KYRA HALLAND
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Books
    • Daughter of the Wildings >
      • The World of Daughter of the Wildings
      • Map of The Wildings
      • Map of Bitterbush Springs
      • Beneath the Canyons Sample
    • Defenders of the Wildings >
      • Mages' Home Sample
    • Mage of Storm and Sea
    • Tales of Tehovir >
      • Chosen of Azara >
        • Cast of Characters-Chosen of Azara
        • Reviews of Chosen of Azara
        • Chosen of Azara Sample
      • Source-Breaker >
        • Source-Breaker Sample
      • Heir of Tanaris >
        • Heir of Tanaris Sample
      • Map of Tehovir
    • Urdaisunia >
      • Cast of Characters-Urdaisunia
      • Map-Urdaisunia
      • Reviews of Urdaisunia
      • Urdaisunia Sample
    • The Lost Book of Anggird >
      • Reviews of The Lost Book of Anggird
      • Lost Book of Anggird Sample
    • Sarya's Song >
      • Sarya's Song Sample
      • Sarya's Song Glossary
    • Short Fiction
    • Boxed Sets
    • Still to come...
  • Read Right Here!
    • Home on the Range
  • About
    • FAQs
    • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Email Signup

Kyra Halland

Strong Women, Honorable Men, Worlds of Magic

Pantsing, Plotting, and the Daughter of the Wildings

3/3/2013

2 Comments

 
As mentioned earlier, I am within shouting distance--probably a few thousand words--of finishing the first draft of Book 2 of the Daughter of the Wildings series. (No title yet; I'm not very good at coming up with titles.) Although I love the characters, the setting, and the whole idea behind this series, this book, like the first, has been kind of a terrifying adventure to write.

There are generally considered to be two basic approaches to writing fiction. "Pantsing" (short for writing by the seat of your pants) means you sit down with maybe just a basic idea and make it up out of nothing as you go along. "Plotting" (also known as "planning") means that you've planned the story out ahead of time, you have an outline of the events of the story and all the who, how, when, what, where, and why figured out before you start writing. This isn't an either/or thing; it's more like a spectrum, ranging from people who say they sit down with nothing more than a title or a character's name in mind and start writing from there, to people who have planned exactly what will happen for every 100 words of story. Most writers will fall somewhere between these two extremes. Which way is better? Neither. It just depends on how the writer's mind works, their comfort level with not knowing ahead of time what they're going to write, and, to an extent, what they're writing. For example, an intricate mystery novel probably requires more advance planning than does a stream-of-consciousness literary novel.

I'm more comfortable plotting. Not in extreme detail, but I do like to have a good idea of what comes next and where things are headed when I sit down to write. I'll start a novel with the beginning, the ending (or at least a general idea of how I want things to turn out) and most of the major and minor events of the story written down on notecards or as bullet points in a document. Things will change from time to time as the story details develop, but generally I know where I am and where I'm going.

But writing the first two books of the Daughter of the Wildings series has been completely different from this. All I had to start them was a basic idea of the first scene or two, and the basic premise. With the first book, I only had a vague idea of what was going to happen next through most of the story and I really had no idea how it was going to end, and the ending completely surprised me--for one thing, Beneath the Canyons was supposed to be a stand-alone novel, but the ending opened up more questions than it answered. Ta-da, instant birth of a series.

Once I had an idea of the general story arc of the whole series, I knew pretty much where Book 2 had to end up. And I had the first scene in mind (which now turns out to be the second scene). Again, I found myself stumbling from scene to scene not knowing what was going to happen next, and finding some surprises along the way. I wrote about some of them in an earlier post--Silas looking at some events and drawing a different and much more logical conclusion than the one I had planned for him to come to, and then the day when he pretended he had no idea what he was doing and then decided he did. (This was when the book almost got titled "Silas meets one of the awful fates from the 'apologizing to your characters for the horrible things you've done to them' thread on the National Novel Writing Month Boards".) Then the biggest surprise of all--when it came time to confront the bad guy, it turned out the bad guy wasn't who I thought it was!

So, a mix of panic with, "Hey, this could be really cool," and I decided it would work. And it does, and the ending is falling into place perfectly now. I don't understand why the books in this series are turning out to be so hard to plan. I don't like that mind-numbing, stomach-wrenching feeling of writing the last paragraph of what I know, and then trying to think of what comes next. But now that I look back over the story, I can see where, in the process of desperately trying to make things up as I lurched from paragraph to paragraph, I've done some really interesting things with the world, the characters' situations, and some plot threads from the first book. So, hooray.

