This is war: Pantsers VS Plotters. A fight to the death!
Let us make no mistake here: I belong to the former, and I’ve about had it with the ‘other side’, which, of course, is totally wrong-headed!
It all came to the breaking point recently when I received an email inviting me to a course where we would learn all about creating a wonderful outline from which to write a powerful story. I ignored it, as I’ve found that if I outline a book, that book will never get written – at least not by me. Once I’ve told the story – which is what one does in an intensive outline – I have little interest in going back and retelling the story, this time with more details. So, I dump that idea in favour of another, one that I haven't told yet.
But I received follow-up emails inviting me to register before the deadline. I ignored those, too, until … a final email came with the subject line addressing my side of this vicious battle for supremacy: pantsers.
Now, I’ve attended several virtual summits where various aspects of writing are discussed. Some of them concentrated entirely upon plotting, some only touched on it in a few seminars. None of them discussed the art of pantsing, probably because it is an art rather than a science, and is thus more difficult to deal with or teach. So, whenever I see the word “pantser” I get excited. Perhaps this time someone has put forth something that I will find very valuable. Oh happy day!
Unfortunately, this wasn’t going to be that “this time”. Instead, the evil purveyor (has to be evil ’cause he’s the antagonist in this little affair) of the evil course (has to be evil as it’s about plotting, and we all know that plotters are engaged in a plot – what else? – to take over the writing world) is trying to encourage the pantsers on his email list who have said they wouldn’t take the course – because, hey, that’s not what they/we do – to think again.
Normally, this wouldn’t bother me. But the wording of the missive brought out the fire within and I girded my loins to do battle. [Gird? Went to an online dictionary and it said “to jeer or jeer at”. (I solemnly affirm that was the first definition that popped up; I am not making this up.) What? That doesn’t sound right. I jeered at my loins to do battle? “Hey you dumb loins: Betcha ya can’t even fight if you tried. Go ahead, prove me wrong if you dare! Go on and fight, loins, do battle!” Hmm, better try a different dictionary.]
When we find something that works for us, we tend to assume that it is the best thing since sliced macaroni. And that’s how those dratted plotters feel about plotting. It works for them, and anyone doing anything different just needs to be shown the error of their ways. And how better to show us the error of our ways than to use stereotypes?
“Pantsers go off on tangents” and end up with manuscripts that need pruning with a machete, then rewriting, then more pruning and more rewriting, etc. until they finally end up with what plotters get first time around because … hey outlines, which keep them on track. If they are nice, they will say, “MOST pantsers…”, leaving room for the odd exception to the rule.
Our comeback, which is absolutely 135.5% true, states that outlines stifle creativity, box the plotters in, blinkering them like mules pulling a wagon. Plotters wouldn’t know a creative moment if came up and bit them on the backside. [Hey, this is war, and wars tend to become violent and bloody.]
Of course, those poor, benighted beings claim that outlines leave room for creativity. If something brilliant comes up, then an adjustment here, a tuck there, a little sliding of the plot will accommodate this creative moment. Yes, they think this, though it isn’t true. How do I know it isn’t true? Because I said so. Okay, I admit there are minor exceptions … a few … once in a while … if the plotter is lucky.
However, for the most part, an outline puts the writer into a mental straightjacket. A creative thought which differs from the outline may come up, but will most often be swept aside because, whether the plotters realize it or not, their outlines fight against change. Only a brilliant flash of creative ingenuity can overcome the tendency to want to stick to the outline once it is in place.
Manuscripts that follow fully plotted outlines plod along like the aforementioned mules, leaving little room for improvisation. And that’s how they end up: staid, dull, without a chance to sparkle. Alas.
I can already see the plotters rising up from their drafting tables, anger at my disparaging – to them – comments, ready to do battle. Well, I said this was a war, a war to the finish, with no quarter asked or given. Give me freedom (for my creativity) or give me death (but please, please, I beg of you, not an outline).
Okay, how much of the above is true of plotting and plotters? How much of that do I actually believe? Not much. There are a few minor truths sprinkled within, but I’ve blown them up all out of proportion, and they can be overcome by an intelligent writer. But, if you are a plotter, how did you feel about my disparagement of your style of crafting a story? I ask, because that’s how we pantsers feel about the way you misunderstand and misstate what we do. After a while, it gets tedious.
So, I mentioned stereotypes. What exactly are they? Let us go with an old analogy – walking a straight line across a snowy field.
You have a snowy field in front of you and you are told to walk across it in a straight line. So, you carefully place one foot in front of the other, taking care to place each foot just right. When you get to the other side you look back and find that your path, rather than a straight line, wavers to the left and right and you end up a distance from your goal. Your problem? You were looking at your feet, trying to figure out where to step next instead of looking up at your goal. Each step appears to you to be directly ahead of the last one, but if you turn your foot in the slightest, the next step after that will drift off course, perhaps even taking you in a complete circle by the end.
This is the conception that the plotter has of the pantser. Without guideposts to keep them going in the correct direction, pansters meander, get caught up in tangents which really go nowhere, after which they have to fight their way back to the path. The whole meandering side-journey will then need to be cut from the manuscript. Why does this happen? Because we don’t know where we’re going, they say. We’re writing by the seat of our pants, going off in all directions (looking at our feet) and only hopefully ending up where we need to go.
The solution to this – according to those evil (not really) plotters – is to construct rails that keep us on track. Once the rails are in place, we walk between them and end up where we are going without taking any of those extraneous side-trips to nowhere important for which we are so famous.
That’s not how it works, my dear plotter friends. (Oops, I put an extraneous “r” in the final word of that last sentence. Sorry.) Do you want to know how it works, how it really works? Well,
Stay tuned for “Plotter Wars II: The Pantsers Strike Back” coming soon to a blog near you. (Okay, this blog, next week.)
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