Today is all about plot and character development. The task today was to pick up one of your favourite books and map out what happens chapter by chapter. Then go through and mark how character develop. This is what I came up with (It’s Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight, so don’t read the picture if you plan to read the book in the future, because spoilers.):

PLot Line 001

I have to say, personally, I don’t get planning. About the most I naturally do is write a page of plot, a couple of pages about important character stuff (mainly names for all my characters) and then I start writing the book. I am what is known as a pantser, and I am just fine with that. It means that most of my effort goes into the revision and editing stage where I go through and tighten up everything.

But plotting? Not for me. I have tried plotting, and planning out the sorty, the arcs, the chararacter development before writing and it went terribly. Worst of all? I didn’t enjoy it. I actively hated it. So I stopped trying to do it that way. Because if there is one thing I have learnt in my short time as a writer, it’s that there is no right to write a novel. There is only the right way for you. There are some writers out there who love plotting, some of my close friends included. But I am not in that group.

For me? It’s pantsing. I like being surprised by my novel and seeing how it develops as I write it, because often thing comes upin the middle of writing that I would never had thought of if I had planned everything out. Maybe it’s because I’m a roleplayer, and roleplayers have to go with the flow and makes things up on the spot, in the heat of the moment when we play our characters. But either way, I write first, and then edit everything together afterwards, and that’s what works for me.