“Are you a Plotter or
a Pantzer?”
The most political yet honest answer I have to that question
is, “I have learned the value of Plotting.” It is indeed the most efficient way
to write a story, and it gives the story its best chance of being written – for
even if you are sick to death of the thing, you can still doggedly follow a
written plot to the end. And it will be complete. If you are Pantsing, on the
other hand, you must engaged and enthusiastic about the story, and if it takes
a wrong turn or bogs down, it is so much easier to drop the book into a nearby
drawer and take up officially with the next one – which, to tell the truth, you
have been cheating on the first book with. Plotting is essential if you want to
write professionally, for time wasted is money lost and plotting keeps you from
wasting time with dead ends, plot collapses, and dull days when writing is
hard.
But Pantsing is fun.
Pantsing is putting your characters into an interesting
situation and asking, “What if?” And as you write that, you think another “What
if?” and “What next?” In this way you keep the main characters moving from
situation to situation, from complication to complication, until finally you
allow them to reach the resolution. As you write you draw on your character’s
personalities, experiences, and situation to create complications. You send
them off to new places that you heard about yesterday, and you have no idea
where they will end up tomorrow. In Pantsing, a great amount of time is spent
mulling over the story and character to figure out where it will go next.
Pantsing is also a very social way to write. Most Pantsers
like to talk about their books as media fans talk about an ongoing series,
using their friends both as soundboards and as inspiration. Plotters, I’ve
found, don’t have as much time for that idle chit-chat. They already know where
the book is going and what will happen, and they don’t need to bounce their
ideas off of each other. Instead, they will talk about all the other
interesting things in their lives – for one advantage of Plotting is that it is
much easier to put down the book at the end of a writing session and think
about other things.
The result from Plotters and Pantsers is often different.
Plotted books move smoothly from start to finish, with all the parts working
together from the start and few digressions. I can often see how a book will
end when it is Plotted, just from the general shape of the plot, the emphasis
that the author gives each character, and the progression of the events. I
still read such books for the drama and action, but the plot is like a road
that goes to its destination. Pantsed novels, on the other hand, have unforseen
twists and turns, non-obvious connections, and endings that are not neat but
not unsatisfactory. They are more akin
to a trek through the backroads – and for the adventurous, a lot more fun.
As you may have guessed, I am basically a Panster. My
current WIP, Maroon Sunia, Barbarian
Princess of the North, is being written Pantsed. I took my hardworking
tavern girl, gave her some magic armor, and set her on an Adventure with only
the vaguest idea of what she would achieve and what she would find along the
way. I throw adventures at her and her companions, I lean on tropes and turn
them on their heads. At this point, halfway through, I know the final scene and
the major points I will reach on the way there. Every week there are new
adventures to write about, new ideas, and questions to answer. Writing is slow
– about a chapter a week, but it has been steady.
On the other hand, I have also written Plotted novels. There
is no way to write a first draft in thirty days unless I have a plot to draw
on, to tell me each day what I will do and where I will go with the story.
Furhter, Plotting is a good way to rescue a story that started off Pantsed, stalled
out, and now sits in the dust with its wheels spinning. So, I have learned the
value of Plotting.
Plotting is for productivity and Pantzing is for fun. My
best work, however, comes from a combination of the two approaches. If I
minimally plot out a story by deciding what the ending and the major plot
points will be, and I write toward those points, I can Pants the stuff in
between and not get lost. I can both have fun and be productive. That’s what
works best for me.
