Plotters seem to think that pantsers operate in a literal “by the seat of their pants” way. No plan, no idea, ready to follow anything that comes up. Let’s look at the process.
Pantser sits down at his (or her – but I’ll use his, because I am a “he” and I’ll be using myself as the example) writing desk or keyboard, or wherever he (I) happens to do his (my) composing. He opens the word processing program (or his notebook) and looks at the empty page.
“I want to write a book,” I say (either to myself silently or out loud), and put my fingers on the keyboard. First thing I need is a main character. Hmm, male or female? Okay, let’s make him male. Then I begin to write. John Doe and then stop. Where do I start? Well, I just got up, so let’s have John Doe starting off in bed. Great! John Doe woke up… Why did he wake up? …to a strange sound … Where is it coming from? Downstairs, upstairs, outside, the radio? …coming from outside. Okay, I’ve got him awake, now what? I suppose he should investigate. He rose from the bed and opened the window. He looked out and saw … Dang, what did he see? Something that made a noise, but what? A car? A train? A person? I rock back in my chair, and a squeak emanates from it. A mouse! Yes, a mouse! Ha! But, wait. Would a single mouse from outside cause enough noise to wake John? …and saw a thundering herd of mice … hmm, I haven’t placed them yet. Herd of mice? Probably not an urban setting, so I’ll make it rural. …galloping across the freshly plowed field, heading for … heading for where? The barn? The house? A nearby village, town, or city? … the city of Boultersville. I’ll just use that as a placemark name until I can think of a good one.
So, I’ve got John seeing the mice heading for the city. What should he do? Telephone in to let the mayor know? Sounds good.
John quickly dressed and went to the phone, then stopped short. Who would believe him? If he called 911, they’d probably send a paddy wagon. No, he would have to warn the mayor and city council himself, in person. Yeah, we’re rocking now! Damn, the cat wants his breakfast. Hey, maybe John should have a cat, too. A farm cat. Yeah, good idea.
John opened the door to his truck, and Fluffy, his cat, jumped in. Wow! Wasn’t expecting that. Is he going to take Fluffy with him or not? Let’s flip a coin. Heads. By the time he locked Fluffy in the house for safety, too much time would have passed. Those mice were really hoofin’ it! He needed to warn the city. So he climbed in the truck, started it, and headed off towards Boultersville, cat sitting by his side. Soon he came upon the sign, Boultersville, population 32,416. Well, that would be 32,415 now, as Lily Carmichael had died just last Sunday after church service had … had what? … sent her into rapture. Ooh, that’s good. Rapture. Get it?
And we go on with a description of him going into council chambers and trying to convince them that there is, indeed, a thundering herd of mice headed this way. They haven’t much time to prepare for the assault. But, the council doesn’t believe him. Naturally. Things getting worse.
John returned to his truck. He’d have to approach this another way. What allies could he get? Wait! Where was Fluffy? He’d left her in the truck – but with the windows open so she wouldn’t get overheated. She knew better than to jump out, so where was she?
Fluffy made the rounds. Okay, maybe Fluffy will become the protagonist, I’ll work it out later. Word – in the form of meows – had spread. They couldn’t count on humans to save the city, humans took too much time to decide to do anything. By the time they’d made a decision, it would be too late. It was up to her and her friends. Go, Fluffy, go! What will they do? The cats lined up just outside of town, a thin … what’s a good descriptor? …tabby line against the oncoming hordes. Fluffy looked to her left and then right. Would one hundred and eighty-five cats be able to stop those mice? As Farmer John had driven along the highway, she had seen what must have been at least 5,000 mice, eyes red, looking unstoppable, heading for the city. She licked at her shoulder to calm her nerves. This was it: the Catamo! Hey, that’s a good title. The Catamo – I wonder how it is going to end? Will the mice show no quarter and kill all 185 cats, or will the cats be able to save the city? Boy, I can’t wait to find out!
