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#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 16 Nbr 14 — Are you a pantser or a plotter? Have you always been this way? What brought you here?

A few answers here.

I write stories by starting with a character and a situation they must deal with, along with a setting and situation that will end the story. I may jot down some notes or presumptions. Rarely, I write a treatment. This is regardless of the size of the work. I consider this vaguely like an outline. I then write the story with whatever occurs to me as I write the story, aiming for the ending. I explain what it is like to write when asked that I channel the characters.

Pantser? Plotter?

I don't remember the process of writing the first 25k novella, but I think I had something like a rudimentary outline. I also was intensely in tune with the POV MC. It was probably mostly written seat of the pants, but I did finish it in the two weeks afforded me by the winter break.

I wrote the next story after spending money to buy books on how to write a novel. This induced me to write a detailed 20 chapter outline, and I proceeded to write a novel based on that. The characters kept taking over, until one secondary character with asian features and a white streak in her red hair insisted on telling me how she got the white streak. I wrote it all down. It became a treatment. I switched to writing that novel. 200k words later, I sold it.

I never completed the outlined novel. I find that if I write too much detail down, I've drained the interesting experiential part of the story out of me. I lose interest.

Panster?

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#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 16 Nbr 13 — What’s your favourite trope? Do you lean into it for your work or shy away?

I've little interest in tropes, which I see as cliched bits of plot found frequently enough that a critic (read: not an author) decided could be well summarized in a few words. In my opinion, every plot has been written before, as has every character archetype.

As authors, we should feel no shame, no angst, no fear borrowing ideas wherever we find them. We need combine our discovered treasures with whatever message and character moves us, and write. The self-harm of measuring against tropes, other authors, or critics needs be discarded for what it is: procrastination and insecurity. It stifles us from writing, it prevents us from realizing our characters' dreams when that's what we truly desire.

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#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 16 Nbr 11 — Do you write or imagine a backstory for your secondary characters, or do they pop into existence as required?

They pop into existence, then assert something germane to the plot, then I consider how that happened and why. Sometimes that generates a backstory, which often elevates the SC to recurring through the story. If I'm interested, the reader should be. When I ask myself why they're recurring, they sometimes end up modifying the plot going forward. Often this elevates them from recurring to their own side story as a MC.

That's my character generation pattern in a nutshell.

Though the co-MC in Reluctant Moon isn't a secondary character, I had a bridge sentence in the narrative that takes the reader from A to C without a few weeks B in-between. The sentence takes the reader from the moment it is apparent the MC pair are going to win their scholarships to him bringing her the news that both won scholarships. It, however, implied backstory for main series antagonist. Specifically, that the woman who runs the school, incidentally the ruler of the nation, is attracted the the co-MC and has secrets that need narratively to be shared. So, 30,000 words later, I'm still writing a backstory for that one sentence bridge with the main series antagonist as the major very affectionate SC. It might be a standalone novella, or it might get knitted into the main narrative.

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