This month, Lon, Janet and Marianne join JP and Crys for another book club, this time reading Take Off Your Pants! by Libbie Hawker. They discuss hot takes, useful advice, and how they will incorporate this book’s lessons into their writing.
Question of the week: What were your hot takes from Take Off Your Pants! by Libbie Hawker? Share your answer here!
Don’t miss our weekly check in on Patreon (it’s public!) where we talk about what we’re currently learning, any thoughts we missed in last week’s episode, and our plans for this week!
Show Notes
Take Off Your Pants!: Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing by Libbie Hawker
The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby
Your Book, Your Brand by Dana Kaye
Transcript
JP: Hello friends. This is episode number 65 of the Write Away Podcast. And it is the 12th of October as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my cohost…
Crys: Crys Cain.
JP: Hello, Crys. And we have a book club today, so we are joined with…
Lon: Lon Varnadore.
Marianne: Marianne Hansen.
Janet: And Janet Kitto.
JP: Excellent. And we are discussing Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker.
Crys: So Take Off Your Pants is supposed to be kind of plotting book for people who don’t like to plot. One of the things I really liked that she says about it, and this is part of my hot take, is that she doesn’t use it for every book and it’s not for every writer. This is just a way that works for her that helps her get her commercial fiction out very quickly. She uses an example of, she had an outline that she’d written, I don’t know, years before, and the editor was like, Hey, can we, you know, get this second book in production? And she’s like, yeah, like how about we get it done in three weeks? And they were like, whoa, is that enough time for a good book? She was like, yeah, I’ve got a great outline. We’ll be good to go. And she pumped out of 98,000-word book in three weeks.
Now, while I think that speed is not the best judgment on whether a plotting system works or not, I do think that’s a testament to the power of a good outline for a person who works well with outlines.
JP: So let’s start it off with some hot takes. What you all got?
Lon: I mean, you know, amazing that the guy who has his pants on thinks that the whole plotting thing is a bad thing. I remember a while back when I first read the book and I looked at it, I tried it. Like, it’s not like I haven’t tried this. I did actually try it.
And I got like little novella out of it. Then I looked at it again and it’s rubbish. So it’s like, well, I have to go back and rewrite this. It still felt very confining while doing it. So it’s still something that’s not for me. But hey, I will say for those who want to plot or something, it would definitely be a very good how-to for beginners.
Marianne: I bought this on audio book and my biggest issue with it was then I had to buy it on Kindle because I wanted to try it. I wanted to try the steps that it goes through and you need to see the outline. Like I tried to listen to it and write down what was being said and I couldn’t. It was just too hard to process. And if somebody else is better at learning this way better than I am, I think I’m more of a visual learner, but I ended up buying the audio and understanding what was being said so much easier.
I’m using they because I think it was a man who read the book and so I’m getting really confused.
JP: That is correct. I also had the audio book and I’m in the same boat as you. When I first listened through, I had no idea what they were talking about and I had the Kindle, so I opened that up and got to see exactly. Yeah, just the audio book alone I think I would’ve been more lost. And it was odd because I was like, wait, halfway through listening to it, I’m like, isn’t this by someone named Libbie Hawker. And I was like, voice doesn’t match. And then I figured out that yes, it was read by a man named Nathan.
So Janet, what is your hot take?
Janet: Yeah, my hot take is kind of going to be a repeat of what’s already been said, but I think the book is, like, if you want to have more confidence in your writing by planning out your story, then I think this book gives you a basic template to build on. And it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to still waste time in words trying to figure out what story you’re going to tell because I think any method you have to practice. But my take was that the intention of this book was to make the writing process for regular releases more efficient.
JP: Yeah, I totally agree. I like this process. I don’t know how much I’m going to actually use it. But I think that it’s a useful tool to have for me, because I’m outline heavy and then I get myself too knotted up.
So sometimes I like just going this route and then being able to be a little bit cleaner. And I did this on a short story recently and it worked out really well. So that’s my hot take is that I think it works for some things and for some people, but not everyone.
Crys: Yeah. One of the things I do like is that it has, like I’ve mentioned before that when I’m plotting, I need slightly more points than three story method has, which is just three. And that is your conflict, choice and consequence. And that’s too few for me to feel comfortable when I’m plotting to draw the dots together. But I almost had this like freak out sense of overwhelm when I looked at her basic scenes that she’s like, these are the scenes to figure out for my plotlines.
