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One of the challenges in this current novel I am writing, created because I am “pantsing” it—writing the entire thing without a preplanned map or outline—is that I know certain things need to be solved, but the manner of that resolution was utterly unknown to me.

For example, the cultists who have set the plot into motion started everything some 52 years before the novel opens in 1984. Their actions, plots, plans, and objectives are buried in that history and drive the major action, both physical and supernatural, of the story. That’s all well and good, but for the protagonist to come out ahead—to defeat their plans—he has to first know and understand them, and he is way out of date.

There never was going to be a Bond or comic book-like scene where one of the bad guys takes the time to explain everything to my protagonist. That’s not this type of story, and it is not my style of writing.

I knew this problem existed, and in previous books I would have solved the trouble at the outline stage, having worked out a method that served the story, the character, and my own sense of plotting—but not when I am pantsing it. I started the manuscript with only the vaguest idea of precisely what was happening and why, much less any conception of how the “good guys” were going to get clued in on it.

Now I have completed Act 4 of 5, and I really, really need to answer that troublesome question.

And the answer came to me yesterday. It arose naturally, organically from events and backstory I had created along the way. There are details to be worked out and much establishing to do in the revision stage, but the shape can be seen, and it had been there for chapters and chapters—but it took me a good long while to see it.

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While I had hoped to get writing done at last week’s World Science Fiction Convention, the stress of the unhappy events made that nearly impossible. Oh, I managed to complete a scene I was in the middle of with an additional 600 or so words written during one session, but that was the sum total of my writing during the five days.

Yesterday, back at my day job, at lunch I got down 800 words on the next scene, and I can feel the narrative moving again. With this act nearly completed and only one act remaining, I can see the end of the manuscript, and I should reach it before September is done.

That leaves a lot of work yet to be done on it, though. This is the only novel that I have written by the seat of my pants, no list of characters and their traits, no outline showing all the major events, I just sat down and started the thing with scarcely any idea of where it was heading. That means that there is a lot of ‘reconstruction’ to do once I reach the end. For example, I now have a much clearer concept of the story’s themes, community being one of them. The communities that betray you and the ones that defend you has emerged as an element of the plot. It is also about outsiders to the wider culture and the insiders, and how that dynamic puts pressure on the individual. All of this I had no conception of when the first words hit the page, and now the revisions much strengthen and elaborate on these ideas.

Still, with luck and determination, I may have a completed novel ready before the end of the year.

v

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No, I am not referring to some sudden and terrific news I have received but rather to a classic refrain from characters in film, television, and prose that has always struck me as a bit false.

Characters suddenly finds themselves in some implausible situation, transported to a second-world fantasy or such and all too often they will insist or mutter or ponder if they are dreaming, because this simply can’t be real.

Here’s my problem with that. Dreams, no matter how strange and defying of conventional reality, always feel real. During the dream you don’t question them or their breaks in any rational logic, you always just accept them.

Yeah, I was at work talking to a co-worker, turned the corner of the hallway and now I’m back in high school and stuttering in front of a cheerleader. The transition from one reality to the next happens and you don’t question it.

So, a character opening their eyes and finding themselves surrounded by elves and the like isn’t likely to go off asking if this is a dream because that’s not how dreams work. Not only is the question clearly so overused to have become a cliche but the incongruity of the character asking that question breaks for me suspension of disbelief.

Joss Whedon, apparent scum that he is, I think really nailed the logical and illogical absurdity of dreams in the final episode of season 4 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. As we follow the characters through their dreams, being stalked by a supernatural entity to give the story some stakes, the world around them shifts and changes in the span of an edit but the characters do not notice. They do not question that the college has suddenly become the high school, that the back of the ice cream truck leads without a break into a basement. That is how dreams work and as we dream them, they feel right, they feel true.

I would advise to excise any mention of a character thinking that the fantastic environment that they find themselves in questioning if it is all a dream.