Act 1 Review: Why My Method Is a Pantser / Plotter Hybrid (And Why I Think It Works)

I Have an Idea for a Novel. Now What???

So the past couple of Mondays, we’ve been examining Act 1 in a 5-act structure I like to rely on. (The more acts the better, I say. Anyone who’s ever attempted to draft a novel knows exactly how fast things can go wonky. The more guardrails we have, the less likely it is that the wonkiness has a chance to happen.)

Here’s my method for working through a draft—and why pure plotting and pure pantsing have both failed me in the past:

Photo by Mike Hindle on Unsplash

Pantsing

This method, to me, was always the surefire way to fail. Starting a draft with a vague idea meant that whatever I had brainstormed would maybe take me to about the 25% mark and then…I had no idea how to carry it through to the end. Enter crazy subplots and characters who served no real purpose and months laboring over a draft that, for the most part, was destined for the trash can.

Plotting

This was…better. But an outline is logical, clean, sequential…And makes absolutely no allowance for…well…magic.

I mean, that is what happens, isn’t it? As soon as you start interacting with language, putting words down in sentences and paragraphs, toying with metaphor and sounds, don’t things just happen on the page that you could never plot? Ever? No matter how long you labored over that precious outline of yours?

I’m convinced this is why pantsers pants. Because magical things happen when you interact with language.

…and why labor over an outline that cannot replicate that magic? Why labor over an outline that will be at odds with the magic as soon as you start drafting? Why labor over an outline that will be tossed before your draft reaches the halfway mark?

So here’s how I handle it:

First of all, I use my Golden Thread Method to find the arc of the book as a whole.

Then I begin to break my book down into smaller chunks. For Act 1, that means figuring out the hook and the inciting event. And then I will actually draft those scenes using my FEELS Method for strong scenic writing.

I’ll take what I learned from writing those scenes back to my outline, potentially tweaking what I thought I knew.

Back and forth, back and forth, through the entire novel…

By the time I’m done, then, my outline is not just a bullet-point list of chapters. I know the emotional core of the novel, the theme, my character arcs, and the most important scenes have already been drafted.

Next week? It’s on to Act 2.