Feathers and Fae - An Adventure in Pantsing

Next month, on October 11, my first traditionally published novel will be released. One thing I wanted to do was share a few things about this book and my adventure in writing this story.

Starting in two weeks, every Wednesday leading up to my release date there will be a post about how this novel came to be, about the myths I used to create the world of Mythos and about the incredible landscapes I write about and the inspiration for them.

However, this first one will be about the fact that this was an entirely unplanned novel. As I describe in more detail in my next post, this started as a dare/challenge between friends for NaNoWriMo. I had three unrelated prompts and 12 hrs to come up with a story. For those not familiar with writing terminology, this is what is known as 'pantsing'.

I started doing NaNoWriMo back in 2008. This novel was written in 2016. In the years between I have pants many novels and I've also planned novels to the extent of having written 10K word outlines and 11-page spreadsheets. And of course, I've done everything in between.

This also isn't the first time I'd taken on a challenge like this. I did something similar once before so going into this adventure I had some practice with learning how to let a plot flow and follow the narrative.

Things I decided to do as I wrote...


I planned my two main characters, Kami and Emmett, around the prompts. While Kami's name did change in the first set of revisions, Emmett has always been Emmett. Because I planned the prompts around these characters I had a basic idea of who they were and what I wanted to reveal about them right from the beginning.


Once I decided on who my characters were (mostly), then I had to decide what sort of world that I wanted to create. Once again, like many fantasy writers, I leaned on the myths of our world and naturally decided that this world, Mythos, would be the place where those stories originated, from a time when their world and ours moved more closely together. This would allow me to draw from many sources and bend a few myths as necessary to fit the story.

As I'll mention in one of the upcoming posts, when I finished writing the first chapter I knew I wanted to write a journey that was reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings. I wanted incredible landscapes and danger at every turn. Each adventure more dangerous than the last.

I also knew that my characters were going to need help, what was so that is where Jewel came into existence. Someone to tell them what to do and how to do it. I knew I wanted her to be a bit out there, but knowledgeable.


Things that surprised me...

Tithoriea and Malawli were not supposed to be nearly as interesting as they turned out to be. Maybe one day I will write their story, but those characters that appear for all of one scene ended up having a wonderfully complex history.

I had no idea that Jewel would join them on the journey. I wrote it and then I rolled with it. Why not, a third person to give an outside perspective on the relationship between Kami and Emmett didn't seem like a bad idea.

Kami's character arc developed naturally. I hadn't planned it and as I realized what I was doing with the character I made sure to keep an eye on it as I wrote. Like her name, a lot of her interactions required significant rewriting and alteration after the fact because of this. I do think that rewriting this part made for a better novel (and a more likeable character).

Bob the Yeti. He just showed up, pushed his way into this story, and left me wondering what the hell happened. What was supposed to be a throwaway innkeeper who would give my three weary travellers a small hand in their journey turned into what is most people's favourite character in the entire novel. I would also like to credit my friend Ashe for naming him. Bob's name was originally be more exotic, but he got named Bob and it stuck.

THAT CHAPTER. You'll know what I mean when you read the book, but there is that one chapter when it seems all hope is lost. Every good story like this needs to have that moment when we all doubt that our heroes will win. But how that happened in this story? Man, it still breaks my heart a little.

About the creative process of pantsing...
Planning is necessary for many types of novel, but a straight-up fantasy adventure works nicely for a pantsed story. A lot of this kind of tale involves a point A to point B to point C thinking style. While I still had to develop an ending and antagonist on the fly, I found that I was still able to work in plenty of groundwork for all the things that had to be added later

One of the things I did was using a decision-maker to decide on a path if I couldn't decide which way to take my story. Like the flipping of a coin trick, if I really hated the option that was chosen then I went with the one I really wanted, but this rarely happened. I sometimes even used this method for deciding what my characters would say some instances.

I could go on and on about how I made this novel happen, but I won't too much. To be honest, it's a lot like driving down a strange road at night. I got there a little at the time without knowing what the road would look like, but I followed where my characters took me. Thankfully, they were strong enough characters to carry me along.