Note: If you have not read either I Shall Believe or The Witness (see Complete: History), reading this page is going to give you some spoilers for both.

How’s that for alliteration my friends?

So first, what is pantsing? It’s the term writers use when we sit down and write without plotting. We just let the story go where it’s going to go. Fanfiction is known for that — the chapter by chapter nature of posting, the instant feedback from readers shaping the writing.  I began as a pantser, though just once very early in my career as a writer, I wrote out a story sketch, broke it down scene by scene, wrote key scenes, and then filled in the linking material. That was Jaded, which is probably why, of all my early 2002 stories, feels different. At least, it does to me.

I’d hate to pretend that there aren’t good things about pantsing, because it totally works and one of my favorite stories I’ve ever written was written in that fashion: The Witness. But another story of mine that is relatively popular, I Shall Believe, has some definite pitfalls from having been unplotted.

So, I’ll talk about how each developed as a concept and then break down what worked and what didn’t.

Concept: I Shall Believe

I Shall Believe began as a reaction to the Sonny shooting Carly in the head story. I was so angry he was going to get away with it, like it never happened. I think the reasoning was: He shot Lorenzo in self-defense, because he thought Lorenzo was hurting Carly, and Carly was an accident. Anyway, I wanted to work with that.

Of course I added in Jason/Elizabeth because that’s what I do, and you can’t tell a Sonny/Carly story without Jason. I’ve ranted before about the way GH writers often take the easier way out when it comes to developing conflict. Rebecca Herbst’s real life pregnancy in 2003 would have been so much more interesting if Zander were not the father. They had barely written for the character of Zander, and what they had written wasn’t that great.  I would have preferred the baby’s father be Ric, but since I’m a Liason fan, I went with Jason.

Which of course drew in Courtney, her new marriage to Jason and the relationship she was developing with Brian Beck (and what a travesty that turned into). I decided to try to really develop her as a main character. A lot of Liason fanfiction at that point kept making her the annoying, stupid, ditzy idiot or the straight villain. (I did this sometimes, too, guilty!) But I wanted to see if I could something more with her, the way I’m doing in The Best Thing.

Sage was added almost as an afterthought when I realized I was going to pair Carly and Lorenzo. If I could rewrite ISB (and I promise, I’m not going to), I would shift the earlier chapters to better deal with her character. But, ah, c’est la vie.

So that where I was before I sat down to write ISB. I knew nothing except the following things: Elizabeth was going to get knocked by up Jason, Courtney was going find out and divorce Jason, and Carly was going to get some damn spark back.

The Witness as a Concept

So The Witness was a challenge story — I was given a title by IsisIzabel and had to write a story based on that. Looking back, I can’t remember if  I thought much about it before I started to write the first chapter.  I think I’d had a vague concept of having Lucky go after Patrick and Elizabeth due to an affair, and then shooting Robin by accident. I just…wrote and somehow that story came out.

So yeah, it’s not much of a concept I just…wrote and wrote and wrote, haha. And it kept growing and getting out of hand in some ways. But as a concept, it was very simple. For the longest time, I didn’t even know if I would be able to use the title correctly. I knew nothing about the story until it appeared on screen. In fact, (spoiler alert!) for about eight chapters or so, I really intended Lucky to be the shooter.

Perils and Peaks

So why do I think The Witness turned out better than I Shall Believe, despite having a similar method of writing? Mostly the story structure, which I can point to in two ways.

1. The Use of Central Event and/or Theme

They are, of course, very different stories. ISB is a story driven by emotions and characters at crossroads, making choices. The Witness is a two-day action story with twists, cliffhangers, and red herrings. However, they both deal with a large cast of characters interacting with one another, with subplots and diverging points of view..

In ISB, I deal with the following stories:

– Jason and Courtney’s marriages collapses because she’s learned she wants different things
– Elizabeth is pregnant with Jason’s child.
– Carly, by not remembering her emotions, finds herself drifting towards Lorenzo.
– The fallout of Sonny shooting Carly and Lorenzo affects most of the cast
– Lorenzo’s niece Sage bonds with Carly and settles into Port Charles and the other teens.

Not a lot right? But it’s so muddled–I should have tied the story to the fallout of the shooting, rather having it as a side story. With the fallout being the main aspect, I could have explored Jason’s character more. Why did he agree to marry Courtney despite a one-night stand with Elizabeth? What does it mean for his loyalty to Sonny to take Carly’s side initially and to take over the business?  His marriage to Courtney? How does Carly deal with losing her emotions, but still knowing the history. There should have been more tug and pull over Sonny. Sonny should have been a larger part of the story.