I was like, oh, that’s too much. I’ve mentioned the w plot before, and that has like nine points. This had a bit more than that, and I didn’t count them because I got overwhelmed. But when I was reading through the plot points that she has, specifically in her example of one of her main character threads that she was sharing, she shared that main character’s full plot points, then it made sense to me. And I saw that some of them repeated themselves. That was her murky middle. She has a series of three actions that follow one after the other that I really like. It made sense and I think I will often be stealing.
So it is, new drive for goal and packing list attacks and then thwart number three. And people who have trouble with the seven-point plot structure, and I don’t know if you guys have ever played around with that one, that one has things that calls plot points and pinch points.
And it has confused the ever-living daylights out of me ever since I encountered it. I have friends who like that works for them, they get it, they can roll with it. And for the life of me, I cannot keep plot points and pinch points straight with that method. And what I think she has here is something similar in a completely different structure, but that thwart element that she has is a new external conflict that comes in. And I don’t know if I’m being confusing, explaining this to anyone who hasn’t read the book yet. But the thwart aspect, what helps keep the murky middle from being murky.
So as we’re moving through a book, we’re trying to follow the main character changing, right? I think if we only had main character tries something, the main character fails and then has to try something again, that has always felt really flat and boring to me because you’re focusing on the same thing over and over. And I think this was a new key for me, is like when you throw in that thwart element where something new and external, related to things that have been going on.
Some people might say, Hey, this is the elements of the side plot or whatever, or a subplot, like they might define this as a subplot, though she has several that are her thwart aspects. It’s something outside that comes in and like makes things more complicated and worse. Rather than it always being a direct consequence of the character’s actions. It’s something else that comes inside and says, oh, and now I’m gonna make it worse. That’s kind of how I’m processing that.
Janet: I actually liked in this book that she dives into that it’s not about plot, that it’s about the story core. And plot and story, they’re not the same thing when it comes to outlining, like that the focus was on the character arc, was on the pacing, it was on the theme. And as she talks about it, plot is a sequence of events, and those are the things that you can play with.
So if you want to pants, you can still pants because you’re dealing with the plot. What you’re outlining is the story core. So I think that all ties into that. Like, I’m not gonna think about those pinch points either.
JP: Yeah, there was a part to it that I really liked because it resonates with my thoughts towards how theme can be used as a hypothesis for each scene. And she brings up several points in here where, you know, like Charlotte’s Web isn’t going to end a certain way because that doesn’t really fit with the theme.
I can’t remember these exact examples, but they really hit to the point, like, if you think about the overall story core, of course it’s not going to hit these themes at the end because that has nothing to do with what the story’s about. And I think that when you take that step back and you kind of look at that, that was the part that I really liked was that story core aspect and how each scene and how even the ending interplay with each other and tell this narrative through this theme and that’s how it drives forward.
Crys: And one of the interesting things I found, and I think I had this with Story Grid as well, when they extract what they think the theme is from books that I have read, I often disagree with them and that’s completely okay because reading is subjective. And that’s a good thing to remember that when we write, no matter what we think the theme is, even if we’ve expressed it extremely clearly, there are going to be some people who come away with something completely different. Because it’s this interplay of the reader’s own background and what they have learned about life, interacting with our text. And then they’re going to see things completely different than how we would see them.
Lon, was there anything that you took away that is useful for you?
Lon: I will say that some of the things you’ve talked about, like the thwarts and the idea of building the core of the story, there are good elements to that. And the thing is, this would not be something that I would use on like a first draft. It’d be more like, you know, this is like a second/third type of thing. And that’s how I felt about several of the books. It’s always been like definitely not a first draft thing for me, but afterwards there are some good elements in here, like the thwart and some of the other ones that you mentioned.
Crys: Yeah. A new drive towards the goal, the antagonist attacks, and then the thwart. I mean, she had five or six of these occurring one after the other, leading up to the climax.
Lon: So yeah, but there are several points that I have used in the past and I still once and again will if I’m stuck, and I will think of it in like, what is a new drive or what is a thwart that I could possibly use?
Marianne: I have to admit, I paid more attention to the beginning of the book than the end of the book. Just because I liked how she started with character. I thought that how important it was that you think about all of the goals and the things that your character wants first, and that will then lead to who the allies are and the antagonist and all of those things. I appreciated that. And I started to do that with my work in progress. And I was doing great until I came up against the antagonists, which I guess is what the antagonist is supposed to do. I was just hoping that the antagonist would only work in my character’s life and not in my own.
