It's Called Writing Into the Dark
In Today's Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Writing Into the Dark
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
"How can you possibly arrive at a destination if you don't know how to get there? The trick, I soon learned, is to put your faith in your characters and trust them to take the lead. ... I found the experience both liberating and thrilling." Chris Saunders (see Of Interest)
"I also found that the more I wrote into the dark, the easier it became to get back to the story the next day. Sometimes critical voice still tends to catch me unawares, but the return-to-the-manuscript happens faster and with less resistance than before. It's been a great shift and I'm glad it has happened." Anitha Krishnan
Writing Into the Dark
I could have titled this "Grow a Pair."
How many times have I said "Trust your characters to tell the story that they, not you, are living?"
How many times have I said that writing into the dark will give you a thrilling sense of freedom you've never known as a writer?
I didn't make up the first Quote of the Day above. It's straight from the writer's mouth in the article referenced in the first item in Of Interest. And he was (sigh, and still is) a confirmed plodder.
Yeah, I use the term "plodder" for any plotter who chooses to use the term "pantser" to describe me and other writers who believe in themselves. And yes, I mean it just as derogatorily. Hey, screw 'em.
Look, most fiction writers who actively promote the myths are doing so only so you'll keep having to buy their nonfiction books. It's a sinkhole moneytrap. Don't fall for it."Plot" is a noun. It should never be used by a fiction writer as a verb.
Using "plot" as a verb is nonsensical. The plot of any authentic story of any length cannot be planned in advance.
Ever try to plan what will happen as your neighbor's life unfolds? Or even your own? If you forced them or yourself back into your preplanned mold, how'd that turn out for you?
As Ray Bradbury himself so bravely pointed out, plot has always been and will always be the footprints the characters leave behind as they run through the story.
So I'm a "pantser," eh? God how I despise that term! I've never pantsed anyone in my life, and I've never been pantsed by anyone.
But I've seen it done.
Pantsing is a humiliating act of bullies. I personally witnessed, as a 10 year old child and the eldest of five siblings, a full-grown bully of a wanna-be man "pants" a woman strictly to humiliate her in front of her children. It worked. And it all but destroyed her spirit.
Bullies are cowards. PLEASE don't allow those frightened little broken-winged swallows who limp along scared half to death someone won't like their story to call you by such a demeaning label just because they can.
Don't accept that bullsh*t. Don't take it. Tell them to shut the hell up and crawl back into the shadows of revising, groveling as they "seek critical input," and rewriting X number of times.
All while you and I are happily writing and publishing and moving on to write the next story and the next and the next: you know, actually PRACTICING the craft of which we claim to be practitioners.
Because you (we) who write into the dark are not "pantsers."
Yeah, I’ve heard the lame-a*s excuse: "Oh, they only mean I'm flying by the seat of my pants."
Sure, okay.
Only you aren't flying a damn plane, are you? You're sitting at your laptop or with a pad of paper on your lap and a pen in your hand and you're doing the work of writing an actual, authentic story.
In other words, you're actually doing something they will never garner the courage to even attempt. Hence the snarky "pantsing" crap. They're virtually pantsing you with the term itself. Don't let 'em off easy. At a bare minimum (forgive the tasteless pun), at least fire them a note back: "Thanks, Plodder!"
Be proud of what you do, and be proud you believe enough in yourself and your characters to NOT have to depend on a critique group or beta readers or anyone else to tell you what "should" be in your characters' story.
How the hell can they possibly know what should be in your characters' story? They weren't running through it with you as it unfolded around you and your characters. Were they?
Don't let the bestids call you by demeaning bullsh*t names just because you're doing something they can't find the guts to even attempt.
ANYBODY can hide in the shadows of the myths or in seclusion up in the ivory tower and construct an inauthentic story block by prefabricated block. That's easy. Being constantly scared of your own shadow doesn't take any special skill or talent.
What takes courage as a writer is tossing out the gleaming white control-freak angelic-chorus invoking “ooh, looky, I’m a writer” robes, slipping into sneakers, a t-shirt, and jeans, and rolling off the parapet into the trenches of the story to run through it and experience it with your characters.
Okay... I'm glad that's out. I feel a little better now.
Still, I don’t care how you choose to write. Completely up to you. But don’t refer to me and my compatriots derogatorily. If you weren’t limiting yourself to plodding along when you should be running and laughing and having a good time with your writing, such BS would be beneath you.
