Plotters and Pantsers

Diving into the world of fiction writing has taught me a lot of things. Among them, is that the writing community is divided into two types of writers: plotters and pantsers.

Plotters are exactly what they sound like -- writers who plot. For weeks or even months before they begin writing, they sit down to meticulously map out every aspect of their books. They write comprehensive outlines of plot points. They create detailed character biographies. They plaster their walls with post-it notes and storyboards. Some even determine their main characters' Myers-Briggs personality types and astrological signs as a means of "getting to know them" better before beginning to write.

And then, there are the pantsers. They have a rough idea of what their story is going to be about, but that's all. They don't outline. They don't usually know exactly how their story will end or in what direction they want it to go. Pantsers just jump right in and start writing, let the characters reveal to them who they are, and let the story dictate to them where it's going to go. They "fly by the seat of their pants," hence the name.

The first printed draft of my novel. At that stage, it was definitely NOT organized enough to be read by anyone but me.

When I started writing my first novel, I became a pantser by default. As I've mentioned a few times before, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) was the catalyst for my decision to start a novel. My son (in 3rd grade at the time) came home from school one day in late October and told me that he was going to be participating in the student version of the program, and on a whim, I decided to join him. The program started on November 1st, which gave me hardly any time to plan and outline even if I wanted to.

As it turns out, having a lot of time to plan probably wouldn't have made much of a difference for me. Extreme planning and organization have never been my strong suit, and if you've seen the inside of my closets or the haphazard way that I navigate the grocery store, this probably doesn't surprise you. I can be organized and efficient when I really need to be; it just isn't my natural state. 

When I started the novel, I tried to write in a linear way because I thought I was supposed to, even though I didn't know exactly where the book was going. I wrote the prologue, then chapter one, then chapter two, and so on. And then, I took a detour. As my characters and plot started to come into sharper focus, I started seeing scenes unfold in my mind -- scenes that were way ahead of where I actually was in the timeline. I needed to write them down before I lost them. And that's how my new, divergent, write-that-shit-down-as-soon-as-it-comes-into-my-head approach was born. At first, I thought I was creating a mess, that there was something inherently wrong with this tangled disaster of disconnected, out of order scenes. A good writer would have planned ahead, I thought. A good writer wouldn't do things this way.

Why did I feel that way? Why did I let my personal writing process become a source of shame, something

"less than"? I think it comes down to cultural conditioning. As a culture, we place high value on things that are neat and organized, efficient, things that can be easily understood and sorted by an outside observer. What we forget is that there is a difference between having a disorganized process and a disorganized product. If the product is great, does it really matter what process the creator of that product took to get there?

I worked for several years as a high school English teacher, and also as a college writing tutor. In those roles, I worked alongside countless students as they navigated the writing process. Although I modeled various approaches to the writing process, and encouraged them to try these various techniques to discover what would work best for them, I always made it clear that writing strategies were not one-size-fits-all. We all have different approaches that work best for us when it comes to writing (and learning, and -- for that matter -- life). Here's a toolbox of strategies: try them out, but ultimately it's up to you to decide what works best.

Thankfully, I finally listened to my own advice and realized that there is no "correct" approach when it comes to writing fiction. Here's what works for me: 1) Have a general sense of what your book is about. 2) Write the scenes as they come to you. Keep going until you have something that is generally "book shaped." 3) When you're finished with that, print out a physical copy what you've written. 4) Sort out the existing chapters into an order that makes sense. 5) Figure out what you need to add/remove in order to make everything fit together. 6) Make an outline. 7) Make necessary changes. 8) Repeat #7 over and over ad nauseaum until it works.

My "after the first draft" outline. This is where I sorted out the order of my chapters and decided what I'd need as far as additional chapters to bridge the existing ones or further develop characters.

Yup. As a turns out, making an outline was a part of my process, but it came pretty late in the game. Once I had written most of the book, I realized that an outline was what I needed to bring order to the chaos, to make sense of what I'd already written and what I still needed to write. It was sort of reverse-engineering, making the outline after the fact, but it really helped me to better orient myself to where I was in the process.

As an aside, I want to mention that just as writing processes vary from person to person, they also vary from project to project. When I was writing my Masters thesis, I was very intentional about how I organized my data and research, because that type of writing demands a certain level or organization. Part of my transition into fiction writing has also meant un-learning so many of the rules that have been ingrained in me after years of academic writing (both on the teacher and student side). It meant embracing the beautiful chaos that is the creative process. Creative writing is a completely different animal than academic writing, and it make sense to dig back into the toolbox for some different tools than you've used before -- or maybe even create some new ones.