The Adventure Continues...

Sherry: After digging my way free of an avalanche of flow charts, character worksheets, copious notes, and not an inconsiderable number of empty Hershey kisses wrappers, I looked up to realize I’d written my way to the mid-point of chapter (or, as I like to term it, in this early stage of the rough draft – a CRAPter. But I digress) three. Yay, me! A terrific plot twist suddenly slammed into my brain. O, spontaneous idea! So why couldn’t I get it to mesh? Suddenly the Crows of Doubt (or COD) were pecking my noggin and causing me a brain fugue. This called for an emergency brainstorm session with Laura.

After much wailing and whining (on her part, really – echoes of JWTFB), we realized that I was rushing a potential plot point and I needed to pull things back a tad. Fine. Completely doable. So I steered the crapter back in the direction it needed to go.

How had that happened? I have flow charts and copious notes, and I still got off track. A flaw in my brilliantly anal system? she asked with a wibble in her voice.

Nope. Just part of the process. Even a dyed-in-the-wool Plotter takes the Pantster route sometimes.

Just this time, the Muse jumped the gun. And then again, it could just be an old fashioned sugar rush. Heh.

Think I’ll let the ole Muse just sleep this one off.

Ssssh…..

Laura: What? Jones had written herself into a corner? Had all the dry erase markers dried up? The flow charts stopped flowing? And just who was really doing all the whinging? (Hint: her initials stand for "Sherry Jones," but I digress.)

"Go sniff a dry erase marker."

"Very funny. I'm stuck! WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"Okay, so, whatcha got?"

Jones pulls out her pointer stick, lines up her flow charts, diagrams, character charts and dry erase boards, explains what she needs to happen, and WAAAAAHHHH.... Boo hoo hoo, woe is me--- I can't make it happen, Laura!

"Um, why do they have to do this right now?" I ask, completely ignoring her flow charts, diagrams, character charts and dry erase boards. "What purpose does it serve? How will it make the story progress? Is it really necessary at this point? Can't you do something a little less drastic?"

Now, mind you, I have a special expression I reserve for when Sherry says to me, "What's your character's GMC?" whenever I howl at her to bail my Panster Bootie out of the fire. And darned if she didn't make the same face at me when I blithely ignored her Plotter tendencies and went for what I saw from a purely Panster Prospective.

I drew my conclusions, IM'd them to her as she was IMing her conclusions to me.

And that, boys and girls, is how a Plotter and a Panster come to EXACTLY the SAME conclusion from totally different perspectives.