?Calling All Pantsers! How DO You Actually Finish a Novel?

[RepresentingCaution]

Procreate, and then you get to take several years of hiatus while you wait for AI to develop well enough to finish your story for you.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Procreate, and then you get to take several years of hiatus while you wait for AI to develop well enough to finish your story for you.

I think you and @SailusGebel are the most consistent forum members. If it's him I expect a "bruh" is incoming. If it is you I expect something about procreation. Sure you both throw curveballs, but you are usually in a strike zone.

 

[Jet]

I have only one story, I'm working on. Sure, I had several ideas for other stories, but I never acted upon them. As such, I have no other options than to finish my story. So it's pretty simple at that. Also, I don't think I'd ever start working on another story until my current one is finished in at least manuscript format. Moreover, it was back in 2003 when I wrote the first story that was set in the same universe, my current one is set. When you've been working on it for as many decades, it's easier to grasp the the nuances as well.

 

[whitewoman]

I have a black belt in Partial Arts

lmfaooo nice one

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I think you and @SailusGebel are the most consistent forum members. If it's him I expect a "bruh" is incoming. If it is you I expect something about procreation. Sure you both throw curveballs, but you are usually in a strike zone.

Wha?

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Wha?

 

[Kuropon]

I'll tell you when I finish one.

 

[J_Chemist]

So I finished my first book to my now multi-series/novel story by finding a cut off point, and the puzzle didn't fall into place until around chapter 50 of 75.

I started with an idea of a story and also a starting point. Then, I started to write and let my imagination take me away for an entire 20k prologue that set up the foundation of a long ass endeavor that's turned into a multi-year journey that I both love and hate. As I went along by the seat of my loose asf pants, I started throwing in details that I thought were cool and thought I could potentially utilize as plot points later to help my character.

Overall, I wanted a story that I would enjoy both writing and reading, so I threw typical BS tropes/rules out the window and followed the "I do what I want" rule. However, I needed to keep myself from getting Feature Creep and forced myself to stay in a box. Thus, I knew going into the story I needed at least four things:

• Companions who were disposable each with the potential to survive, grow into potential MCs, or become emotional fodder for the Core MC.
• Stuff to challenge my character and/or kill him if I decided to replace him.
• A bad guy/guys that were initially very threatening that could be comfortably power scaled and slaughtered later on.
• An MC who is not a typical pansy hero who isn't afraid to get his hands filthy that would spit in the face of a real "Hero".

As the story went along, I threw him into a place where I knew he would "develop", figured out what I wanted to be developed, and then made a plan to get him going. I made up an enemy for him to face and one that would be challenging enough to kick him in the dick to get him right, then gave him a bunch of companions that were both competent and absolutely useless depending on the situation. More were useless than competent in order to force my MC to become better than them to actually kill the enemy, otherwise he'd get shwacked.

I came across a few trouble points along the way where my MC didn't have enough power. So I beat him up, then threw in another "better" character/companion that would further develop them, got him smacked around a little more, made him overcome the problem, and then wham-bam killed the companion in order to keep him down the "anti-hero" path. Because companions who are a live aren't as emotionally damaging as companions who you've bonded with that are now dead.

In the middle, I began working on having my MC break through the "tipping point" where he would go from needing help to becoming a menace to society. So, I power scaled some more, made him go through a few stressors and training points, once more cooked him and threw his face against the wall, then paired him with the cannon fodder to show that he was now outscaling them. This was when Chapter 50 hit.

At around Chapter 50, I realized that this Arc could go on forever. I needed to eventually wrap things up and I would need to do so comfortably. So, I reread the first half of my story, made a crap ton of edits and changes in order to retroactively adjust things to better fit the script that now made a lot more sense, and then the forward route became more clear. However, I once more made recognition of needing to hid some goals:

• The ending couldn't be "happy", otherwise my MC would go Hero. I needed him to be sad and angry. Thus, I needed to ensure I killed off enough of the Companions to keep him an angry boi.
• The ending needed enough of a significant climax that would ensure my MC had nothing else to be done in the region he was at. I.e; it had to be big enough to warrant him leaving.
• Whatever the ending was, it needed to have enough of a bang to showcase that the MC is much stronger, much more capable, and much more intelligent at battling the enemy than he was before.
• The enemy needed to remain a problem through the entire course of the climax until the very last page.