This is why my plan is to have all five books (at least, I think it's going to be five) written before I start revising and releasing them. Since I don't know what's going to happen in the future of the storyline, I need to be able to go back and make adjustments to earlier books to match. But when it's done, you'll be able to start reading the series knowing that it's done and that the story isn't going to go off the rails right in the middle. The going off the rails will have already happened and been dealt with.

On another note, if you like the idea of a mixed-genre western with an unlikely couple as the main characters, I strongly recommend reading Camille Laguire's Mick and Casey stories: Have Gun, Will Play (novel), The Curse of Scattershale Gulch (novelette), and two of the stories in Waiter, There's a Clue in My Soup. Plus she's going to be posting a new Mick and Casey serial in March!
2 Comments
Camille LaGuire link
3/3/2013 02:21:10 pm

Hey, thanks for the mention!

As for your pantsing and plotting: I find that every story wants to do something different. Although, as you experienced, sometimes a whole series wants to be done the same way. (Usually it's difficult and difficulter.)

Reply
Kyra
3/3/2013 02:29:43 pm

You're welcome :)

It's exciting in a terrifying kind of way, or maybe terrifying in an exciting way. But whatever, these stories have been after me for a long time to get written, and they're going to get written whatever it takes.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I am Kyra Halland, author of tales of fantasy, heroism, and romance.
    Welcome to my worlds.

    Follow me on BookBub
    Follow me on Goodreads

    Sign up for my email list

    RSS Feed

    My Books

    Daughter of the Wildings
    Beneath the Canyons
    Bad Hunting
    The Rancher's Daughter
    To the Gap
    City of Mages Cover
    For the Wildings cover
    Daughter of the Wildings Books 1-3
    Daughter of the Wildings: The Complete Series
    Defenders of the Wildings
    Mages' Home
    Mages' Exile
    Mages' Uprising
    Defenders of the Wildings: The Complete Series
    Mage of Storm and Sea
    Tales of Tehovir
    Chosen of Azara
    Source-Breaker
    The Warrior and the Holy Man
    The Brilliant Career of Sajur Golu
    Tales of the Source-Breakers
    More Books
    Urdaisunia
    Love and Magic Box Set
    A Cure for Nel and Other Stories
    Mistress of the Mirror and Other Stories
    Click on the covers for more information

    Categories

    All
    Book Extras
    Creative Inspiration
    Fantasy
    Geekery
    Guest Features
    Musings
    News
    Reading Corner
    Romance
    Saryas Song
    Self Publishing
    Sneak Peeks
    Tales Of Tehovir
    The Lost Book Of Anggird
    Urdaisunia
    Weird Western
    Wildings Saga
    Writing Life

    Archives

    January 2023
    October 2022
    September 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    February 2021
    October 2020
    July 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Kyra Halland: Welcome to My Worlds is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

    Other links on this site may also lead to products for which the owner may receive compensation.

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
Kyra Halland: Welcome to My Worlds is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Other links on this site may also lead to products for which the owner may receive compensation.

This site uses StatCounter cookies to track page views, link clicks, and other information useful for running this site. To decline StatCounter cookies, click here.

Privacy Policy   FAQs

Proudly powered by Weebly
Photo used under Creative Commons from Brett Jordan
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Books
    • Daughter of the Wildings >
      • The World of Daughter of the Wildings
      • Map of The Wildings
      • Map of Bitterbush Springs
      • Beneath the Canyons Sample
    • Defenders of the Wildings >
      • Mages' Home Sample
    • Mage of Storm and Sea
    • Tales of Tehovir >
      • Chosen of Azara >
        • Cast of Characters-Chosen of Azara
        • Reviews of Chosen of Azara
        • Chosen of Azara Sample
      • Source-Breaker >
        • Source-Breaker Sample
      • Heir of Tanaris >
        • Heir of Tanaris Sample
      • Map of Tehovir
    • Urdaisunia >
      • Cast of Characters-Urdaisunia
      • Map-Urdaisunia
      • Reviews of Urdaisunia
      • Urdaisunia Sample
    • The Lost Book of Anggird >
      • Reviews of The Lost Book of Anggird
      • Lost Book of Anggird Sample
    • Sarya's Song >
      • Sarya's Song Sample
      • Sarya's Song Glossary
    • Short Fiction
    • Boxed Sets
    • Still to come...
  • Read Right Here!
    • Home on the Range
  • About
    • FAQs
    • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Email Signup