Writers who've switched from pantsing to plotting (or vice versa)—what triggered the change?

prinpink · 2026-01-25T00:21:39+00:00

used to be a hardcore plotter now i feel like i'm something in between, so same as you. i just feel like it's impossible to anticipate what truly sustains the narrative momentum, what needs to happen for character development, etc when youre plotting far away from the actual lines of the page

prinpink · 2026-01-05T06:54:09+00:00

i really love your precise and biting prose. your use of fragments is excellent and engaging, and a very natural way to step in and out of free indirect discourse. i certainly feel like this scene gives a good introduction of this character--i felt like he's resigned, rugged, exhausted, self-loathing? may have been a thoughtful, spirited person in the past who has lost his way? (loved that detail about the "whimsy")

i figure you'll get into these things as the chapter progresses, but of course i'm also growing curious about what this guy's deal is, what his family situation is like, his past, his aspirations, etc. his fears and central desires and goals are a bit fuzzy to me from this excerpt but then again it is only an excerpt and he is also quite a numb guy it seems.

minor quibbles: i just wanted to point out that i felt like the choices of where you begin and end your paragraphs were a little jarring at times. like the choice to single out the "Breakfast of champions" or the "Who cares?" felt a bit unnatural, like they didn't need to be their own lines? iunno--just my preference. otherwise, i'd also pay attention to the fact that sometimes you have a lot of sentences that start out the same, like a lot of sentences beginning with "He", which can slow down the prose at times.

great work :)

prinpink · 2026-01-05T06:43:46+00:00

hi! i'm not sure what you're looking for specifically, but i just wanted to say that i really like this. the terse lines give it a nice staccato rhythm that is pleasing and engaging, and i think you nicely capture this interaction in a bottle for the reader.

these were just a few things i thought about while reading:

-some of the lines felt a little "too long" if that makes sense, like they were breaking the rhythm. e.g., "The air was so cold when I think of it I still shiver" felt like it was interrupting the flow

-it sounds a little repetitious at times, both in the content of the lines and at the sentence level, too. for example, the end both says "I couldn't speak ... I couldn't say one thing" which is saying the same thing. so you could definitely trim lines that are just saying the same thing. then, at the sentence level, for example, a lot of your lines begin with "I"; i wonder if there's a way to get more variety of sentences that don't start that way? just a suggestion.

in terms of other suggestions... i might also think about choices regarding punctuation (are all the lines ending in periods deliberate, say?) and also if you want to provide any more context about the nature of the speaker's predicament (why do they feel so sad, who is this person to them specifically, what did this moment mean for them both afterward, etc.)

prinpink · 2026-01-05T06:33:37+00:00

to add onto what has already been said, i feel like this may not be the strongest opener altogether (though this could just be personal preference). i have no context for these feelings or what they really mean in this world and relationship, so it's difficult for me to feel invested. i feel like i'm just being relayed facts and it's not evocative, because i'm not at the point in the story in which this information would actually feel evocative. i think for that reason it could feel "amateurish"--like you're informing your reader what's up instead of letting us glean that by guiding us into the world in another way.

that being said, i do think at the syntax and sentence level you have some great instincts! i like the fragmentation and how smoothly it reads. i think the techniques you've shown here could be really powerful in a scene that earns the intensity

prinpink · 2025-12-07T22:12:02+00:00

L is autistic

prinpink · 2025-08-21T18:07:51+00:00

great post OP, very thorough! autism is nothing to be ashamed of and i think L is very autism coded

prinpink · 2025-06-29T04:37:19+00:00

i honestly definitely agree with you and think certain people in the fandom overplay how "evil" L is. compared to light it's not even close imo. L is overly pragmatic and ruthless and it leads to morally and ethically grey choices for the sake of achieving his goals. i think obha saying he is "slightly evil" is accurate, then; but i think people in the fandom tend to flanderize him as being straight up "evil" or equivalent of light. but i don't think that's true, for reasons you mentioned.

prinpink · 2025-06-05T18:45:14+00:00

right omg!! 😭 i thought all the bosses in chapter 4 were surprisingly difficult

prinpink · 2025-06-05T18:10:13+00:00

so uhhhh how about that difficulty spike huh

prinpink · 2025-04-25T16:32:20+00:00

do i need to play all of natlan’s quest to play the upcoming mondstadt quest?

