Pantsing along…

or…How Her Father’s Daughter came about

I am a serious pantser. Not something I chose, it’s the way I am. I might begin to write towards a particular turning point but the pen or the keys take off in a different direction and before I know it my characters are saying and doing things they would not have considered in the previous chapter. Or paragraph.

I jot down notes; ideas and what ifs. I make mud maps when I am stuck. But nothing works like allowing the pen to scribe and the keys to take over.

Take my current WIP, Her Father’s Daughter (WT) for example. This began as an assignment. We had to write a personal ad. Mine was an ad placed by a 10 year old boy for a new Dad. This then became a short story which was published in an anthology. So far so good. I decided it should become a novel. I really liked my characters and wanted to write more of their stories.

Ta Da! Her Father’s Daughter. Except that the only similarity between this and the short story is that the protagonist is widowed. Oh, and she has a son. But he is not hiring a Dad. And now he has a sister. Sigh.

It was a relief to reach the end of the first draft in more ways than one. It was the end at last and I finally knew how it ended and where my characters journeys had taken them. Or did I?