Plot vs. Story

Absolutely. And every time this happens I go back to the main character's flaw. I see the whole story through that lens and it reshapes itself like clay.

The flaw will lead to the moral choice and the moral choice leads to the character's change/growth. The thing they've spent the story avoiding has confronted them and they must deal with it. They may win or lose, but the time has come. 

So no matter what the plot/genre/idea, go back to the flaw and ripple through. If the MC isn't fighting against his/her flaw, then the plot has less meaning than if they are. 

All my opinion, of course. 😉

Hi Bootz,

I enjoy pantsing, but when I need to get moving on a story, I outline. 

Progress feels forced:

1) Check your MC because they (or you) may need an adjustment. As a pantser, you have a character in mind and a goal, and (hopefully) have dropped at least one obstacle between them and the goal. Your character has attributes, personality traits, morals, ethics, and an internal flaw that make them attractive to the reader. If overcoming the obstacle runs counter to the core values of the character (let's say they have to kill, but killing would break them), then, in the author's mind, your mind, you hit a snag and can't figure out how to get past it. It frustrates you because doing this thing ruins a perfectly good character that you're in love with.

You are faced with a choice between two approaches, change the character or change yourself. If you change the character into someone who can do the deed to get past the obstacle, they will get past it, and you can write on. As long as the change works with their internal flaw, creating awareness of their flaw or intensifying their angst over that flaw, then the change will help the story as you write on. This will aid the roundness of the character and make them a better read. But make sure it works in this way, because just letting them disregard their core values makes for a flat character and tears the heart out of the story. (Note: This can be an incredibly hard psychological hump to get over and may be the cause of your "forced" feeling.)

If forcing the character to do the deed when they (and you) want something else to happen, then you should check a mirror. It could be that you've run up against a personal foible that needs addressing. Getting past psychological problems over moral decisions that you have to make for a character is part of "killing your darlings." Your character needs to grow or they will not reach the goal - they can't remain who they are at the beginning. As much as you'd like to, you can't give the goal to them on a silver platter. Growth hurts. Everyone with any emotional intelligence has been through the agony of growth, and that is where the compelling part of any story lies. So, it could be you. If it is, get through it and write on. Hate me later.

2) The idea may be too big for a short story. So you may be attempting to shoe-horn a novel into a short story. For a quick evaluation, start at the end and work your way backward to the beginning. Write each step down as you go, scene by scene. This method helps me out of a bad pantsing situation by allowing me to easily cut dead ends that I've started down and have had to abandon (these would otherwise cause plot holes). It also helps me see a way forward from where I've become stuck. The major advantage, though, is that it can quickly allow me to identify the number of words I will need to complete a story. If I'm at 5k words and learn that I've only told half the story, I'll forge on. If I've only told a quarter of the story (and everything else is in order), then I will put it away because it's a novel.

Once dead ends have been cut, the proper avenue forward can be revealed. I did this with my first Finalist story and found a couple of superfluous side streets to cut. It streamlined the story and I was able to finish pretty easily. (It was a last minute entry. Whew!)

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Plotting vs. Outlining

Plotting always felt too rigid to me, so I pantsed while looking for another method. I had been outlining research papers and speeches since grade school, so I started outlining when I got stuck. Then I found Take Off Your Pants! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing by Libbie Hawker. In my opinion, outlining allows freedom that plotting stifles. Plotting demands that the inciting incident be here, right here! on this page which is located at exactly this fraction of the total manuscript, and it gets me anxious about numbers and structure. I believe that it is an analytical vs creative brain problem. 

Structuring, except in the broadest terms, kicks me out of the "zone." So, I picked up Hawker's book and read about her method of outlining. It is much more flexible than any other method I've read about. MC, Antagonist, Ally, Character Flaw, External Goal, Inciting Event, and Theme are there in the outline, but where they are placed (and sometimes if) relies on your ideas for the story and not a rigid structure. She created it to write her novels faster, but it is easily adaptable to short stories.

I think of outlining in terms of how I learned it in school; it is good for anything that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It can be extremely detailed, and I mean down to specific sentences that occur to me before I get there in the manuscript. It can also be vague, allowing my head free room to create.

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One exercise to overcome being stuck:

Cover your monitor screen and write about anything having to do with your story. Keep writing without looking and without correcting or editing. Do a character study. Write details about the setting and how they relate to a specific scene. Write dialog without quotations or who it is attributed to. Do some world building to see how decisions in the story are affected by physical, cultural, economic, and political reality.

And...

Have fun

I'll keep my advice short - write two versions. one where the storyline rules (plotted), one where the character rules (pantsed essentially). See which gives you a better story. sometimes dropping the 'rules' we have given ourselves (this must be plotted, for example) can allow us to find other options.

You don't even have to do the whole story. Just one section will give you an idea of how its working. And also bare in mind - some people are just plotters, some are just pantsers. Maybe you fall in one of those camps. But more likely its just you're so used to writing one way, thats what feels 'right' those are the writing muscles you've exercised and made buff. So allow plotting to feel a little awkward

Posted by: @bootzenkatzen

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Do you ever feel like you have a really great idea for a story, you've got the plot mostly figured out, but when it comes to actually writing it, it feels forced? Like, I read through it, and it doesn't feel like my writing anymore.  I feel like I'm trying to railroad my characters in a certain direction or something. 

This is a big problem in my stories. I know what I want to happen, but when I write it, things fall flat. For me, I think the problem is I'm not spending as much time developing my characters - exploring WHY they want to make these choices. Showing their emotional reactions to the things that happened. For some reason, it always takes me a couple drafts to figure this out.