On Skeleton Drafts and Pantsing
This morning, around 10:00 AM, I finished the skeleton draft of a new novella about phantom punches, MMA, and a sailor who desperately wants to impress…well, pretty much everyone, including the reader. It started out as a project that drew inspiration from Robert Howard’s Sailor Steve Costigan stories, but quickly became its own thing. If nothing else, there’s less overt racism and sexism than Howard’s Costigan stories. Also, more starships and space stations. The skeleton draft is the phase of the project where the story is more-or-less done, but only in my head. In practice, there are scenes where I’ve locked down the major beats and narrative pivots, but haven’t yet locked them down. Or scenes where a secondary character appears for the first time, but doesn’t yet behave like they need to because I don’t know their role in the story until I push towards the final chapter and see their impact. Right now, the biggest unfinished scene is
