I don't really recognize the terms 'planner' or 'pantser', and not only because the latter is such as ugly word. I don't think I'm either, not really; I live in the shadows between.
I usually start with a rough idea where I'm going. I try to plan, increasingly so as I age. There are usually key notes down in my mind, if not on the page, before I start. But it usually comes down to flying blind. By the time I reach the climax, all attempts at order and discipline have been jettisoned.
So it goes with Breathing Fire. Here I am, at the final big action scene, and I have no clear idea of what I'm doing. If I were planning I'd never have had the magician falling off her horse. And I'd never have had the POV police officer abandoning the hunt for the good guys and coming to lend her a hand. I mean, what's the point of that? It just gives me another pocket of people to explore; another thread to feed into the tapestry; an unnecessary complication.
My first three published books were first-person point of view and stuck pretty rigidly to linear storytelling. It had to; everything followed from a single person's adventures and perspective, and unless you're willing to play with the nature of time, that's how it's gonna go.
Third person, as all my other novels have been, allows for many more complications. It's like being a director – or perhaps an editor – on a movie; you select whose eyes you're looking through, whose head you're in, in every scene. It has big advantages – you have a richer viewpoint and can witness things 'in the round', so to speak – but it's hella more complicated.
I find myself, devoid of a shooting script, going round in circles. Start with one character, cycle to the next, and the next, and the next… Lots of detail, lots of tiny snippets of action, but little actual progress. It means I write thousands of words to cover maybe five minutes' progress. And, most of the time, I'm not sure whether I'm adding any value or if the putative reader is simply screaming for me to get on with it.
When it works I think it adds tension and ensnares the cast in a way that first-person never quite does. The reader sees 360 degrees and doesn't need boring things like 'explanations' because they've been in all those heads. Keep things pulled taught at all times; keep spiralling inwards before we all explode under pressure.
Still I can't help doubting myself. What if all this is destined to be streamlined? What if there's a better way? What if retaining mystery is better than showing every single move?
If I were a planner I'd have every single move sketched out; I'd know exactly what people were thinking and where I'd be aiming to have them meet up. But I'm not – not in this, the final analysis, at least. Which is why I can, at least, enjoy the frisson of surprise. I wasn't expecting the magician to fall off her horse, nor for the policewoman to help. I have no idea how they'll get on.
Circles and spirals; all slowly drawing in tighter into this one light-industrial building, alarms blaring and fires burning outside.
Still not got a clue what's going to happen when we get there, though.
And I'm running out of time.
'Circles and Spirals' is something that obviously resonates in me; I originally used the title for this poem, written way way back in a different life
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