In Defense of Pantsers
We get a bad rep.
Pantsers are christened as such because they write as though they’re “flying by the seat of their pants.” Another way to call it is discovery writing. Much of this process is improvising as they’re developing their characters or their plot. You know… discovering along the way.
I am one such person. Why do I pants instead of plotting (planning) my novel beforehand?
In my experience, outlining can freeze me. I simply don’t know my characters and what they like or dislike until I have them interacting with each other. That’s where I find the spark, the magic, the gem inside the geode. I can’t figure out their fears in an outline either. Even though I can follow character creation sheets and have a vague idea of what I want them to be, sometimes when I write them out, they end up contradictory. It depends on what the story needs.
Outlining for me also triggers my executive dysfunction, and I’m unable to do what it is I need to do—which is to write—unless I put away that outline and dig my fingers into the dirt.
But there’s a bit of an image that pantsers have within our writing community sometimes… That we’re disorganized and messy. That we don’t know what we’re doing and are therefore aren’t real writers or cannot produce quality work.
Which is bullshit.
Here are some common misconceptions people have…
And why they’re wrong.
That it’s the easy way out. No. Not even fucking close. I don’t think people understand just how difficult it can be when you’ve yet to come to the defining vision of your work and writing without it. It can feel a little like you’re meandering. Figuring out a plot while you’re trying to write is like driving in a brand new town but with your GPS off. You find what you find along the way, and you don’t know your way back home until you’re made your rounds. It can be infuriating to dismiss the immense amount of time and effort we put into figuring things out. This statement just isn’t fair. And what’s the difference anyway between figuring things out in an outline and figuring it out while you’re writing? Writing is and will always be hard.
That pantsers are lazy. See my first answer. Also, fuck you.
A pantsed story cannot be edited because it’s a mess. Ummmm…. I don’t know how to tell you this, but your first draft after using an outline is still a mess.
Published pantsed books are a mess. Not in my experience reading. Stephen King is probably the most celebrated pantser out there. Salem’s Lot—that book, yes, the vampire one—may have been pantsed but it was arranged with a lot of thought in mind once he stepped back and looked at the bigger picture. There are multiple POV’s in this book, and because it’s about a town deteriorating due to disease and backwards country living, the townsfolk have their own shared POV too. Which… wow. This book is not messy. It takes a lot of work to get any type of book to be this organized—but for plotters, it happens in a different way. This assumption is a complete lie.
Plotting saves you time from rewriting, or plotting saves you from having to rewrite. Insert a snort here. Not always. Even if you’ve put in the work in an outline and got all your ducks and geese and fucks in a row, it doesn’t guarantee that it will work out. Sometimes, you write half a book and it just doesn’t work, and you still have to rewrite it or reoutline it entirely. And even if it’s true that plotting can save us time, so what? A story needs what it needs. It takes what it takes. Big deal.
Pantsers don’t follow story structure. What planet did this one come from? We all get exposed to story structure at an intuitive level. We’re all watching TV shows, we’re all reading books, we’re all getting fed by the feeling that our story really gets going with an inciting incident and we have to build up the tension, and build it up, and build it up, until it inevitably comes to a climax, and after, we can finally give it a resolution. When we are done drafting a book, there’s nothing stopping us from matching our manuscript to a structure and working on making the story more cohesive. Ever seen the movie Whispers of the Heart? Whether you’re a plotter or a panster, the whole point is to whittle away the geode until you get to the gem inside. All stories take editing and structuring and revising. Pantsers don’t ignore this step.
We make things up as we go along. This one is a bit misleading. We don’t just vomit random plot points into our story. We build from the foundations that we have laid down, from previous scenes, from previous beats, which directs us to where we need to go.
I think it’s important to remember that just because you don’t know where you’re going, doesn’t mean that you don’t know what you’re doing. Have faith in what you’re working on. There’s a reason why you have these ideas, and pantsing is truly about articulating that. And all in all, it just takes practice. Lots of practice. You’ll find your niche soon enough. For some people, they start with a scene or a line of dialogue. For others, it’s about characters. For me, it’s an image that starts the avalanche. All methods are valid and fine.
I think this quote sums it up just nicely. Neil Gaiman has said, “If you get lost or stuck, it does not mean you are not a bad writer. Good writers get stuck, too.”
Let me know, do you struggle with being a pantser sometimes? What frustrates you about what others say about your work process? What kind of advice would you like to hear about the process that you find doesn’t quite “fit” with your process? Let me know in the comments!
Until next time!