Here's Where the Fun Begins

 

I might as well admit it now: the series has officially gone on the back burner. It’s not dead, it’s just resting. The side project is now the main project. I’ve been typing up the longhand in between paid assignments, doing spot research as I go along. Eventually I’ll reach the point where I’ll need to go to Philadelphia to scout locations. Sure, I could do that through Google Maps and websites, but where’s the fun in that? I deliberately chose Philly as my location because it’s within driving distance. Any excuse to get out of the house and not work.

Currently I’ve hit a bit of a snag. I read over the longhand before I type it up, in case I need to fix, add, subtract or otherwise change something. Well, Chapter 5 is going to need to be entirely rewritten. It introduces a main cast member, who I didn’t know when I created her. I discovered who she was as I went along. Now that I’m on the second draft, I need to make her match up with what I learned about her in the first draft. For instance, I’d originally intended for her and the PI main character to hook up. That isn’t how it turned out. She ended up hooking up with the caveman and the PI found love elsewhere, with a character I hadn’t even conceived of when I started writing. Hence the need for a new Chapter 5.

Because that’s both the joy and the bane of being a pantser: there’s no road map. You sit down and you find out what happens. You may not even have a plot when you begin; I didn’t with this book. I started with two characters and a premise: a caveman, claiming to be a fictional character, hires a private investigator to track down his author and find out why he’s been pulled into the real world. Plot, characters, incidents, ending and themes all popped up as I went along. When I was done I had a contradictory mess, but at least it had a linear plot and a satisfactory ending. And both my protags found true love. Who could ask for anything more?

That was the first draft. Now I’m on the second draft, where I have to make it all make sense. The second draft is for actual writing. Here’s where the fun begins.

For example: the woman in Chapter 5. She’s another fictional character, a ripoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (The publisher specialized in pulp-style knockoff series.) She was pretty generic when I started writing her. Then a chapter or so later, out of nowhere, she started speaking with a New England accent, surprising both me and my PI protag. Not a problem; far from it, in fact. It helped me develop her background. She’s a descendant of Puritans, trained to hunt and destroy supernatural monsters that threaten humanity. As the story went along, I discovered she’s also part demon and can talk to ghosts. For her intro, all I needed was to establish the accent, and show a flash of demon red in her eyes to convince the PI that a) she wasn’t just into cosplay, and b) there might just be something to the caveman’s outrageous story after all. She clinches it with another bit I’d originally introduced later on: she has a magic wad of cash that never runs out, so she can handle expenses when she’s on a case. Proof she’s not from around here. It also explains how fictional characters eat and have homes when they never appear to work at paying jobs. It helps the PI accept the Twilight Zone episode he’s now living in, and he allows her to join their hunt for the missing writer. And now we’re on our way.

Sounds like a pain in the ass, doesn’t it? Yeah, it can be at times. It can also be a lot of fun. Because this is primarily a mystery story, it allows me to play with the readers. The search for the missing writer is just the surface plot. One of the characters isn’t who he appears to be. This leads to a major twist at the climax, which I need to set up so readers won’t throw the book across the room. That means sprinkling in the kinds of clues that don’t look like clues but make sense when you get to the end. A great one hit me out of nowhere as I was nearing the end of the book. I decided to leave that aspect in, and have started laying the groundwork all the way back in Chapter 1. It also ties in to a side note I included that came from the original flash scene, where the caveman complains about retcons—how his writer gave him a sister and killed her off all in the space of a page, and he’s left to deal with memories and emotions for a person who never existed until that moment. That’s a clue now. Wonder if M. Night Shyamalan had as much fun writing The Sixth Sense as I am with this?

That picture up top is a clue too. It’s the scene in Star Wars where Han Solo says, “Here’s where the fun begins.” Mr. Ford never personally appears in my story, but his influence is felt. Indirectly, he’s the reason the writer ends up living where the characters finally find him. Personally, I’m more in the Indiana Jones camp, wandering around a jungle of words looking for hidden treasures. Not to mention my favorite Indy line: “I’m making this up as I go.” If that’s not a pantser, I don’t know what is. For you other pantsers out there, have a blast!