on Writers Helping Writers:

Writers come in a variety pack of processes. The most common types – regardless of genre – are pantsers, plotters, and plantsers. We know these terms well, right?

• Pantsers sit down at the keyboard and see what falls out of their fingertips for a while to figure out how the story will take shape.
• Plotters lay everything out in advance, so they have a guide for their story.
• Those rebel Plantsters do a little bit of planning – maybe the inciting incident and the turning points, possibly the All Is Lost moment – but not too much before they write away.

And Then There Are Story Quilters Like Me

These storytellers might do one or all of the three methods above, but probably not in the same way. Story Quilters are writers who divide books into individual scenes that they stitch together later into a cohesive story.

If I want this brain of mine to make continual progress, I must take a story down to a bite-sized chunk of writing. I am not alone in this.

Some writers like Diana Gabaldon, Lorna Landvik, and Janet Fitch (and little old me!) don’t see their stories from beginning to end. Instead, we see glimpses and glimmers that we write down until the whole fabric of the story becomes clear. Janet Fitch originally wrote White Oleander as a series of short stories. Lorna Landvik (Angry Housewives Eating BonBons) has been known to string a clothesline down her hallway during the editing phase, with every scene on an index card. She walks the hall, shuffling the cards around, until the story feels right to her.

The idea of doing it this way gives most of my fellow scriveners hives but hear me out. I have good reasons for this.

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