With those in mind, I put the entire cast into a chokehold. Everyone became disposable and everyone was now in the line of fire. No holds barred, and I retuned my brain to remind myself of that several times. If a character would provide emotional baggage that would enable growth for my MC; they were in the crosshairs. I generated a problem that would stress all of them, then threw everybody to the wolves. I wrote a build-up that put everything I had developed up to that point on the line, threw my MC at a mini-boss, and then let the dice do the work. While I didn't actually use dice, I went with the flow and used real life experience of certain situations and also real life historical evidence of similar experiences to develop "what would actually happen?" endings.

In the end, I slaughtered about 95% of the cast, humbled and scarred my MC, turned him into a tactical monster with magic and swords, sent him on a murdering spree, and then dropped the curtain while he was still malding.

Turned out better than I could ever have expected, and now I'm onto book 2.

EDIT: With book 2, I'm generally doing the same thing. I have some plot points I know I want to include and I have a general compass pointing me in the direction of an ending, but everything in between is being schemed up every morning when I decide to write the next chapter.

 

[zephyrzane]

I'm only a half-pantser. Once I get into a story and feel it starting to become too complicated, that's when I begin to write a very general timeline of what needs to come next. Not a whole detailed timeline, but a general timeline of story beats for the next 2-4 chapters. I don't like to get too far ahead, because then I feel like I've spoiled the story for myself.

 

[Slays_The_Crusader]

Pantsers, assemble! This post is for you fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants novelists who shun detailed outlines and dive right into writing. We all know the freedom and exhilaration that can come from spontaneous storytelling. But at some point, that blazing momentum starts to fizzle. The dreaded sagging middle rears its head. Your plot holes mock you. And you're left wondering - how DO you finish a whole dang novel this way?

For those who have successfully pants-ed a book from start to finish, please share your wisdom! How do you keep up the pace and stay focused without an outline? Do you pants the beginning then switch gears? What strategies help you fill plot holes and tighten everything up in revisions? For fellow struggling pantsers, what obstacles tend to derail your progress? What tips and tricks have helped you complete a book, or come close?

Let's collectively pool our knowledge so more seat-of-the-pants writers can experience the satisfaction of typing "The End" instead of the sadly unfinished manuscripts gathering virtual dust in our documents. Please share your hard-won advice for finally finishing a pantsed novel, if you actually finish any...?

Honestly, I tend to already have somewhat of an ending thought out and usually panst my way through the middle of the story.
But if I haven't thought of an ending, I'll tend to just go for whatever is either the most emotionally resonant, or whatever makes the most logical sense. A predictable ending is always better than an out of nowhere bullshit twist ending.

 

[Deleted member 58005]

That's why I have my co-author. He's often the type who loves thinking more than writing, much so that 90% of the suggestions for the story he gives me are only stuffs that will happen multiple arcs/seasons in.

I appreciate his ideas, but they're usually flawed in terms of storytelling and character development blah blah blah. So I do my part and polish it to how much I can.

That being said, I often derail from the plots he gives to me because I feel they aren't good. He understands it, so he does his best to improve as well. If we put our minds together, we often come up with something I'd count as readable.

Also, I rarely ever forget plot points of my story. My co-author has a habit of questioning me on lore about the world and its characters, and I always have an answer for it. Every word I type stays inside my head for long periods at a time.

 

[Slays_The_Crusader]

That's why I have my co-author. He's often the type who loves thinking more than writing, much so that 90% of the suggestions for the story he gives me are only stuffs that will happen multiple arcs/seasons in.

I appreciate his ideas, but they're usually flawed in terms of storytelling and character development blah blah blah. So I do my part and polish it to how much I can.

That being said, I often derail from the plots he gives to me because I feel they aren't good. He understands it, so he does his best to improve as well. If we put our minds together, we often come up with something I'd count as readable.