Crys: Yeah, how she approaches from a character aspect really reflects how I also approach telling my stories. The only thing that just drove me bonkers, and I think this is just a very personal thing, it’s not something that everyone will feel the same, her describing her focusing in on you need to find your character’s flaw, their fatal flaw. How she described it was great. I loved it. But anytime someone says flaw, it’s very confusing for me. I much prefer KM Weiland describing it as the lie of your character believes. And in the way that Libbie uses it, it is the exact same. It is the lie your character believes, it is the flaw they need to fix. I don’t know. I just cringe at using the word flaw and that’s me bringing my own backstory to the table.
Janet: Can I say something more about theme? Because I think in this context, we’re talking about outlining and so it’s to be our guidepost. Like it’s not supposed to be something that the reader is going to figure out. It’s not supposed to be like a higher meaning or anything, it’s supposed to be so that we keep some kind of unifying story throughout.
So what else do I want to say about this? Like, I think that you have to think about themes so that you can avoid overwriting if you’re going to be outlining and thinking about themes. So theme, it’s also good to know that so that you can write your blurbs.
Crys: It definitely helps. I don’t know if she mentioned that, I didn’t pick up on that, but it definitely helps writing your blurbs.
And I liked generally, how she, not necessarily how she described theme, but the examples she used were very in line with Brian McDonald’s idea of armature. They were sentences that could be proven or disproven. Except for her example of her own book, which was like exploring an event through three different viewpoints. And like, that’s not a theme, that’s a structure. But that’s just me being pedantic over here.
JP: I think though, that can allude to like how it’s difficult for you to pick your own theme out of your own work. And it’s something that, for those that want to work with theme, they have to sit down and think about like, what does this flaw truly mean? What am I trying to speak about this flaw or this lie my character tells themselves? And that’s why I like the aspects of armature so much because it’s that proof that you can use. But yeah, it leads to a good point that she struggles to truly define it in one way. That at least you pick up on the sentence that you’re giving for everything else that begs the question that, yes, it does take a lot of work to figure out what your theme is.
Crys: Now, one of the things that she brought up that I honestly haven’t really seen any other craft writer cover, and that doesn’t mean that they haven’t. Chances are somebody has written it, I’ve read it and then just glazed past it. But how you end scenes and chapters, she calls the technique a symbol crash.
And she gave an example of a perfectly well-written scene that started, finished, had all of the conflict, choice, consequence, even though, you know, she doesn’t talk using three story method, but that’s what we’re familiar with. And then it just ends. And then you go on to the next scene and she’s like, but what happens if you basically add a bit of denouement, like a little punctuation, a symbol crash.
And she puts just like a paragraph of imagery and worry at the very end of it. And she was right. It flows so much better. The scene had so much more emotional impact just from that little image there at the end. And that is one of my weaknesses, is how do I end a scene? How do I move from one scene to the next without being abrupt?
And that was possibly the most helpful thing that I got out of this book, not to say that I didn’t get a lot of other stuff out. And it’s funny because I’ve read this years ago and don’t remember a lick of it, it was like reading a brand-new book.
Marianne: I would say that part is also lost in the audible version. Because I listened to it and then when they said add the symbol crash, I’m like, I don’t know how this is different. Like, I don’t remember enough of how different it was. And so, I thought that in the audible version, they should have had an actual symbol crash and that would have helped me so much more to know where that was. And perhaps it’s just me or the fact that maybe I was doing something while I listening to it as well.
Crys: I definitely flipped back and forth between the two.
JP: Yeah. I had to stop doing what I was doing and listen, because I was like, ah, I have to hear this, otherwise I’m not going to get it. And even then it was very difficult in the audio version.
Lon: Kind of a weird little tangent from this. Because as I’ve said before, I actually went to school for this. And I remember cause the thing that I wrote was a mystery book essentially. And you need those in every chapter, you need like the symbol crash, you need something.
And it’s funny because my writing instructor, the guy who was in charge, said, you should take those out. I was like, oh, okay? He’s like, you shouldn’t have something where the one chapter ends and then the next chapter begins a second or two after the chapter ends. Like, have you not read any mystery book at all? It was kind of strange. And this is someone who has actually written actual mysteries before. It was just like, what? But that was something that I already kind of knew, and I always am trying for at the end of every scene or chapter type of thing.
Crys: Yeah, I definitely have tried to leave like an open question at the end of a chapter. Like, what’s going to happen? But I had never had somebody to describe to me how to next level that transition/image at the very end. Yeah.