With a central theme, the affected characters become more clear and interactions feel much less forced. (And God, the more I think about it, the more I want to rewrite it. Bad, Lissie, bad!)

With The Witness, while I deal with Robin’s shooting, the following stories are also addressed:

– Patrick and Robin’s relationship
– Carly and Robin’s rivalry
– The Spencer/Cassadine feud
– Dillon/Georgie/Lulu
– Maxie knowing the paternity of the baby
– Elizabeth and Lucky’s marriage collapses; his drug addiction
– Sam’s recovery after the surgery

And that’s just off the top of my head. I think there are several smaller things addressed: Sonny’s concerned for Robin as a callback to their history, Jason and Elizabeth’s friendship, the remnants of Sonny and Carly’s relationship, the old Jax/Sonny rivalry, Brenda and Robin, etc.

So there’s a ton going on in The Witness, but (at least in my opinion) at no point does it ever overwhelm the story because they all come back to this main event: How does Robin’s shooting affect the people in her life? Since Robin is a central character in PC because of her history, I could pull in most of the cast in one aspect or another and make their ongoing stories part of the larger picture. This was not possible with ISB, so some of the interaction feels forced (particularly in the Jason/Elizabeth section of the story)

2. No Inciting Incident Weakens Story Opening

What do I mean by structure? I generally write my stories using a Three Act Structure with an inciting incident, two turning points, a midpoint, a climax and a resolution. It ensures that a story is relatively well-paced.

The Witness

Act One, Inciting Incident:  Robin is shot. (Prologue-Chapter 1)

Act One, Turning Point One: Elizabeth learns that Lucky picked up Cameron hours ago. (Chapter 3)

Act Two, Midpoint: Carly is shot (Chapter 6)

Act Two, Turning Point Two: Luke confronts Stefan at Wyndemere (Chapter 10)

Act Three, Climax: Luke confronts Helena and Stefan with Dillon and Lulu in tow (Chapter 14)

Resolution: The epilogue in which Robin leaves the hospital and Lulu realizes they’ve left something unsolved.

I’m not even sure I can do the same thing for ISB because when I try to determine an inciting incident, it doesn’t really work. Why? It goes back to the definition of that term. An inciting incident is supposed to kick off the story–something that sets everything into motion. That’s not what happens in ISB.

Possible inciting incidents: Elizabeth discovers she’s pregnant. Why doesn’t this work? Let’s forget the fact that I wrote in the possibility of the kid being fathered by Ric, Zander, or Jason (yes, Virginia, I made my girl a Carly) and then promptly wrote it out in about five seconds.

The real reason this sucks as inciting incident is because it does nothing to affect Carly’s story. Yes, it does effect the Jason/Courtney arc, but it’s barely a blip on Carly’s radar.

What about Carly starting therapy with Cameron Lewis?  Does that work? It’s her inciting incident, so that’s why they’re both in the prologue. But it only affects one of characters

So the problems with story structure go back to point one. I had no central event to tie it together, so without that as an inciting event, the rest of the story falls apart.

ISB has pacing problems — entire characters disappear for some time, storylines stall for several chapters. I could go into a chapter-by-chapter, scene by scene break down on why it doesn’t work. I’m not going to do that here, but you can certainly see some of the points in the story where I’m just meandering.

3. Fanfiction in the Soap Opera Fandom

This is less about the pantsing aspect and more about the overal fandom and conept of fanfiction. I’m sure some people think: Well, you’re overthinking this. Soap operas don’t have general themes. There are always unrelated storylines happening, why does it matter if ISB doesn’t have a central arc?

This is the major difference between watching a soap opera on television and writing fanfiction for it. The written page has to capture your interest in a way the visuals don’t. You’ll watch day after day because of the performances.

The written word doesn’t have the advantage of Jason Thompson’s gorgeous dimples or Rebecca Herbst’s flawless delivery. I have to get your interest in the first chapter and keep it until the final words. You do that by writing a tightly-structured, well-paced story that doesn’t make you feel like you’re wasting your time.

We’ve all read books or fanfictions that meander, that drift from the point, that don’t hold our attention. Fanfiction has to be different than a soap opera, so you either write a concentrated story about one set of characters (A Few Words Too Many is a decent example of this) or you write an ensemble story that’s based around a central theme or event. If it doesn’t start that way, you have to have it emerge within the first few chapters.

