Authors often talk about being a plotter or a pantser meaning they even plan their books/stories ahead of time or write by the seat of their pants (basically BICHOK).
I am a bit of both. For most of my stories, I am a plotter (as evidenced by the Project Page). But for some stories (I won’t comment on whether they are successful or not) I am a pantser.
And for other stories, like during NaNo or my upcoming free reads I am a Plonster or a Plotster? Which basically means that I start with a general idea for the storyline, a few characters, a lots of ambition and a desire to write. I’m currently working on a YA UF Novella that falls into that last category. These are the stories where I don’t do extensive background or pre-writing. I don’t do character sketches. I just basically sit down, open a word doc and start to write.
Now, you may be wondering, how is that different from what I do with my plotted stories. For the plotted stories, I start with a blurb, outline and synopsis before hand. I know where the characters is going, what’s going to happen and how I’m going to get there.
It works for me because each story is different. Each story has a different method/system/process. I’ve learned the hard way not to force things because what works for one story may not work for another story.
I’ll touch on my pre-writing process more in another post at a later date.