Welcome to the first in a brand new guest blog series: Dissecting My First Draft.

When we think of books, we tend to picture the finished version. Shiny covers on bookshop shelves. Or much-loved tomes on your bedside table. But what about what came before? The spark. The mess. The scribbled notes and deleted chapters. The version the world never sees.

In this series, I’m peeling back the layers to explore how books begin. Each post invites a writer to reflect on their first draft —  the awkward start, the stubborn scenes, the unexpected characters who muscled their way in, and the many cups of tea (or wine?) that got them through.

To kick things off, I’m thrilled to welcome our very first guest, Chris Panatier, as he takes us behind the scenes of his brilliantly bonkers new novel, SHITSHOW — a horror comedy worth its weight in toilet-based supernatural humour. From a chaotic first concept to unexpected breakthroughs, Chris offers a no-holds-barred look at what it really took to wrangle a spark of an idea into something publishable. Weird. Wonderful.

Because, let’s face it, first drafts are rarely pretty. I can certainly testify to that! But still, they’re where the real magic begins…

Dissecting my first draft: SHITSHOW, by Chris Panatier

I am a very serious writer. Very serious. My books swim in the slippery viscera of societal cruelty, explore the nature of friendship and betrayal, and shine the light on the dark shadow cast by humanity.

So. Serious.

But one day something happened, and the dirty little seed was planted for my latest novel, SHITSHOW, a horror comedy pitting a latrine technician against a dark carnival. I didn’t have to write this book, but for some reason I did. Sometimes you have to follow the muse, yes?

What was that muse? How could anyone decide to write such a book? Well, those are good questions, and I’m glad I asked.

The answer: I was riding my bicycle past a port-a-potty and I heard the words, asked questioningly by my own mind: “Portal Potty?”

And my mind answered itself: “Oh yes.”

After doing a few minutes of research and deciding that no one else had tapped the potential of a conceit in which portable toilets are wormholes, I decided it would be me who would pen such a story. Now I just had to figure out what that story was.

“Portal potties. Sorta like in Doctor Who, except the Tardis is a shitter.”

SHITSHOW, page 115

I thought about the story for several weeks. I’m not much of an outliner, so my normal process is to let a story congeal in my brain until I simply can’t hold it in any longer. When it came to SHITSHOW, the result was a very smart and very funny prologue, which is largely unchanged since the first time I wrote it. The rest, however, changed a lot.

I needed to make the whole port-a-potty thing logical to the story. Why port-a-potties? I played with the idea of centering the story around rock concerts. They usually have lots of the (usually blue) toilets. Maybe there would be a ghost band that lured people into the dark realm to eat their souls. That probably could have worked, but I ended up pivoting to carnivals and county fairs (big here in the United States) for a few reasons. One, I wanted to write a book that people would pick up during spooky season, and Autumn is the time for carnivals, fairs, pumpkin patches and hayrides. Second, carnivals are mysterious, and even dangerous. The seedy rides, the romanticized vagabond nature the troupers, the transformation from folded up machinery to a spectacle of lights and smells and music when the sun goes down. It was all very conducive to the horror novel I was looking to write. So, carnivals it was.

But what was the central conflict going to be? Who would be the main character? I played with the idea of having some carnival goer, a teenager most likely, going inside one of these portables and being swept to another world—the dark carnival at the heart of the story. That could have worked. However, it also would have been expected. It’s always teens who get up to such things. And there is something happenstance about that setup as well. Random teen, random shitter. Despite my decision to write a gonzo tale about toilet teleportation, I wanted the story to be grounded—and for the protagonist to be someone you wouldn’t expect, but whose presence in the story was completely logical.

Enter the port-a-potty maintenance man, Sunday McWhorter, fifty-two years of age. Lives in a trailer park. Carries his cell phone in a leather pouch on his belt. Not a teen. Now let’s send him to the underworld.

Some writer whose name I don’t know once said something to the effect of “it’s not the first idea that will be the one, but the second or third,” and I’ve found observation to be true more often than not. My first idea was to have a teen be the protagonist, but putting this older guy who has never been outside of Glen Rose, Texas, up against the horrors of the underworld seemed more compelling to me. It was certainly funnier.

So I had my main character. What’s the conflict? Latrine technician versus dark carnival, right? You wouldn’t want your carnival port-a-potty sending its passenger to the outlet mall. Or maybe that could work—anyhow, I went with a ghostly faire set in the underworld, or something like that.

I love writing the first draft because it’s an ongoing process of discovery—especially if you’re a seat-of-the-pants writer.

We’ve got a dark carnival. Why do we have a dark carnival? If you want to boil down the process of writing a story, it’s really just asking yourself Why? over and over again, and before you know it, you’re typing THE END. Much of my time as a writer is spent going through my day asking myself why this or why that, then sitting down and drafting. I’m not going to spoil things here, but I did answer the particular Why? of the dark carnival with a fun, and I hope engaging story. That’s where I found the antagonist.

Back to me being a very serious writer for a second. I love a good joke and a cute conceit or premise, but I want more than laughs in my stories—even in my most humorous ones. I want them to be emotionally weighty. For SHITSHOW, I needed to come up with a compelling core around which to wrap this story, and it needed to fit. If I was going to get Sunday McWhorter down one of those toilets, he’d need a really good reason—a Why?

Enter Regina McWhorter. Not Sunday’s wife, not his daughter, but his mother. Why? Well, I’ve read lots of stories about someone whose spouse or child is in peril, but I haven’t seen many about parents in peril, and especially the elderly parents of adult children. Regina is Sunday’s mom, and she’s in her seventies. She lives with Sunday because she suffers from dementia. I won’t tell you what happens to Sunday’s mom, but she’s his Why.

SHITSHOW is about a latrine technician versus a dark carnival, but the Why? is what gives it real stakes and the emotional weight to go with the jokes. Something vital and dynamic comes out of a situation where a person must push forward even if hey are ill-equipped for the task. That’s where the heart of this story lies, and it came about because I kept asking Why?

If you want to connect, I’m easy to find because I like attention. Explore my website, or find me on Instagram, Bluesky, or TikTok.

Happy writing, and always ask WHY?!!?!?

More about Chris Panatier…

Chris is an artist and writer living in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, daughter and a fluctuating herd of dog-like creatures (one is almost certainly a goat).  He writes short stories and novels. THE PHLEBOTOMIST, STRINGERS, and THE REDEMPTION OF MORGAN BRIGHT, published by Angry Robot Books, are available everywhere.

Find out more about SHITSHOW and how to order it here.