CJC’s Author Chat #3

Are you a plotter or pantser? What is your writing process like?

Ginger Lee –

I’m the biggest pantser ever! Lol

Mariah Thayer –

I used to be a pantser, and I’d get 35k into a manuscript and get blocked. The first time I tried plotting, it took me 2 months to write my first draft of an 83k manuscript. Now I plot. My writing process starts one of two ways. I start with an image in my head of a universe, a world, a setting, and a problem. Then I ask myself what kind of person would tackle this problem. After developing the characters, I write the outline, drop it into a document, and start writing. Or, I have a wild and wacky, insanely vivid dream and write it down, then flesh out an outline based on that.

Stephanie Dillon –

I just sit down and write. I do makes notes as I go. I do actually have ideas for my next 6 books already 

Shannon Heighton Hicks –

Pantser. My squirrel brain could never but I do outline.

Vic Leigh –

I try to be a plotter, but end up pansting away! I go so far off the plan, my brain just works that way.

Mia Monroe –

Somewhere in between these days. I used to be full panster but the switch to PNR required more plotting and making sure ends got tied up. My writing process is just butt in chair, write the words that are needed for that day and hand them over to my alpha reader.

Laura Mowery –

I’m a hybrid. I call myself a planster lol. I start with a light outline in my head with a beginning, middle, and end so I don’t get distracted by plot bunnies. After that, I go where the story takes me and second guess it a million times, self editing the ever living sh** out of it, and then send it to my betas. From start to publish it takes me an average of six months.

K.A. Finn –

100% pantser. I prefer to let my character take the lead and see where it goes 

Skye Turner –

1000% pantser!

Becca L’Amour –

Maybe a procrastipantser.  I start stories from a visual scene, or character conversations in my head. I don’t really plan because I wait for my characters to talk. It’s a puzzle piece process—collect the scenes, not always in order, then fill in the gaps. I find if I have a prospective ending, it gets me there easier even if the story eventually changes. I struggle to work on just one story at a time.

Autumn Key –

Pantser. With my current series the books are all connected so I have written down plot points but there is no point in planning more than that because the characters go off road all the time!!!!!

Shelley Justice –

Pantser. If I try to plan out anything other than character names, it’s always a disaster…

Mara Valderran –

My previous series was completely pantsed, but I’m trying my hand at plotting my current series. Both are fantasy. Hard lesson from the first one: It’s easier to build the world first before you write instead of making shit up as you go and accidentally creating plot holes, contradictions, or places/people/things that you forget how you spelled and having to fix it all later.

Ron Perry –

When I started writing, I was 100% a pantser, but as I continue to write more stories, I’m slowly evolving into a hybrid-type. I seem to do better if I plan some things and at least do a bullet-point type outline so that I can be sure to hit certain beats along the way. But frankly, there’s still a lot of pantsing going on!

Lindsay Murray –

I am neither. I am a rare breed known as a “bread machine.”

Basically, I write the whole book in my head first. I may go back and forth on the plot, the backstory, and the details, and work it out in my head almost completely in its entirety. And sometimes it does change when I actually start writing. But generally speaking, when I sit down to write, I’ve done all the hard work in my head. I write really clean first drafts, and I write them really fast. But I may have spent anywhere from a few months to a few years letting it develop and “rise” in my brain.

Bread machine!

Miski Harris –

I started out as a pantser. Today I’m actually toiling over character sketches. It’s a process but basically I write, send the draft to my editor,she sends it back with her “recommendations”. I add 10,000 words and we publish.

Lori Remenicky –

I’m a pantser, I’ve tried to plot but it just doesn’t work for me.

Jess Wood –

I’m the definition of “Make the plan, execute the plan, and throw the entire plan away.”

Vivian Murdoch –

I’m a plantser. Basically, I have a loose plot then the characters take over.

Jennifer J Williams –

Other than the names/ages/physical descriptions of the characters, and the tropes I want to hit, I’m a definite pantser. Even I don’t know what is going to happen in my books.

L.G. Knight –

I am a lose mix of both. I have a basic idea of where the story is going, how it’s starts, or even sometimes a blurb but the story is basically written by the characters and they do whatever the heck they want to 

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