Think GH’s large sweeps stories during November and February–the ones that really worked. The February 2006 virus storyline is a particular favorite of mine. They were able to kill off characters, deepen relationships, continue the introduction of new characters, provide jump off points for future stories, and it worked because they had one story to wrap it all around. Ensemble fanfictions should take the format of a sweeps story: a major event that effects a big group of characters.

Conclusion

So what can you learn about writing without a plan by looking at The Witness and I Shall Believe?

(1) Keep story structure in mind. You have to have something happen every few chapters to keep the story moving forward.

(2) You either have to have one major story and one set of characters or a large ensemble cast tied to a central theme/event.

A Few Words is an example of the first type. The main story is Ric as a threat to Elizabeth and her child. Because Sonny is Ric’s brother and Jason is Elizabeth’s love interest, you can draw in the characters related to them, particularly Carly, Emily, Audrey, Courtney, and Nadine (whom I added in this).  Though Ric’s threat is the main story, the use of these characters allows for subplots that all tie into the major story.  One main throughline with subplots, all of which affect a small set of characters. The Best Thing also falls into this category. Jason has custody of Sam and Sonny’s daughter. How does this affect the people around him? 

Daughters is a close approximation of the second type, though it’s certainly not perfect. It has both an inciting incident (Robin returns to Port Charles after years of radio silence) and a central theme of family and relationships. I have four women: Robin, Elizabeth, Emily and Lulu, who are all intimately involved in one another’s lives. Even though they each have their own tragedy and story, they link together through their relationship to one another and their family.

So this is turned out to be less about pantsing, ha, because when you really break down the process of writing these two stories, their successes and pitfalls have nothing to do with the fact I didn’t know what the hell I was writing about from chapter to chapter, but that I forgot the cardinal rule of writing with ISB: Story Structure is king.

It’s also important to note that ISB was written in 2003-04, and The Witness in 2006-07, so that’s anothe factor in why the latter is better than the former. I had learned–from writing Mad World and ISB badly–to avoid similar mistakes.

Future Articles

With all my emphasis on story structure here, I suppose that would be a natural next story topic, probably with A Few Words Too Many as my case study. I was also considering some more on characterization. How to utilize a character’s history and biography to inform their actions, some resouces to do so. Thoughts? Requests?

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Introduction to Series: After many moons of writing fanfiction, I’ve learned what works for me and what doesn’t.  I thought, since I’ve been doing this for sixteen years, I could ramble about my process for a while and offer some insights. If anyone cares. Possibly, they don’t.

This is the only time I’ll publish this in the site news section as well. Once I’ve written another one, I’ll create a page for them. I hope they’re useful. I get bored.

Inspiration 

So I’ve written a lot of stories. I plan to write a lot more. Why? Because I keep getting ideas. It’s an issue. Where they come from? God. I wish I knew.

Seriously, they often come when I’m watching the show. I find myself thinking — what if that character had said this or did that? What would it take for this concept to work? What if instead of doing that, they had done this?  So it’s basically either a What If or a How Can I approach, which is why I mostly work in Alternate History.

For example, I’m currently working on The Best Thing, which as I remark on the story page, began as a completely different concept. Shortly after Lila Quartermaine’s death in the summer of 2004, I found myself wondering how GH would handle that? Or how should they? Would her family members return? So once you start with that aspect, you have to think about where to set it. For me, I didn’t want it so close to Lila’s death, so I picked the spring of 2005, which meant I had to fill in the background for the characters during the intervening ten months.

Which is where the concept of Sam’s death and Jason assuming custody of her daughter came from. At the time I began the development of the story, Jason had assumed the paternity of the baby. I suppose GH had always intended to kill the kid off and there was never any chance Kelly Monaco’s Sam character would be eliminated (though, wow, imagine the fun that would have been). But at that point, it was still in the future. So I opened the story in May 2005, with Jason and Elizabeth engaged and raising Cam and Sam’s daughter, who in that story was named Lila.

I wrote about six chapters back then, all of which were unposted for some reason. I had Sarah and Steven back in town, a large storyline planned for Elizabeth’s parents. Audrey’s biological son, Tom Hardy, would return with his son TJ and his ex-wife Simone, etc.  I had just started exploring the concept of Sonny and Carly looking to regain custody of the baby when my computer crashed.

