extrapenguin

I watched a YouTube video by Ellen Brock that categorized authors into four types based on a plotter/pantser axis and a methodological/intuitive axis. I already knew I was a plotter, but the methodological/intuitive bit was new. Then she said something along the lines of "methodological plotters usually do their major edits before even writing the outline" and suddenly, every problem I had ever had with every editing-related advice ever ("write a crappy first draft you can then edit!" etc) made so much sense. It does not apply, because I do my major edits before even typing up the outline, and then do any remaining major edits in the outline phase! In fact, this tendency is so strong for me that I once whined to a friend about having no idea where a fic was going and typed up the outline to show this – only for the friend to go "wtf, penguin, this is fine". I just hadn't been able to do the gross edits just by juggling stuff in my head; I'd had to put stuff down as an outline to discover what I wanted to do with the fic.

Brock also has some "signs that you think you're an X but you're actually a Y" stuff in her vid. She also has a playlist with the original video plus one ~30 min video for each type of writer with more specific guidance on problems common to the type and ways to solve them. Some of the methodological plotter issues weren't my issues, while other suggestions were pretty useful and I'm going to try them out in my current WIP of doom. I also watched the intuitive plotter video out of curiosity and basically everything there had me go "wow, this is super not applicable to me/I would find this counterproductive", lol.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure some of you would find this really interesting, and for me at least it showed why a bunch of advice just doesn't apply to my way of doing things. Did you have any revelatory experiences?

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