into his head, and he just started writing. And he is very much enjoying getting to see where it’s going.

The problem is, it doesn’t know yet where it’s going. Not really. It’s going to meander a bit before it reaches the destination. Maybe that shouldn’t be called a problem. It’s just a different process. And for a short story, Kent is willing to roll with it. He might end up needing to write a novella’s worth to get that short story out of it, but journeys are said to be what life is all about. And if the seat of his pants gets a little threadbare by the time he’s done, he’ll just learn to appreciate the breeze.

With larger-scale projects, that attitude would threaten our ability to finish what we start. It’s work enough to tell the story well when you already know how it goes. Needing to invent it on the fly, keep it on track, and make the sentences sparkle is too many plates to keep spinning, especially when there are multiple POV characters and a detailed world that needs building. Add to that the need (in our case) to coordinate the efforts of two co-authors, and it’s clear that an assiduous planning regime is the only survivable option.

A writing partner is someone who always has your back, even if sometimes their own butt might not be covered.