On Writing - To Plot, To Pant, or To Plant

Sissy Spacek in the Carrie, 1976

I don’t usually write about the craft of writing, but after a long (book) publishing spell and only receiving back-pats for writing about my white-witch-hair (and the associated compliments from the general public) a writer begins to questions her methods. Seek a little yoga for the creative brain. Read up on the subject. Want inspo.

Ever since an author mate of mine said, this book made her feel very secure, I've had Stephen King’s ‘On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft’ on my must-read list. Also, he's a panster (like me) not a plotter. There must be no better way to feel positive about your approach to putting a narrative down, than reading pointers from your tribe! 

This book is a real tonic. For any writer. It's hugely entertaining. SK swears like a trooper. The book zooms around his childhood and his high school years. At age four, while his mum worked he was in the care of a string of babysitters. The one he remembers most is a 200 lb, teenager, Eulah-Bulah. He claims she prepared him for being reviewed by The Village Voice. Because she used to fart in his face while shouting, Pow! However, it was feeding Steve seven fried eggs and locking him in his mother’s wardrobe that eventually got her fired. 

In his sophomore year, bored with being the editor of the school mag, he created a satiric newspaper, The Village Vomit ... “filled with fictional titbits about the faculty”. Miss Raypach the study-hall-monitor becomes Miss Rat Pack, for example. Apparently, this rag was the “most useful writing lesson he ever got” and got him into a bunch of trouble. 

On the craft of writing, SK says he only needs a situation in order to get started on a story. He cites his debut novel Carrie as an example. In Carrie there is an unpopular girl (Carrie) taking a shower in a high school locker room. She gets her period for the first time. Her fellow students take tampons from an adjacent dispenser and start throwing them at her, along with cruel insults. Carrie thinks she's dying. All that blood! (BTW SK writes about this with all the casualness of a caretaker making a cup of tea. I blanched the first time I read it too.) Carrie's inconvenient first period just so happens to coincide with her telekinesis ability materialising. SK got this 'situation' while cleaning the girls' showers with a male friend who educated him on the uses of the contents of the wall dispenser. That coupled with an article in Life magazine he'd read years before. The article suggested, some reported poltergeist activity might actually be telekinetic phenomena. And that girls, around the time of their first period, might have the ability to move objects, just by thinking about them. Carrie was going to get her own back. And it was going to be messy. Red.

The movie Carrie came out in 1976. I was 11. I'm not sure how old I was when I watched it but I was absolutely terrified. I'd quite like to read the book now. There's a scene in the TV series Fleabag, when Phoebe Waller-Bridge is asked what her favourite 'period' movie is. She replies, Carrie! Should you want to revisit this classic-horror-zinger it's on Netflix. Halloween isn't far away ... 

SK "... stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point B ...; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings the characters to life through their speech." And "I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, ... I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible."

More than once, when I've got stuck midway in a story I've thought not being a plotter is a curse. I always start with detailed bios of my characters. I created young Lily Max way before I had a story for her to tell. (I have a two new characters mucking about upstairs *raises eyebrows* rn in fact.) I do know where I want to start, and where I'll end (the middle comes when I sit down and get the hell off Twitter.) In book #1 Lily Max: satin, scissors, frock - I knew Lily Max would create a stunning outfit in order to win the Snow Queen crown (I also knew I couldn’t let her win.) In came my antagonist, the ghastly Violet Hughes. Once I had my large cast of kooky characters, and my setting in place the story wrote itself. Ahem. Keeping a sharp eye of course on pacing, dialogue, my underlying theme etc etc. 

Plotters please know I'm knocking plotting. It just doesn’t work for me. If I write a chapter by chapter plan I never stick to it. I get bored. I'm a panster. Such a terrible term. Someone who takes the-seat-of-their-pants approach. Novel writing, anyway you approach it is a lot of sitting on your pants, I mean on your backside in your tracky pants. It's hard graft. Hours and hours of hard graft. Putting word after word. Sentence after sentence. Until you become so obsessed with the characters you've created, you start to prefer their company over your family's. Those living-breathing humans for whom you tear yourself from your labours to prepare evening meals (albeit begrudgingly) when in full flight. Although, I'd say SK's lovely wife Tabby prepares his dinners while he writes at his desk in the corner.

"Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around." SK

I mentioned theme earlier; every writer has one or more themes whether they realise it or not. Mine covers underdogs and believing-in-yourself. SK has many recurring themes in his work, two interesting ones are "the fundamental differences between child and adults, and ... the healing power of the imagination". He says these are no big deal, and that all writers have unique interests that come from our experiences. Our lives.

This made me think. His whole book made me think. (Honestly get a copy from your library and get into it.) Whatever your a station ... I was a child. I am a daughter, a wife, a lover, a mother, a woman and a writer. All under the one umbrella. We all bring our own style to the page. Be we plotters. Pantsers. Or Plantsers - a bit of both.

"Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. //Drink and be filled up."  Stephen King