The article I referenced in the first item in Of Interest below is a good article, if only for the purpose of showing you just how close one guy came to freedom before the internal pressure became too great and he relinquished his hold on the golden ring.
As I read through the first part of the article, I thought "Yes! Another convert to the freedom of WITD! Good for him!"
And he WAS a convert. Well, he seemed to be a convert. Almost. Sort of. He was a convert, um, temporarily.
What makes a "temporary" convert? Read the article.
Chris Saunders had it right there in his grasp. He tried WITD for himself and with no urging from anyone else but himself and: It Worked!
And then he reverted to the imagined safety afforded by editing and rewriting.
Do yourself a favor, fiction writers: Be Bold. Kick the other busybody "villagers" (from the sniveling, I-can't-do-it uncertainty and self-effacing "it takes a village" BS) out of the crib and Just Write.
Take a chance and prove to yourself that WITD works, and then KEEP taking the chance, over and over again. If you do, you too will find "the experience both liberating and thrilling."
Why would anyone—having finally and at long last discovered the "liberating and thrilling" experience of believing in themselves enough to write into the dark— ever take a step back?
Like being fearful about nothing and plodding along, it doesn't make sense.
Of Interest
When Pantsing Pays Off for Writers Um, always, when they have the courage to stick with it. It figures this would come from the myth-ridden Writer's Digest
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1130
Writing of "I Have the Pity Too"
Day 1…… 2172 words. To date…… 2172 done
Writing of Blackwell Ops 44: Sam Granger | Following the Ghost Trail
Day 1…… 3613 words. To date…… 3613
Day 2…… 2893 words. To date…… 6506
Day 3…… 1824 words. To date…… 8330
Day 4…… 3025 words. To date…… 11355
Day 5…… 3697 words. To date…… 15052
Fiction for May………………………... 42056
Fiction for 2025………………………. 420469
Nonfiction for May………………........ 10800
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 111710
2025 consumable words…………….. 525759
Average Fiction WPD (May)……...... 3487
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 10
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 26
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 114
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 296
Short story collections……………………. 29
Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.
Harvey,
Thanks so much for this. I'm still not writing much because of my mental health, not even sure I'm supposed to be writing anymore, but your blog reminds me that I still long to create, and how freeing WITD is. How sad to see another writer come to close to that and yet go back to his previous methods.
Thanks for sticking up for those who write into the dark, Harvey. Your post took a dark turn I wasn't expecting, but I appreciate the seriousness. Bullies are awful, regardless of how they abuse others.
I can't tell you how isolated I feel in the writing world now that I don't follow the myths. It's really disheartening. My writer friends don't understand my point of view and don't seem to want to
My last manuscript (and hopefully not the last one I write, ever) was written entirely into the dark--and it was fantastic. And the few people who have read it say it's a great story; in fact they're more enthusiastic about it than previous novels I've written.
Thanks too for the reminder that plot is not a verb. Plot has been weighing on me lately, the part of the story I hate most, that nagging thought that there must be tension, must be things happening. When you're tired and depressed you just want to sit with the character. No narrative, just a setting, a character, a world. Maybe that's not a story. I don't know. But I'm still fascinated by characters and people.
Back in ancient times - the mid-70s - I ferried a single-engine turbine helicopter roughly 450 statute miles across East African desert from Djibouti to a point in the middle of a pile of sand and dust. The helicopter was such that it could be loaded with two 55-gallon drums of turbo fuel, upright, in the aft cargo/passenger area. (Fuel is an important consideration when there isn't any to be had en route.)
The first 150 miles were a piece of cake, primarily along the Gulf of Aden to a point south of Berbera. Berbera at that time was a Russian submarine, naval, and air force base, around which one took a wide, careful, low-level flight path. From that point, it was straight-line across sand to that pile of sand, all beneath blue sky and desert heat.
To aid in navigation, I had a Michelin road map of East Africa at that time. Needless to say, a road map it wasn't, but it would do in a pinch if the dead reckoning didn't work out - as in, with fuel on board, I could make it to the Indian Ocean coast and make my living by fishing.
Plan B and the fishing weren't required in the end, but it's called dead reckoning for a reason...
(All of which might have nothing to do with Harvey's post, but I thought it might be interesting to some, since his "flying by the seat of my pants" comment caught my undivided attention and I started to reminisce.)
I add that in these modern times, China is in the process of paving many of those camel trails that are now roads. Consequently, good old dead reckoning just might not be the same in that part of the world.