Jigsaw plot

This is where I am with my WIP right now:

At 35,000 words - coming up to half way - I've finally got my characters to Ethiopia, thus totally justifying my holiday there last year. And hell yes, I'm using those thousands of photos I took for reference purposes. I WANT TO GET IT RIGHT ... not that anyone reading the novel will care. *sigh*

As a die-hard Pantser, at 35K I've also hit the point where the writing process becomes really complex - a bit like doing a jigsaw where every piece has to be hand-carved as you go along. I'll sit down to write a new scene, moving the plot an other notch forward. But inevitably I also have to go back to one or more previous scenes to add a few lines of dialogue or a single adjective, to tie that scene into the new one. I have to make sure that the characters can proceed logically from one action to the next instead of making gigantic lucky guesses, and that they can look back on past scenes and suddenly realise the significance of a event or observation. That means a LOT of infilling of details.

I flew thousands of miles to take this photo, I'll have you know.

Three times now I've had to go back and insert entire new scenes that round out character motivation, or that will have the desired plot effect eight chapters down the line. And more embarrassingly, I've also had to backtrack to remove stuff. But just once.

Every scene must pull its weight. There's no padding.

I go to bed every night thinking about plot and wake up every morning thinking about plot. I've grown increasingly non-verbal around Mr Ashbless, as I'm constantly trying to keep every story detail in mind until I can get them written down.

Don't marry a writer, folks. Or maybe check if they are a Plotter or a Panster first!