Seat of Your Pants: The conceptualization

Hey everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. If you were here last week, then you know we’re talking about writing by the seat of your pants. We’re talking… how on earth do you write a story without an outline? And we’re talking about this because of the vast number of times I’ve been asked these questions. I guess people think all writers outline their stories? I don’t know, but whatever the case, I thought we’d take the month to discuss how I write, and how, in general, seat of your pants writers, write.

Last week, we talked about getting an idea and rolling with it—and if you’re curious what that’s like, be sure to go back and check out last week’s post!

This week, the tale continues…

Seat of Your Pants: The conceptualization

Now that we’ve gotten our idea and started playing with it, we have to move forward with the story. Obvious, no?

I don’t know if all seat of your pants writers do this part. I really don’t. But it’s what I do, and it makes the most sense to me, so let’s discuss. Now that I have my idea, now that I’ve rolled with it a bit and know what I’m doing, what I’m talking about, and have a little idea of the story I’m setting out to write, I’ll take some time and write down my concept.

It's not outlining, don’t worry.

During this time, what I’m trying to do is flesh things out and get my ducks in a row, so I don’t have two characters who give conflicting information about the world in general. Oh, and by this time, I’ve probably written between 16,000-50,000 words. That’s only a few chapters, for me. I know, I write really long stories… I’m not sorry.

Anyway, what I do during the conceptualization phase is that I’ll write down all the information I now know about the world in which I’m writing, and I’ll make a file of it so I can refer back to these things as I continue writing my story.

It’s in this phase that I really decide what things look like, where things are, and sometimes I’ll even set down a little bit of the history of the story, so I have it for future reference. This becomes very useful for me when I get past the 50,000 word point, which is why I always make sure to do this before I reach that word count.

In the conceptualization phrase, I try to immerse myself in my world, as I know it at that point. I immerse myself within it, and I discover what it’s like, from every angle, to live inside this world. I need to know what it’s like to live here, what people think and act like, and what I can expect from the future of my story.

For some authors, I’m sure that’s something you’d like to do sooner. Especially if you’re an outliner, I’m sure you can’t even imagine what it’s like to not really conceptualize until you’re this far into your story—but you know what? We all do what we have to do, in order to get the stories out of our noggins.

Next week, we’ll really get going!

[love]

{Rani Divine}