Have you ever been a pantser?
Not the German tank, and this is not about whether or not you prefer jeans, slacks, or skirts. I’m asking if you’ve ever just been the kind of writer who just, you know, wings it.
If you haven’t heard, there are traditionally two types of writers. Plotters, who outline stories before touching the laptop, plan things in advance, sometimes write stories by hand first, then type. They are forward thinkers, literary tacticians.
Pantsers, well, as the saying goes, they fly by the seat of their you-know-what. Get an idea! Rush to the computer! Write! Write! Then, stop. Dead. Daydream. Plans, what’s that? Stare at the ceiling. Go for a walk. Many weeks later, they circle back around on another writing high and plop down another few thousand words, no looking back.
Plotters. Pantsers. I think there’s wiggle room for many writers into either, but let’s keep it simple.
Ninety-eight percent of the time, I pants until they burn off. Like a typical artist, most who could see me IRL would wonder how I get anything done. This guy just works, then lays back and stares at the wall all day! He wrote several stories, many of them full fledged novels? This pancake?
But hey, I did the things. Lots of times. Adn, I still do, though mostly in pantsers heaven, I mean, Kindle Vella. Vella has worked great for my mind. Drop an episode whenever. Motivate when the iron is hot. Don’t when it’s cold.I feel less pressured.
But boy, once I decide I need to take time to handle novels seriously, the stress mounts. It shouldn’t, because it’s self inflicted. So, I should remain calm. However, nobody can pressure a pantser more than we can to ourselves.
However, if there’s one thing I’ll take care to write down before and during the story creation process, it’s worldbuilding. Not sure why, but writing out a world by hand comes easy, and I love bu
For all the lack of planning, the looking cross-eyed at times at nifty, detailed outlines, pantsers can suddenly get hella reactionary about our works once we dig our heels in. It’s like a zero sum game. If I can’t be all in, I can’t be in. Period.
Stephen King advised us to put our butts in the chair everyday and write. Who cares if it’s bad. You’re gonna redo it anyway. Um, maybe. See, after a decade of professional indie authorship, sitting in the chair everyday has netted me jack squat results in wordage. When I do get them in? You guessed it. It’s when the artistic Muse zonks me and then it’s go time.
I stopped fighting it. Good for the pros who make millions if they can sit there everyday. I have zero fight in the plotters vs. pantsers war, if there even is one. I found what works for me, I stick to it. It works. Plotters fascinate me, and once in awhile, I too can outline in advance. It’s fun.
Soon, I’ll scrape up the WIPs on Vella and the seven or so novels I began with NaNoWriMo 2022 and dig in. Edits. Rewrites. Finishing them! Then you’ll see a whole different me.
Or not. Because I’ll be in the cave getting the work in. No matter which way you lean in the writer duality, the work is the work. And there’s no getting past that.
So are you a pantser? Or, do you plot? Or maybe, you hover somewhere in between. I’d like to know.
Threads that Bind 
6 responses to “TROUSERS”
Ah, now here’s a subject guaranteed to rile up the hoi polloi! I’ve been both. I began as a pantser, and stayed such for a good long time before I finally sought the advice of some successful writers. Mind you, I know and admire some that write on the strength of no more than “hold my beer, I’m gonna try something!” I’m not one of them.
I always “wrote from the hip” and was proud of it. It worked okay for short stories and did right up to the end, but the long stuff… The first novel I ever finished was a 140,000-word epic quest fantasy that might have been good at 80,000. The problem was that with no road map, I never saw a dog-hole or rabbit run that I could stay out of. During the writing also, the lack of a plan caused me to change one thing that then forced me to have to rewrite over a hundred pages. I didn’t try another novel until I learned what a plan was and how to create one.
And, of course, I don’t believe that discipline in any way equals creativity. You want to piss away six or seven hours you’ll never see again? Sit down and force yourself to write when you aren’t feeling the juice. But thanks for this revealing look into one of the classic feuds of our beloved hobby. Long-time writers will be set in their ways, of course, but this will provide a most enlightening primer for the newbies and nonnies who may be reading..
