For those of you don’t know what a pantser is, it’s somebody who doesn’t necessarily have a clear image of the story they’re going to write. I’m speaking from my experience here, every writer may have a different interpretation. But generally, a pantser makes the story up as they go without an outline already prepared.

This can make for very very chaotic first draft, especially. So I thought I would give some ideas on how to go forward when you’ve got one of those very chaotic first drafts.

There’s four different ideas that I’ve picked up in writing courses, in interactions with other writers, and on the advice of a literary agent.

So the first idea is that at some point you need to really set down your structure story, even if your’re a pantser at heart. While a ‘plotter’ would do this before writing, for a pantser, it’s better to do it after you’ve got a first or second draft. You’ve spewed out your ideas. So now sit down and figure out what the structure is to give those ideas the narrative form that will make them compelling to read. This was a particularly good piece of advice for me because I do tend to write messy long stories.

So you can go study of the three act structure anywhere online (I know I often write more towards a five act structure than a three act structure but still idea that you’re defining a structure and then you’re wedging your story into it). Doing this, you will discover what story beats need to be given more prominence, maybe this whole sub-plot is a distraction that doesn’t need to be there, and you’ll get a clearing picture of your story.

The second idea that I got from my course was from another student who said that when she’s finished writing a scene, she looks at it and thinks how would the scene be if one of the other characters were the POV in that scene. I’ve been finding that actually a very useful little trick to get through scenes that are necessary but awkward mainly because they’re trying to give too much information.

It’s hard to kind of give an example for this without giving away things. There’s a theme of racism that runs through TAU CETI. It’s hard to explore from either the male main character or one of the two female main characters cause they’re both white. But the other female main character is not white and so recasting some of the scenes from her perspective allows us to see her experiencing racism in a way that simply having white characters witness it fails to register.

This is something that I will explore in its own separate blog post coming in the first week of July 2026. I’ll link it here when it happens.

The third idea is one that I just discovered through the social network Threads. It’s the idea that chapter titles aren’t just for the reader but there to help them writer focus on exactly what the chapter is about. I’ve never used chapter titles. It’s not something that particularly interested in me.

But with this book being very problematic in its structure and the information that needs to come across, I’ve been finding that it meanders directionless in spots that will lose readership. So what I’m wanting to do with that is tightening up before I release it and one of the tools now that I’m using to tighten up titles.

There’s been a few chapters that I’ve looked at in this book where I can’t decide what would be a chapter title for it. That’s a huge red flag. If the author can’t define what the chapter is about in 1 to 5 words, there’s no way the readers going to stay with that chapter. So this is letting me flag which chapter specifically I need to focus on and figure out if I do need a whole chapter for this or can I reassert that information elsewhere while keeping the book tight and trim.

The fourth idea is to try what that Agent has suggested to me and that’s to write short stories. This particular agent, Janet Reid, used to host Friday flash events where she would give you five words and you had the weekend to generate a full story that incorporated those five words, but you can only use a grand total of 100 words. Every word counts, every word needs to be doing its utmost to fulfill the story.

You really become a tight writer when that’s what you’re being held to. While doing these, I discovered that writing in about the 2,000 word range was something that I could also do well; telling a tight, entertaining story in just 2,000 words.

So I guess those are four different methods you could use to help rescue a troubled work in progress. I know that’s what I’m doing right now you. You all get to see the results at the end of August 2026 when Tate comes out and hopefully I’ve done it right and you find it all enjoyable.