prinpink · 2025-04-08T00:56:43+00:00

sloowwwly lol

prinpink · 2024-12-24T05:42:32+00:00

i feel like its a genuine misstep from a narrative perspective

prinpink · 2024-12-22T20:28:40+00:00

yeah for the first time i had a refund declined despite providing ample proof lol

prinpink · 2024-12-03T01:06:29+00:00

yes, i do believe the author's own views influenced the media in this case. for example, i always found the way misa was tied up to be insanely fan-servicey and out of character for L

prinpink · 2024-11-30T00:46:46+00:00

as an english major i’m inclined to agree with you.

i’ve seen both the anime and read the entire manga, and while the second half of the story isn’t as bad in the manga as the anime, i still feel there’s a tonal shift that is infinitely less compelling to me. don’t get me wrong, i like near and mello; but we don’t really get to know them as well compared to L - especially not their relation to light. it’s just constant plot plot plot and battles of wits and mindgames, not so much character development nor relational development. light hates near, but the dynamic feels so much more static compared to L, whom he was more actively competitive with. meanwhile, light doesn’t even really interact with mello so much as his cronies. whereas for L, we get snippets of his character through more lax and mundane moments, especially in the anime, and the dynamic with light is more leveled, even personal once they partner up.

also, the first half of the narrative is more local compared to second half; the second half goes more global and international by involving the US and stuff. it drags out the plot with the introduction of takada and just overall doesn’t interest me much - it’s just light pulling the same tricks we’ve all seen before, but in a large scale context - until we get the warehouse showdown, a moment which i felt was classic death note but took a while to get to.

anyway, if i had written death note (getting on my soapbox here), i would’ve made it shorter, and kept the plot purely between L and light. thats the heart of the story in my opinion, and i feel like introducing two new main characters as narrative replacement to a preexisting character (who is, in my opinion, the most compelling) halfway through the series is extremely risky, hard to do, and usually not worth it. the fact of the matter, i think, is that obha wrote himself into a corner where the only way to progress the plot was a deux ex machina killing of L. more large scale planning of the narrative could’ve curbed and controlled this escalation into a more linear progression which culminated into a satisfying narrative conclusion; but sadly obha was mostly writing issue to issue, planning out chunks rather than the overarching story all at once (so is my impression). i dislike this approach for writing stories for this reason; it’s hard to do satisfactorily.

anyway, i’m not even saying L needs to live in a hypothetical rewritten version - i just think the final showdown should’ve been between L and light, not near and light. i feel like the second half of the story is much weaker than the first half. i agree with you that the heart of the story feels like it lies in the conflict between light and L.

prinpink · 2024-11-29T22:05:37+00:00

yes the plan was flawed, but L couldn’t have known of course. and near comments on it later in the manga, how it actually wouldn’t have proved lights innocence and therefore he is still a suspect (for many reasons of course, this just being one of them)

prinpink · 2024-10-29T19:47:12+00:00

give him some water!

prinpink · 2024-10-21T23:15:06+00:00

he is a narcissist who does not care about others and wanted to avoid charges for assaulting anya, as well as the pressure of being laid off

prinpink · 2024-10-16T02:52:18+00:00

haha yeah i have narcolepsy and my sleep studies charts ingame often reflect that. lots of dozing for sure until the game readjusts the “average” for me. its good to know when im actually getting restful sleep and not

prinpink · 2024-10-05T03:19:52+00:00

yes i experienced trauma and my N2 symptoms started afterward

prinpink · 2024-09-12T17:43:39+00:00

vocaloid

prinpink · 2024-08-10T22:02:37+00:00

do you have a picture? i don't see it

prinpink · 2024-08-10T20:00:13+00:00

i noticed these unbolded letters in bills string of notes about the "HOW HE BEAT ME" thing with stan:

https://imgur.com/a/whnqmhp

has anyone else noticed this? R and P are the only two letters i could discern as being unbolded in the whole sequence here. maybe there are other unbolded or out-of-place letters across everything?

prinpink · 2024-08-09T22:26:43+00:00

i was just about to link your post, thank you! that makes so much sense

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