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Oct 2020

I used to do a lot more worldbuilding than I do now, too. I think that kind of in-depth fictional culture designing is fun, but it is so time consuming. Some people are also good at designing worlds and settings, but not good at structuring coherent narratives, and vice-versa. I totally agree that it is tricky to translate a well thought-out world into a story easy to digest as a reader.

I am glad you are getting into story writing! I hope my post was not too confusing. I did not mean to use a bunch of loaded terms that require background information

Oh yeah, that is definitely the approach to take I think. Especially if you are writing character-centric dramas or romances, letting the characters' personality and motivations drive the plot instead of the writer is essential.

Rough outlines are usually helpful, but winging it lets you write the kinds of twists and turns you would personally enjoy reading yourself. I agree

That is interesting. So you probably write out bullet points for arcs and then the smaller arcs sort of fit together into a larger narrative? That is an approach I have not tried yet, but I have seen it done successfully in lots of media (comic serials and shonen manga come to mind).

For the story I am posting now, it is exactly the same situation you described. I am editing chapters a bit, but everything was written two years ago.

Slice of life (or just a modern, realistic setting )certainly seems like the easiest way to make a good pantsed story. Maybe it is because the worldbuilding is done for us already? But even with the pansting approach, I think we can carefully construct a narrative that does not just feel like a series of "and then" statements. I am curious how many other authors are pantsing stories they publish here. :slight_smile:

No need to apologize for pantsing stories! It is just as valid of an approach, no judgement here. :slight_smile:

I also agree that keeping notes is important, otherwise I would probably forget stuff later.

I like to see it as I made lists for point A, B and C, but space between them I just write however I feel. Imagine a piece of paper with three points drawn on it marked A,B and C and were told to connect them with a single line: most people would just draw straight lines connecting them, in terms of a story that would be a very short, cut and dry 100% plot focused story with nothing else, I like to have some fun in how I draw the line between the points.
Side-stories within the major one evolve and develop as the story progresses, but because you're always on track to that next point, you never hit a spot in the story where it seems dry, drawn-out or boring. You do have to be warry of going off on tangents though.

Less is more is so true. The whole design of this site actually speaks to that. I find that some people judge stories by word count elsewhere, so I appreciate that Tapas designed the platform to promote an episodic, brief, almost screenplay-like feel with the writing. It definitely meshes with my style. Sometimes I will have long chapters or chunks of writing, but I try to avoid long winded tangents (I had to restructure something to publish it in my story for the character count, but I doubt anyone will notice).

Overall, I like the site, but it is kind of hard to find the sorts of things you would be interested in reading. I wish there were more distinct tags, for example. My story is a crime thriller in addition to other genres, but there is no category for that sort of writing.

Yeah, I also like thinking "what would the character do in this situation?" rather than just deciding everything immediately. Outlining is very helpful, I agree.

That "what if i did this instead?" is such a good question, honestly! I went back to an old draft that I wrote years ago and played around with an alternate (more logical to my older self) idea of how things may have worked out. I don't think I could naturally pants an entire story like you though, that is impressive.

Ah, that is true. If only there was a way to architecturally design things that grow themselves, haha. It almost feels like two different parts of the mind battling internally.

Plotting like that is certainly efficient. I always wonder about writer's block, because I have not experienced it. Usually it is everything else in life that gets in the way. time just gets eaten up sometimes. Good to know that plotting prevents it, if I ever run into a stalemate with my own imagination

Other times I outline the whole story, but I change the outline often to make the story flow better.

Ah, so the main quest and sub-quest sort of design. That is a good one and I think it works especially well for interactive stories (D&D, video games, etc). I mean, if you didn't have a main questline, it would be sort of chaotic, but your side quests probably make it more exciting and diverse.

More than writer's block as in "I don't know what to write here or how to write this scene" is more like the opposite. My mind gets overwhelmed by all that is left to write and how do I connect it and oh my god I really want to get to this climax point but I need to create a good build-up for it but X and also Y and Z and... I end up not writing anything.

It's more or less like procrastination is many times caused because we get overwhelmed by the size of the task we have ahead. Plotting is my way of taking that huge task and spliting it into smaller, more manageable chunks that don't scare me as much

PLOT

I need the structure in case I can't think of anything. For example I had plotted out the first half of Demon House extensively, and had an idea of all the major episode arcs. I also plotted out the ending extensively. But I had room in the second half for more mini arcs before the endgame would start. I just thought, "ah, I'll think of something when I get there."

Fast-forward almost 4 years and I only came up with one mini-arc TwT
So I was like "welp" and just went into the endgame after that.

That makes sense. It is much easier to do something in smaller pieces, especially if it is overwhelming.