What Happens Next?
Headlights in the Dark
Here is a question: As a writer, are you a pantser or a plotter? Pantser make it all up as they write and plotters tend to create an outline of their piece, beat for beat, and then commence the actual writing.
In my initial drafting stages, I make it all up. Write and find words along the way. Especially when writing fiction — I start with an image or an idea which makes me curious, curious enough to investigate with one leading question: What happens next?
This question acts as a headlight while I traverse through dark, sometimes morbid, (and hopefully engaging) storylines, drawing from my personal beliefs and worldview and some, lately, from without. The only way to satisfy this question is to reach the end. The itch to know what happens next is what helps me finish an early draft of every story I write.
One of the biggest advantages of this method is the not knowing how a story moves or how a character reacts. It helps me come up with surprises, surprises even I didn’t know were coming, surprises that have surprised me as well.
In the story I’m currently working on, there is a moment when my character, escaping from the “baddies”, encounters a door. She rushes to it, places her hand on the handle and turns. It’s locked. While writing that bit, I never knew the door…