So Rule #1: Always back up. Use Dropbox. Email your stories. Work from a thumb drive. Whatever has to happen for your stories to stay secure.

I let the story linger for a while, always kind of intending to return to it, but then I had my six year absence so all my stories fell off the radar.

When I returned, I found the old banner image I had once created for The Best Thing.

So as you can see, I had intended for the story to be based on the Webbers. However, when I began to develop a new plan for it, I realized how much I had changed as a writer. I had never really tackled the hows and why of Jason having custody of the baby, which I knew would have to be in the story.

Characterization

Once I began to explore that, I began to see this as less of Elizabeth’s story and more of Jason’s journey. I think I can really count on one had how often I really put Jason at the forefront of my stories. Mostly, because I feel like I have the most trouble explaining him as a character. For a character to work on the page, you have to explain their motivations. Characters like Carly and Elizabeth are relatively easy to do this with. Carly is very different in The Best Thing than she is in A Few Words Too Many or even other stories on my site, because of the starting point on the show.

What drives Elizabeth? Why does she continually end up in relationships that are unequal? Why would she stay with Lucky so long or remarry Ric? Why would she have an affair with Nikolas? For me, explaining away these things goes back to her rape and that year with Lucky, where she started to piece herself back together only to shatter all over with Lucky. She’s based on that–never feeling quite right, always a bit damaged. Looking to save someone because it might save her.

For Carly, it’s all about insecurity about being abandoned and a belief that she is fundamentally entitled to more than what she has. It’s what drove her to seduce Tony, to drug AJ, to sleep with Sonny and even turn him into Feds. Straight up until her cover up of AJ’s murder. Carly, in her own head, will always be a trailer trash nobody who has to spend her entire life hoping no one sees that in her. But she trips up — she looks to protect herself before anyone else. And she always thinks about the short-game, not the long-game.

But Jason? The show hasn’t done as well keeping his character arc intact. Change in a character is fine. You want your character to change, to grow. It’s what allows soap operas to thrive for generations. But when Jason returned to the show in 2002, this began to falter. Initially, Jason’s accident left him with a clean slate. Emotions, looking to the future, basic human interactions, were all a myster to him and they had to be relearned. He once prased this beautifully in a conversation with Elizabeth in 1999 that I have referenced in several stories because it, to me, is what makes Jason essentially who is.

He tells Elizabeth that half of what he learned, he learned from Robin, and the rest from Sonny. He grew up in Sonny’s eyes, but not in Robin’s, which is why their relationship couldn’t work anymore. And it was such a fantastic expression of what went wrong with the J/R storyline. Robin, because she had always been in the role of teacher with Jason, believed she knew better and told the truth about Michael to AJ. She wanted to stop Carly from using Michael like a weapon. Jason never forgave her for that, not really. When they would share scenes together later after Robin’s return, their friendship was there, but Jason never saw her as anything more again. The pain was too fresh.

Jason’s character was a simple man — he didn’t lie about every day things, he didn’t see the point. He really only told the one lie about Michael’s paternity and his reasoning always seemed so right to me. I really believe had that situtation occured later in Jason’s life, in his development, with more distance from the Quartermaines to begin to see their true selves of being selfish yet incredibily loyal and loving as he would in later years–I can’t see him making those same choices.

But Michael’s paternity comes up at a time when the Quartermaines have done nothing but treat him as a brain damaged pale version of a man they loved so much more than Jason Morgan. Though most of the Qs came to value JM later in life, in those early years, there was such a deep desire to have JQ back that they drove Jason away. And Jason watched them torture each other the way they’re wont to do without understanding the core love they have for one another. (They can mess with each other, but an outsider better step off)  He tells Robin during that heartbreaking conversation regarding her telling the truth that he wanted Michael to belong to himself, to grow up and make his own choices about the Quartermaines.

So Jason, like Elizabeth and Carly, has this fundamental event that shapes who he is and how he responds to sitation. Not the accident itself, but rather what came after. The way he was treated by others. He shied away from anyone who saw him as less than whole, so the Qs and Keesha were out the door. Robin would eventually be discarded because she couldn’t see him for he thought he was. He never grew up for her–he would aways be a damaged man she had to take care of. This core of his character helps me understand why he’s so fiercely loyal to Sonny and Carly, despite all reasons not to be. And even why he gravitated towards Courtney in some ways. They look to him to fix their problems. Jason was never a damaged entity to them, but someone who could be relied upon. Someone they could trust.