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I’m a bit of both (pantser and plotter), as I suspect many of us are. As Gerhard Dennis, I initially pantsed my Canny Danny and Cloacina horror/sci-fi stories; but there came a point when I had to start taking notes in order to make sure I ticked off all the boxes regarding unanswered questions, unresolved conflicts, character consistency, etc. As Garrett Dennis, I’ve always started my Outer Banks adventures by planning things out ahead of time; but I invariably find my characters occasionally doing things I hadn’t planned on along the way (can’t help it – I think my muse might be a flibbertigibbet), which still makes for a long, crooked road instead of a straight path to the end. But in both cases, there’s always a point where concordances become important, so I don’t end up with an incoherent mess (although those can be fun too, as in Bizarro and other avant-garde fiction). Weird, maybe, but it works for me…
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What you describe validates “Tyler’s Axiom:” Characters are fiction. I use a fairly skeletal outline, one or two sentences to describe a scene. I’ll outline what looks to be a great story, then when I get to a scene where one of my characters is supposed to do a certain thing, they’ll dig in their heels and say, “Are you crazy? I’m not doing that!” The feeling is that strong, but what they’re really telling me is that it will ruin the story or them as a character if I force it. I’m a dedicated, unwavering planner, but when it comes to character pushback… well, that’s the reason that all my dedicated, unwavering outlines are written in pencil!
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I am a pantser, but definitely not of the variety you’ve described. I pick up my fountain pen, pencil, or dip pen and a sheet of paper and start writing.
There’s no dancing around the mulberry bush. I just write every day until finished. If I get stuck, I simply move on to another story. Often, while working on that other story, I get unstuck on the first one.
H. Bedford-Jones, back in the 1920s and 1930s, had 4 typewriters going. If he got stuck on a story, he moved to the next typewriter. He was tremendously prolific, turning out over half a million words a year. And was the equivalent of a millionaire in today’s dollars. He was a pantser. And he made his money writing short stories. Ah, those were the days!
I disagree with King and so did the prolific pulp writers. They couldn’t afford to rewrite. They had to pay the rent. I hate rewriting. So I do my best to get it right the first time.
I think writing every day keeps the story in one’s head. If I’m away from writing for too long it takes me a while to get back in the groove — and that’s when the writing tends to not be so good.
Everyone is different. I understand that. But if you want to be prolific, you have to write every day and get it right the first time. And right doesn’t mean perfect. It means the story is good enough.
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Yes, the pulp writers and the ‘pulp speed’ they utilized I adore and would love to emulate…except it never happens. Best I can describe it is like Jack said above about his characters strongly saying they won’t do a thing. I can be into the idea no problem. Put the notebook/laptop/whatever in front of me and…nada. Zilch occurs. Then out of the clear blue sky, a hailstorm of writing that I almost never have to go back and retouch. Weird. But it’s me. I’ll hit pulp speed one of these days.
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While our views on preparation are like night and day, I’m right there with you on rewriting. I’ll go through constantly looking for words I omitted, it’s, an’s, and to’s which I tend to drop when my typing speed goes up, and as I’m doing that, I’ll look for phrases to sharpen or make more colorful, but when you’re a planner, your first draft is a rewrite.
In my younger days I used to try to force myself to do extensive rewrites. You see, I learned to write from books, first emulating my favorite authors, then reading the how-to-write books of the successful. Stephen King’s On Writing is a prime example, but there are more how-to books than there are authors. Virtually every successful writer seems to agree that writing is rewriting, your first draft is just that, and no first draft has ever been written that doesn’t need multiple rewrites. Some claim a dozen or more are necessary. So, I tried to follow their advice, and what I found was after about the third revision, I was changing the rewritten material back to its original state.
And if I’m going to be realistic, I have to credit my resounding lack of success to this. I mean, look, when Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Dean Koontz, Sue Grafton, et al, say that rewrites are necessary and Jack Tyler says, “Nah, I’m not doing that,” whose advice do you think you should follow? All I can say in my own defense is that I had a wonderful time trying.
Remember, we’re all outliners; some of us call our outlines “first drafts!”
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