Plotting, Pantsing, Percolating

Typically in NaNoWriMo, there are two different camps: Plotters and Pantsers. Plotters are the people who make extensive outlines, character descriptions, and who know exactly what will happen in their story from beginning to end. Pantsers, as the name suggests, are the people who fly by the seat of their pants. If they are lucky then they might have the title, basic character information, and maybe a plot idea.

A short time ago, Grant Faulkner, suggested a third camp, that of the Percolator. You can read more about it at the OLL blog here: http://blog.lettersandlight.org/post/33164071079/pantser-planner-percolator

The post really resonated with me, because while I am an occasional Plotter, most of the time to others it seems as if I am a complete Pantser. With the creation of the Percolator I have really found my home. Because though I may not write everything down, I do think about my ideas and my characters most of the time. But, I just feel like if I write down all my ideas, my plot points, then I won't want to write out that actual point in the story because technically I've already written it down.

So, most of the time, when I do somewhat fall in the Plotter camp, it is incredibly vague so I can still write out those scenes and chapters. It works decently well but still I sometimes worry about even writing down those little vague details. I'm fine writing up extensive character profiles and I do spend a lot of time thinking about their personalities and how they would react to certain situations. It all completely adds up to me being a Percolator.

Needless to say, my NaNovel for this year is one I have been percolating on for a long long time. I started the first book in the trilogy back in 2004 and finished it in 2006. At that time I felt so inspired that I jumped straight into the second book, wrote a few chapters and then started working on other stories. I have been thinking about the second book ever since but haven't really had the time to sit down and focus on it because of the numerous other ideas that kept popping up.

I have been stewing over this story for six years now. Though I have lost a lot of my original character information due to computer crashes and USB failures, I still have a hard copy of book one and I can get most of what I need from there.

The Percolating shall continue and I will write down as much as I can today for #nanoprep. On Friday I'll have my next From the Stacks review and next Tuesday I will introduce you all to my NaNovel for the year, which technically means I'm going to introduce you to the whole trilogy. Enjoy your #nanoprep day everyone.