I promise, I didn’t just make those terms up. Really. Go Google them. They’re a matched pair. They describe two opposing methods of writing fiction, and they’re pretty self-explanatory.
Plotter: one who plans scenes, character interactions, spiritual arcs and plot points in advance, and only then writes the book.
Pantser: one who opens a document and starts typing on a blank page without really knowing where s/he will end up.
Maybe it’s my Type A German farm girl (AKA workhorse) personality, but I honestly doubt that there are many people out there who are true “pantsers.” I mean, if you’re going to write a novel, you’ve got to have some idea who the characters are and what the general story line is. As my new friend Stephanie says, “I plot the big picture and wing the individual scenes. I have outlines for all three books in this trilogy– however, if you look at the original outline of The Cracked Slipper the end product is very different from the outline on a scene-by-scene basis.”
I can, however, imagine a plotter—because I know one. My critique partner, Koko, is writing a zombie apocalypse epic, and when she first began presenting us with chapters, she accompanied her first submission with a 12-page chapter synopsis listing not only the events, but the underlying themes to be developed.
Of course, most of us lie somewhere in the middle. In the last few months, I have realized not only that I will never stop learning how to write, but also how many layers are left in the process—and how deep they are. After five years of reading about writing, taking classes about writing, and (of course) writing, you’d think I’d have a good handle on it.
But the process of preparing a submission package for my last novel (which, in case you’re curious, is in the “query” stage now) taught me a new appreciation for a well-thought out plan. Flying by the seat of your pants keeps it fresh, and I don’t ever plan to chain myself to an outline, but outlines serve a purpose. A well-written novel, one that you continue to think about for weeks or months to come, one that reveals some new insight with every reading, is far too complex for the human mind to store and classify every detail without help.
So I will, as usual, not pick one or the other, but I’ll hold the middle ground. What about you? I know there are some of you out there who have tried to write novels. What’s your philosophy?
4 Responses
Hurray for the middle ground! The best of both worlds…I call it “organized imagination.” 🙂
I would say based on my youthful attempts at writing fiction I was definitely a panster. I just had a vague idea for a character or two, and maybe sort of a setting, and I set down and wrote, and figured out a scene as I was writing. But this also might explain why I could only ever manage short stories. Writing an entire novel was completely beyond me. It seems like you would have to be a bit of a plotter to actually manage that.
It seems that different approaches work for different writers. I’ve read articles by fiction writers who prefere the plotter approach, and then I’ve read of others who criticize trying to plot things out in advance. Stephen King, for instance, complains that trying to do so results in creating flat characters that the author simply moves about like chess pieces.
What kind of novel are you writing?
Evan
It’s women’s fiction, a story about second chances, and what we do with them. I’ve been really into the idea of redemption lately in fiction–not so much on a faith level, but in the sense that we all screw up, and then what? Do we wallow in self-pity? Turn our back on commitments we shouldn’t have made? Stick it out? Which is the right course?
I have a concept of this book that is so much bigger than what I feel capable of writing, so I’m starting by following the story of a woman who marries the wrong man, and what she chooses to do about it. I’d like, later, to weave in stories for six or seven other characters who also get a second chance, but we’ll see how things turn out.