Which is the characterization I come to for The Best Thing. I work with that concept in my head — that Jason has always been a caretaker. Before the accident, he cared for AJ to his own detriment. Early on, Audrey refers to a conversation with Lila about Jason Morgan inheriting the worse of Jason Q’s traits — that he’ll look out for Sonny until it leads to his own destruction.

So when I started to redevelop TBT last spring, I began with why would Jason take on this responsibility? This heartbreak of raising another child who isn’t his? After the pain of Michael, it would have to be something really big to make that work. And once you ask that question, there’s a logical follow up. Why would Sonny allow it? So it has to go back to this caretaking role. Jason claimed paternity to protect Michael and Morgan, to protect Sonny and Carly. He kept it going because he wanted to take care of Sam and her wishes. And he’ll do it until he’s destroyed to take care of Evie.

So it’s not enough to have a good idea. You have to make it work for the characters. I read ideas for Liason stories all the time that I don’t feel speak to who these people are as characters. Deeply flawed and complex characters. They often come off as so one-note and superficial. And Jasn is a constant battle — so many stories have him saying and doing things without explaining why.

The most important principle of writing fanfiction is that with soap operas, you can do anything. The audience will suspend their belief. They will accept a lot of things. But you have to keep it in character. You can twist motivations to do a lot of things, but you have to begin with the core of that character and take them on a journey. Otherwise, it feels false.

Development

The Best Thing, in its original form–even in its secondary form–looks nothing like the story I’ve been writing for the last six months. There are lot of reasons why that happened. I had an initial vision of the story–one that ultized the 2004 concept. Elizabeth was a student nurse, Jason was a harried single father. She moves in for a while to help him out and their relationship developed from there.

I had planned to keep the opening in May 2005 with Audrey’s funeral, but I tend to write out the backstories for characters so I can have it fully visualized as I write. As I wrote the backstory, I realized that I had to tell the story of Sonny and Carly as well.  And how could I ignore them as part of the backstory? So the more I developed this aspect, the less it worked for me to keep that initial idea of opening it in May. So, it got moved back to December, to shortly after Evie’s birth.

I really wish I had retained the earlier plot sketches but they’ve been discarded. I had kept the Webbers in the story, plannig to have them as a complication to add conflict to Jason and Elizabeth’s relationship. Her mother would be suffering from an illness, Elizabeth would be guilted for not paying enough attention. I kept that for a while, but I couldn’t make a timeline work, and then I realized that I didn’t need a conflcit in the Liason relationship. It would be superficial and I couldn’t think of way to break it down by scene. It’s one thing to have an idea, it’s another to make it work on the screen.

So I eliminated the Webbers, and had to track back. I realized I didn’t want to kill off Audrey after all. I wanted her as a sounding board for Elizabeth. I also didn’t really like the concept of Elizabeth playing surrogate mother and nanny to Jason and Evie. I thought it would devalue Elizabeth as a character. So I had to rebuild her storyline. Which is how you get her, coming home from California after so many months to be with her grandmother and brother, to raise Cam among family.

And once I put Elizabeth in that position, it became blindingly obvious how I should tell the Liason story against the backdrop of Jason’s struggles with Sonny and Carly. They should meet at the crossroads in their lives and fall in love the way they did once before, back in 1999.

After that, I had completed an initial plot sketch which I sent to Cora, who serves as my beta reader and my savior. If you’re at all enjoying the Carly and Courtney aspects of this story (and by enjoying, I mean you find them useful and good additions to the story), she’s the reason. I realized that I had kept Courtney out as a service to myself because I was never much of a fan, but I had ignored the crucial aspect she could provide — to explain Carly’s motivations in a way that wouldn’t be a ton of info dump POV scenes. And her presence adds a great layer to the overall story because I can give closure to an aspect of Jason’s life, and even honor the budding friendship Elizabeth and Courtney once enjoyed.

And that’s how The Best Thing was inspired, characterized and developed as a story. I used that story as a case study for how I approach all my stories now. I used to be pantser — I Shall Believe was written without much forethought and man you can see it.

Why is it a good thing to know where you’re going in a story? To know the end of the journey? What are the detriments when you don’t? Maybe that should be the next article. The Perils and Peaks of Pantsing, using I Shall Believe and The Witness as case studies. If anyone actually reads this and wants to read more of my rambling.

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