ROW80 A Pantsing Plotter

I have been able to write a little over 1000 more words.  I'm now in that awkward period wherein I've written everything that I have planned for this part of the book, but am not yet to the next point where I know what I want to write.  So, I'm percolating.  This is a new experience for me; I am a dedicated plotter.  I make reams and reams of notes and outlines before I ever write a "real" word.  That way, when the creative rush subsides, I still have a road map to follow.  With this benign literary possession, though, there has been no plotting.  I have a general idea of what I want to do, but that's it.  Against all odds, it's working, but I am left with a few not insignificant unanswered questions.

1.  I have a character named Denae.  She is a minor character.  Yet, with some tweaking, she could become a slightly larger presence and one with a LOT of emotional impact.  Still, though, I already have a lot of threads that I'm weaving together, and to do this right I'd have to weave her in as well.  I'm wondering if the potential for confusion is worth the "pow."

2. Then there is the question as to where this person would end her life.  If the Facility would allow her to end her days, catatonic though she may be, in their shiny halls then the aforementioned scene wouldn't matter. But would they do so?  Would they have the respect for the result of one of their experiments to ensure that she had the best of care? Or would they shuffle her off to one of the state-funded facilities in order to save money and, perhaps, an unpleasant reminder?  I'm not sure yet.

I'm hoping that I can figure out the answer to these questions; it's very odd moving forward blind, or at least myopic.  How about you? Are you a pantser or a plotter?

Here's another bit of what I've been doing:

.  And so I told her, slowly at first, watching her face ang gauging her reaction.  Soon though it was pouring out., all of it.  What the nurses had said, my feeling that Dr. Alyce had abandoned me, my fears about what others would see.  Most of all, what I thought my feelings meant.  That I had gone through all of this for  nothing. That I had lost my last chance to be normal.   By the end I was crying, snot bubbling out of my nose.  Basanti waited until the flow of words and slowed and stopped. 

  Then she spoke quietly.  “You are mad,” she said, “and scared. And sad.”  I nodded.  “Tell me,” she said, “have you blacked out?” I shook my head.  “Cut yourself?  Tried to commit suicide?”

“No.”

She didn’t say anything, just looked at me with her head cocked to one side.  And then it hit me. 

“No!” I said again.  She smiled broadly.  “See?” she said, “you are already makng progress.”

“But the rage, the fear-“

“-are all normal human reactions.  You didn’t think that the surgery would take away all pain, did you?”

I was quiet because, as ridiculous as it seems even now, that’s exactly what I had thought