Also, I rarely ever forget plot points of my story. My co-author has a habit of questioning me on lore about the world and its characters, and I always have an answer for it. Every word I type stays inside my head for long periods at a time.

Ah nice, that honestly sounds like a pretty fun way to right.

 

[Rhaps]

I don't think I need to explain much.

A start and an end, with key points in the story. Then I can do whatever I want.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

4th goalpost: Someone close to Bob dies.


Who dies? Who has become the most important person to Bob, they're going to die.
Climatic fight? I want Bob to be bloodied, battered and half dead by the end. I can worry about the details when I get there.


Goalpost: She needs to lose the snail.
Goalpost: She needs to find someone who can get her to open up.

She is travelling around the edge of a kingdom, close to a jungle full of monsters and savages.
Plot: Soldiers confiscated her snail to help move supplies to an army that is working at pacifying the jungle.

One of the people Cindy interacted with near the start interests me. As she's following the soldiers trying to think of how she can get her snail back, she meets up with the person who wants to.... get their family member back after they were conscripted.
Goalpost: Find snail and family member.

Ruthless!!!
My story is NOTHING like yours. So cruel!

 

[beast_regards]

View attachment 21143
A start and an end, with key points in the story. Then I can do whatever I want.

So you have chosen ... anime!
It has a school in it like every anime ever created. Except for Berzerk, no one rips that one off anymore. And a sister, which is mandatory. And a femboy, which is also mandatory. I've seen one with Satan too. There were several in all of them, and he was femboy in all versions, but only one from five anime was yaoi shockingly enough.

 

[AliceShiki]

I only wrote one story so far, but the way I did it, was simply to have an idea of my ending from the start.

I barely planned anything from the start to finish of the story, but I knew how I wanted to end it, so I could write the story spontanously while also steadily leading it towards its ending from the beginning.

That's how I go about it at least. As long as I have an idea of the start and the finish, the middle can make itself~

 

[AuthorsDread]

I only wrote one story so far, but the way I did it, was simply to have an idea of my ending from the start.

I barely planned anything from the start to finish of the story, but I knew how I wanted to end it, so I could write the story spontanously while also steadily leading it towards its ending from the beginning.

That's how I go about it at least. As long as I have an idea of the start and the finish, the middle can make itself~

I'm gonna try this.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

So, I had to understand what a pantser is, first. I mean, no outlining means not thinking about the plot or just not actually plotting?
Because I don't usually plot. While I'm on the way, I sometimes name upcoming chapters, knowing where I'm going from there. I write down names of characters to remember them, dates I come up with, so I don't get them jumbled up, or make a note of certain lore related things.
For example, in my current novel, there's beings called the Numbered, every one has a number, I have a table that has all the ones that are planned to show up, with their names and some important details.
But other than that, I don't even know what's going to happen after the end of volume one, even though the real story starts at the beginning of volume two.
Good were the days in which I sat down and wrote a novel of 96.000 words in 7 days. Sometimes I miss that youthful spirit, other times I think I still got it in me.
Anyway, I always write with the endgoal in mind. I've coined my own proverb on this: "If you don't know how your story is going to end, you don't need to know how it starts."
I don't mean the ending can't be changed along the way either, but there needs to be a certain goal to be reached there, so you can aim for it, while ticking off the boxes of things you imagined to be in the story along the way.
Just don't write without any thoughts of an outcome, because that will have your story drifting around, even while in the middle of the plot. Coming up with an end on the whim is fine when it's just a change of direction and fits earlier details, but having none to begin with will rob you of the chance of hinting at things from the beginning and then it might feel like an ass-pull later
I have finished more than a handful of fanfiction and four novels at this point and I rarely plot anything at all. So there's that for credibility... or something.

What strategies help you fill plot holes and tighten everything up in revisions?

Oh yeah, I don't do plot holes, btw. I'm like an undertaker - if I see a hole, I stuff a corpse in it to fill it.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

@ACertainPassingUser Bruh.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

@ACertainPassingUser Bruh.

Shit, browser broke and crashed. It does that before force close, that's about it.