DRUNK DEBATE: Plotter vs. Pantser

A while back, an author friend of mine and I were on Facebook chatting about being a plotter versus a pantser.

(This is the post I lost. Found it! Sorry about that Brazil nonsense.)

She was the pantser, of course because I tend to think about an outline for my story, putting together notes for a beginning, a middle, and an end, and get it all together before I start writing my story in any meaningful way. Pantsers, I believe, don’t do that.

 

As we chatted, we thought it would be interesting to do a “pros and cons” kind of point/ counterpoint blog posts on our respective blogs. She’d talk about pantsing on her blog and link to mine for the counterpoints, and I’d talk about plotting and link to hers for the rebuttal.

 

Fun, writer-style.

 

For some reason, that point counterpoint never happened, but it’s always been in the back of my mind that we should do it, or maybe do a joint blog post discussing both sides.

 

Time moved on, and I was BSing with her again and we mentioned the plotter/pantser controversy again. She said, “You know, we should do that some time.” One of us – I don’t know who – made a comment along the lines of “You know what? We should just get drunk and do it live on Twitter or Facebook and see what happens. Maybe it will be funnier that way.”

 

Now, the reason why mentioned drinking is because if you chat with somebody on Facebook enough, every once in a while they’re going to have had a few at happy hour or something when you start up your chat.

 

You will notice they are much more likely to laugh or make typos. It’s a lot funnier for the person not drinking to mess with them at that point. People tend to laugh much more easily when they’ve had a few.

 

As we were chatting, we decided we would need a referee for our Drunk Debate. And since I chat with a lot of author friends online, I knew just the right person to rope into the conversation.

 

And so it was set up after much hesitation to actually have the Drug Debate. A three-party Facebook chat, where me and my other friend would do the point/counterpoint and our third friend would referee. We set a time and made up basic rules: we’d have 1 drink before we started, and 1 or 2 while we debated.

 

We are not exactly sure why we needed a referee, really, but one of us must have thought it might be a good idea – if we were both drinking – that somebody keep us on track. Somewhere along the line, that became all three of us would be drinking, and of course that meant no one would keep anyone on track.

 

As a result, at the scheduled day and time, we were all in fact on Facebook and having a chat and drinking. And also as a result, thanks to the alcohol, very little chatting about the topic got done. I think we were talking for 35 or 40 minutes before we even brought it up. We hired the wrong referee.

 

Anyway, we had a great time. LOTS of laughing.

 

And when we looked over what we had typed to each other, in order to see if it would in fact still be funny the next day and make for a good blog post, something I had suspected turned out to be true. That is, stuff that is funny in the moment when you’re drinking, often isn’t quite so funny the next day for people who weren’t there. So, no Drunk Debate blog post, just a fun memory with two adventurous friends who would probably do it again.

But!

One of the things we did think of was that it might be really fun/funny to have this chat live. Sober, but with real live writers and authors talking about author-y stuff. One thing, there would be a lot fewer typos, probably.

 

Also, you can do Google On Air and have three or 10 or 20 people all chatting like a TV show panel. It could actually turn into a social media must-see event, with two or three recurring hosts, and different participating authors, to discuss a topic.

 

And that is where you come in.

 

I still think it would be a lot of fun to get a couple of authors together from the safety and comfort of their own homes, and have a video chat that we can then air on our respective blogs.

 

One thing for sure, our new super blog would definitely benefit from that. Your fans love to hear your insights, love your personality, and frankly want to know little more about you. People like Jenny Bravo are constantly videoing, but of course she’s bubbly and photogenic, so it helps.

 

It would work like this. We pick a topic, we set a 10 or 15 minute time limit, we make a few notes ahead of time, (we probably do not drink), and then we just have at it.

 

Already sounds fun, doesn’t it?

 

Typically when a TV talk shows air, they do a few test shows first to get the kinks ironed out. I would recommend that, too, so the first couple of video chats would really be just to get the forum down and the mechanics right.

 

But on the hopes that it works well, this would be a standing invitation for like Wednesdays at 8 o’clock or Tuesday morning at 10 AM or whatever, to have a chat with authors, to promote yourself and your intellect etc. etc. as well as have something that you could share. My hope is that it will also be interesting and hopefully funny, so that, well… let’s face it, the funnier it is, the more likely people are going to share and enjoy it.

 

In my experience, education mixed with entertainment is much more memorable and shareable then education on its own.

To allay your fears (or underscore them) I have provided THREE videos of me.

1. The first is “Long QT TV” which will show you how the Google On Air works. Basically, you click in and whoever moves or talks, the camera goes to them. Watching a few minutes of this will give you the general idea. Ours will be great stuff, I’m sure. Here’s that link. (Just watch a few minutes.)
2. The second video is an example of what goes wrong when you video stuff, like having your five year old hold the camera when you do a bread making video. This is also for your amusement, so fast forward to about 1:30 when she starts holding up the Hello Kitty to the camera. Here’s THAT link.  The key is to just have fun. Nobody comes to your house and punches you in the nose if you make a bad video, and you don’t have to show it to anyone. Why did I show you this horrible video? To demonstrate that you won’t die if you make a bad video!
3. THIS video shows a relatively boring second half of a bread making video, after my wife took over for my daughter. Nothing very exciting, so remember to smile and be pithy. Witty works. Try to be witty. Here’s that debacle.

Which video is most memorable? Beats me. But nothing really bad happened, did it? So you can do it, too.

So that’s where it stands. A videoblog panel show where we discuss author topics, have fun and goof off to show authors are people, too.

 

Who’s in?