Janet: I think the example of the triangles and squeezing your character towards the point of the triangle was more useful.
Probably because I’m a visual person, and the symbol crashing, I think more about pacing than I think about like the end of the scene. I also think about the triangle. I already used that in three-story method. I already am using that methodology.
Crys: Yeah. I thought that her triangle and three-story method meshed very well together. Those two ways of approaching it very cohesive together.
Janet: And the idea that they’re all nested together, too. Yeah.
Marianne: The one issue I had with the visual was that you have like the name of the main character, and then you write down five numbers, and you skip everything, and then go to the flaw. I didn’t understand why number two could not be the flaw. And like, I couldn’t understand that. I don’t understand why there couldn’t have been like seven numbers and why number four is actually like number 10.
Crys: So to describe what Marianne is referring to, her story core structure is, you write down five numbers, and then number one is you write your main character in a bit of a description about them. But then you jumped below the numbers and you write what their fatal flaw is.
And then you jump back to the numbers and you write number five, like how the story’s going to end. And it was very much jumping back and forth, which does reflect the creative process a lot. But for someone who’s following someone else’s process, it feels very not right. And that’s probably just from coming out of a school system where you do number one and then you do number two, and then we’re like used to instructions. And these instructions were not in order.
Marianne: And I did not understand why the flaw and the ally didn’t have numbers, but the antagonist did have a number.
Like I wanted, I didn’t get that. And this has nothing to do with like the main part of what I learned from it. But I kept waiting to understand why an ally had no number. And I felt so bad for the poor little ally. It reminded me of Goose in Top Gun. You just feel bad for him the whole time.
Crys: Now I need to go listen to the Top Gun soundtrack.
So, Like Lon said in his hot take, that he thinks this is good for people who are beginning to write and learn to plot. I found really useful things as a somewhat veteran writer. And even with my overload, with the felt like giant list of scenes that she’s like, these are your basic outline.
As I read through them and took them one by one, they spun up plot elements for me reading through them. And I think if I were to write the whole list of scenes out first, and then try to tackle them one by one, I would be completely overwhelmed. But if I just write one and then write the next, it might work really well for me. I haven’t tried it yet. But I’m going to.
Marianne: I haven’t gotten to the end of the written book. Does she have the whole entire list out at the very, very end where it goes one through five plus all of the plot points, which I believe is number four, plus flaw, ally, and theme? Does she do that?
Crys: Kind of, she gives her version of her Pocahontas story where she does 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and flaw, ally, theme, and then all of her scenes. But I don’t think she has a blank version of it just sitting in the book, which is unfortunate because that would be useful.
Janet: Has anyone read The Anatomy of Story by John Truby?
Crys: I haven’t yet. It’s on my to-read list.
Marianne: I’m like, I think I have it to my left, right within arm’s reach. But no, I haven’t read it yet.
Janet: Because this book, she talks about it throughout her own book.
Crys: Yeah. And I’ve heard really good things about how Truby approaches storytelling as well, which is why he’s been on the to read list, but it has not happened yet. Perhaps it shall be a Write Away option for our next book club.
JP: Before we go, why doesn’t everyone tell us where we can find them. Janet?
Janet: You can find me at janetkitto.com.
JP: Lon?
Lon: On Instagram, @dragolite36.
JP: Perfect. And Marianne?
Marianne:@mariannehansenauthor on Instagram.
Crys: Perfect. Links will be in the show notes.
Okay. So to wrap this up, overall, I love this book and I forgot everything about it from the first time, which goes to show that not every book is for you at every stage of your writing career. And also, you can learn new things from old reads. For next month for our November book club, we will be reading Your Book, Your Brand by Dana Kaye.
Join the pleasure of listening to Dana talk about branding. She had some really great worksheets. I’m definitely looking forward to getting this book. I think branding is something that JP and I have been focused on a lot. And we’re dragging everybody else with us. Cause it’s the armature for our writing careers once we figure it out. And it’s so much harder to figure ourselves out than it is every other book that we haven’t written and everyone else.
Marianne: I think I’m going to do next book club lying on a couch.
Crys: Yeah, the branding books, you should definitely be lying on a couch. They turn into counseling sessions for you. So that’s the book we’ll be reading next month.
And then if you are a member of our Patreon, you’ll be able to help us choose our book for December, which will include John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller.
So that will be on our Patreon, which you can join for as little as a dollar a month. And you will be able to join us live for these book clubs and join in the full chaos. Thanks so much for joining us this week.
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