Are You a Pantser or a Plotter?
The last time Passive Guy heard the term, “pantsing,” was in a 7th grade physical education class. It described something that big kids did to little kids. Since PG was a medium-sized kid, he did not participate.
Author Deanna Knippling was not in the same class because Pantsing means something entirely different to her. Before we go to Ms. Knippling’s Pantsing/Plotting blog post, you should know two things about her:
1. She describes one of her books, Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse as “Zombies are taking over Colorado Springs.” This may be old news to you, but PG hadn’t heard this before, so he found Deanna’s blog to be quite educational. She has a picture of a Colorado Springs zombie on her cover so you can’t say she didn’t warn you.
2. Ms. Knippling is the only person who has a formal policy on Passive Voice retweets: “I have no intention of becoming a @PassiveVoiceBlg retweeting service.” In case you need a written retweet policy, this is a good place to start. (It’s less than 140 characters, which is a plus.)
Excerpts:
The benefits of plotting are that your plots will be stronger. You will have to look at your plot before you actually start writing and go, “I have to get from the beginning to the end. There has to be an end.” The completely insane plots will get revised. If you have weak plots, this is plot therapy.
This will also help you develop characters–because you can get to a point where you need to have a character do something in particular that’s almost out of character, then go back in your outline and add a scene suggesting that yes, your character might indeed do such a thing at a certain point in the future.
. . . .
The benefits of pantsing are that plotted stories can feel artificial and by-the-numbers. Plotted stories aren’t usually surprising stories. Their twists can come off as hollow. Their ironies can seem expected; their characters, flat and predictable. The end that ties into the beginning can be seen a mile away.
Pantsing builds stories out of your subconscious. Craft comes out of the consciousness, but art comes out of something underneath that. If you want an organic (dare I say artistic?) story, pantsing will do that for you…if you have the craft tools of writing deeply buried in your subconsciousness. If not, pantsing stories will ramble, be inconsistent, jump around, start out with complete story cheese (like uninteresting prologues, characters who are just waking up, and all kinds of fictional cliches that you haven’t worked out of your system yet).
Link to the rest with detailed method suggestions at Deanna Knippling’s blog
Hi PG.
I really did not understand the retweet thing she mentioned – “I have no intention of becoming a @PassiveVoiceBlg retweeting service.”
The excerpts are not saying much to me, so I didn’t visit the post. Lazy of me, but I’m feeling rather lazy right now. I don’t know if it’s you who chose the excerpts or the excerpts themselves, but I didn’t go further.
I don’t much agree with what she says. A novel is a huge work. It’s not humanly possible to remember the whole book by heart and not make mistakes, no matter how much the craft is deeply buried in an author’s consciousness or not.
To have a good plot, one needs to plan it. Otherwise there is no way that the outcome will be good. No matter how much we want to think otherwise, most of us are not geniuses and even if we were, geniuses make mistakes too.
Pantsing can not create a solid post, not because of skills, but because you can’t follow a whole book, full of scenes, from just memory.
No plot, no story – you might want to read my latest blog post.
Thank you for the post
Jacqvern – I just sent you an email reply when your comment hit my inbox and my mind was roaming around in the Delta Quadrant.
Yeah > “Pantsing can not create a solid post” – correction: not “post” but “plot”. That’s what happens when you have a zillion tabs and windows open.
Ok, I’ll check the e-mail.
Well, I’ve been both. I was once a pantser, I’m now a plotter for various reasons. So, no, I don’t agree with her. But not in the way most might think.
I don’t believe one method is better than the other.
Every writer is different, and the writer might change over time. Every story is different.
Whatever it takes to FINISH the story is what is needed. And I emphasised the word ‘finish’ for a reason. If a method is not helping you finish a project, then it’s the wrong method. That’s the only writing ‘rule’ I use.
Obviously pantsing is working for her and the projects she’s working on right now. It will not work for everyone, and it’s foolish to think that it will.
J.A. – Here’s another vote for finishing.
What JA said. Pantsing and outlining can both work fine; I know much-NY-published authors who are pantsers and seem to be able to produce a “good plot” despite not planning it all out ahead of time. Some people find that works for them, and others don’t.
It’s also not a binary state. You can mostly pants your fiction but do some advance planning, or you can outline thoroughly but then find the writing takes a sharp left at Chapter 12 and pants it from there on. Or you might find that one project is best pantsed, while another requires a detailed advance outline. Some people treat it like a point of doctrine worth fighting over, but most people use whatever tool is best suited to their own style and abilities and to the current project.
On the terminology, we were discussing the pantsers vs. outliners dichotomy on the various overlapping writing areas on the GEnie network back in the eighties, and I can’t swear it started there; whatever you think of Ms. Knippling, she didn’t invent the terminology.
Angie, mostly a pantser
Angie – Agree on whatever results in a good story.
I’m still interested if anyone can provide the etymology of Pantsing.
That one’s easy.
The original expression was for people who write by the seat of their pants — like flying by the seat of your pants, without instruments; or driving by the seat of your pants, without a map — shortened to pantsing, and pantsers.
Angie
Angie – Thank you for the explanation. Are there skirtsers too?
Not that I’ve ever heard, probably because “by the seat of your skirt” was never an expression.
Angie
I’m still finding my way, but tend to start writing from the idea, with an end in mind. As I go along I start plotting out what will happen further along. I find it offers direction, but is still fluid enough to adapt as those unexpected things crop up. We’ll see how that continues to work for me.
As an aside, I’ve been writing in the bath for the past few months. So I’m literally pantsing
Erica – If you’re writing in the bath, I guess that means you specialize in clean books.
Err… bathing is more like sitting in my own filth. So take from that what you will