Character-driven Chaos
The Chimes of the Failed
Currently playing: Blue Prince and Void Crew.
Blue Prince is an interesting game for me. I love a good puzzle game. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes I feel is supremely underrated, and if you haven’t played it yet, you absolutely should. Resident Evil aesthetic with logic and arithmetic puzzles and a fascinating story; great game. Blue Prince, though… It’s got a nice vibe to it, but I almost wish it were more unsettling, like Lorelei. I like the underlying mystery surrounding the mansion, though. Seeing what else I can uncover keeps me playing, but I’ve gotta admit I’m unsure about the random room drafting mechanic. It’s a neat way to slowly expand the grander puzzle of the mansion, but I worry that I will have solved everything there is to solve and the endgame will just be a matter of drafting the right rooms and placing them just so. I hope I’m wrong.
As for Void Crew, great game. Just wish some of the random players I join up with were a little less ableist. Seriously, the majority of the sessions I’ve joined have had at least one dude — because they’re always dudes — throwing out the R-slur. And if you’re chucking that out there with full-throated confidence, I’ve got a feeling you hold some other problematic beliefs, too. That being said, if you’ve got a few friends and you wanna do some co-op space exploration, pick it up.
Now the real nonsense.
While I wait for my dialect-centered beta reader work through my dark fantasy WIP, I continue my work drafting the sequel to Firewind’s Accord, and it’s been an interesting experience this go-around. Everything else I’ve ever drafted has been 70-30 pantsed-plotted. For the dark fantasy, I know the general path the plot will take from first book to last, and while drafting I had a more-detailed vision of where the first book would begin and end. But all of that was in my head. I would outline individual sections or whole chapters when I was away from my PC, but that wasn’t every day. So for the days where I had no outline and I was in front of the keyboard, I pantsed it. And certain plot points changed as characters developed and went in directions I hadn’t foreseen. And then I had to cut 140k words to make it remotely marketable. Through all that, the overarching plot remained 95% untouched. For Firewind’s Accord, the process was largely the same, although I was away from my PC a lot less during that time. Again, overarching plot and theme were in my head, but that was it. I went almost full pants through it, just letting the characters show me how they would navigate the hazards and obstacles I placed before them.
All that is to say, this sequel I completely outlined it, chapter by chapter, noting which perspective would be used. I even decided for the sequel each chapter would have one perspective only, where for FW both Jordan’s and Tyrlok’s perspectives were shown, delineated by a nice little graphic whenever it shifted. And let me tell you, I’m about 60% of the way through the chapters, and I’m still pantsing, what the fuck is wrong with me.
Sigh.
It turns out I don’t really like structure all that much. Granted, I will almost always write from beginning to end, no skipping around all pell-mell. But when I force myself to stick to a rigid outline, I feel like I’m forcing my characters to do the same, at which point it feels like I’m less writing a book and more showing you what I made my paper dolls do in a dollhouse. They completely lose their agency, and it feels so, so wrong.
Everybody has their own process. If you’re an aspiring or published author and plotting everything out is your process, bless you. I can’t do it. Some people will 100% pants their manuscript and go back through and clean it up in edits and rewrites. Me, I need a little character-driven chaos to guide me. Besides, I hate writing shit down, which is ironic for an author to say, but what author doesn’t appreciate a little irony?