Extreme Pantsing

Some of us are architects, some of us pantsers (though I suspect most of us have a portion of each in us). A whole lot of people pants their pants off every year at NaNoWriMo, but that’s in private. I want to share with you a round of extreme pantsing, done in public for everyone to see, that I did a couple of years ago that resulted in a novel that one day may actually make it.

The reason I share it is that I recommend that you pantsers think about giving it a try. Architects too, for that matter. You’ll see why.

So, just how extreme, how total was this pantsing adventure, and how did it work?

It all started with a vampire kitty-cat

In thinking about how the vampire genre seemed to have exhausted just about every approach possible, the idea of a vampire cat came to me as something that hadn’t been explored. About a week later, that character’s voice started telling his story in my head. I made a few notes, maybe two pages single-spaced, about his world and the underlying “facts” of vampirism in that world, and then thought about how to write this thing.

I also had my writing blog to write, and I was in the midst of taking another novel through a critique group. Not to mention the 45 hours per week spent at the day job. I didn’t want to start a new novel in the typical way because I didn’t feel I had the time to devote to it.

I decided to extemporize it online

Since I had a character in my head who was eager to tell his story, I created a blog for him to use as his journal. At this point I had no more pre-thought done than I’ve described above, and I decided to write every blog post on the fly, without much in the way of previous thought or planning, if any. Most often, as it turned out, once a week I booted up the laptop with no idea what was going to happen next.

I aimed to write a single post per week, and I put up a link to it on my writing blog, Flogging the Quill. This high-wire act was open to the Internet, and to any of the hundreds who stopped by FtQ daily. I even got a domain name, vampirekittycat.com.

So I began winging it once a week, getting up at 5 in the morning and making up events as they flowed from what had happened the week before. For the first time, I didn’t know how the story was going to end. Or how it was going to middle, either.

Here’s why it’s worth your consideration

About four weeks into the project, a comment on my kitty-cat’s blog came in. And then another one. People were reading the darned thing. (Luckily, also liking what they read.)

I had, gulp, an audience.

For the first time in my noveling experience, I was aware of my audience as I wrote.

Trust me on this, it’s very different than writing in the privacy of your own head. I became aware that each post had to end with a cliffhanger equal to the extraordinary task of getting a reader to “turn the page” a full week later.

I think that, in the 58 weeks it took to write the story, I learned buckets about creating and maintaining suspense. It’s one thing to craft a story in the comfort of your writing space with no one watching, and quite another to do it on a high wire with an audience below, looking up, wondering about my next step—would I lose my balance and fall, or would the story grow and keep its energy?

My audience also forced me to produce on weeks when I would just as soon have put it off. They were waiting out there, and I did not want to disappoint.

A number of readers stuck with me for the whole year-long adventure, and loved it all the way. Whew! I left the finished “journal” up for a couple of years, and every once in a while someone would discover it and devour it in a few days, and then often send a complimentary comment.

The big benefit

What I learned about how to end a chapter or a section with riveting suspense will carry over into my next novel. Each of those posts were about 1000 words, 4-5 manuscript pages.

I combined all of the posts into a more typical novel, merging roughly every two episodes into a chapter, and keeping the suspenseful endings. I polished it, and started submitting to agents. The voice of my character, Patch, promised so much fun that I got several requests for fulls.

A couple of things happened. One was that an agent would love it but have no idea of how to market it. One of them actually referred me on to three other agents in an effort to help me find representation. The other response was that they loved the writing, but ultimately the story didn’t grab them the way it needed to.

Thus the flaw, at least for me

From the notes agents gave me on the submission, I believe I’ve identified the primary shortcoming—characterization. While my character is likeable, he didn’t ultimately connect with the reader. One reason is that I deliberately channeled a cat while I wrote (the story is told from his point of view), and I saw cats as independent creatures who care only for themselves. While that may even be true, that does not make for an empathetic character.

So now, after a couple of years in the drawer, I’m trotting my cat out for another run at it (he’s a vampire, so he just napped). I’ve seen how to create that quality of empathy for him, and maybe it will be enough to clear the representation hurdle this time. I’ve also taken down all but the first post of the “blook” online. I’m keeping that domain name, though, because this may yet happen.

Bottom line, it was an experience I’ll never forget, and gained a great deal from. If I ever sell this story, I’m seriously considering writing the sequels (oh yes, there are many stories waiting) the same way, only this time to an even larger audience.

Here’s how Patch’s story begins:

Just after dark, death grabbed me by the tail. The moon was out, cool September breezes were scented with hints that fall was coming, and I was trotting over a mound of fresh earth, not an uncommon thing in a graveyard. My mind was on a svelte little Siamese over on 15th Street who was coming into heat when a hand shot up out of the dirt and took hold of my rear extremity.

For what it’s worth.