Nobody I know writes like this, making each decision at the time, without knowing where they are going. Nobody I know sits down to write a book without knowing the genre, what it’s going to be about – at least in general terms – and why they want to write that particular book. Often, they’ll know how the book will end. Plotter or Pantser, it makes no difference. But Plotters seem to think that “writing by the seat of the pants” entails just such a method. I don’t know why.
Before a plotter begins his outline he knows some or all of the above. And before the plotter begins his outline, he’s in the exact same place as the pantser.
So, let’s take a look at why writers want to write books. Some people want to write a book because they think it would be cool to have written a book. These people will likely never finish. Others want to write because they feel they have something to say and this novel (or short story or novella) seems the best way to get the message across. Some love stories and have found that the only way to get a story to turn out as they would like it to turn out is to write it themselves. And some have something to say, want to say it through a story that turns out the way that they want the story to turn out, and think it would be cool to have written that book.
Whatever it is, we all start out in the same place – with an idea. We generally think about it for a while, toss it around in our minds, fill it out a little. By the time the pantser gets ready to write or the plotter to outline, they’ve filled in various blanks. Generally, they’ll know the genre. Is it Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance, Mystery, Action/Adventure, Western? They’ll probably have an idea of the protagonist and what he or she wants to accomplish, and why. Depending on how long the inspiring idea has percolated, they may know a lot of other things, including how they see it ending (though the precise manner of ending may change during the writing or plotting).
Let’s go back to my snowy field analogy. Our plotter has built rails to ensure that he (or she) travels straight to the goal, knowing each twist and turn in the path. The pantser doesn’t look at his feet and takes each step hoping that he (or she) is on course. If they know how the story will end, then they simply look up at that goal – perhaps a tree on the other side of the field – and start walking towards it, keeping it in sight. They’ll travel a straight line to it – as long as the terrain is flat. If it is other than flat and they have to detour around a ditch or something, they still keep the tree in sight and know that as soon as they get around the ditch, they’ll head straight for the tree again.
An experienced pantser doesn’t have to end up with a manuscript that needs to be pruned with a machete. She, knowing where she’s going, won’t be taking side-trips to nowhere important that need to get lopped off the finished piece.
The inexperienced pantser may run off on tangents, but then so too might the inexperienced plotter. It’s a learning process that both go through. And an inexperienced pantser going off on one of those trips to nowhere important may learn more from the mistake than the inexperienced plotter may learn from following his outline, without deviation, from beginning to end.
I’m an experienced pantser with more than 20 novels under my belt. My latest, “Wreck” came from an idea about an asteroid miner who has a certain problem. He finds the wreck of an alien ship at a place he’s come to do some mining and investigates it, finding an Artificial Intelligence in control of it. They both need to accomplish a goal; their goals are mutually exclusive, setting up conflict between the two. I’d given it some thought over the previous several years, but all I knew coming into a November’s “National Novel Writing Month” (NaNoWriMo) (2021), was how the story would start and how it would end. I knew the miner’s goal and the AI’s goal, plus one or two scenes that would happen somewhere in the middle. I didn’t know how I would get to those scenes, and I knew that I might find that I couldn’t, that they just wouldn’t happen. But I knew where I was going and where I was starting from and what I wanted to accomplish with the story.
I made the sudden decision to concentrate on that story – bring it off the “back burner” – on the 30th of October, taking a break from another work. I started actually writing the book on November 1st – just to see what I could accomplish during NaNoWriMo. I didn’t complete it in the month, but did finish the “first draft” on December 4th. That was 90,010 words in 34 days. I didn’t go off on tangents; I didn’t have to cut scenes. I merely kept my eye on that “tree” on the other side of the field, and everything I wrote drew me inexorably towards it. I ended up adding another 3273 words during edits – mostly just elaborating on certain bits here and there as I tend to write somewhat sparsely with respect to descriptions in my first draft.
What am I saying? Stereotypes are not reality. Experienced writers know what they are doing, be they plotters or pantsers. Having outsiders tell us that we fit those stereotypes is insulting. In my personal experience, I’ve found that pantsers tend to understand plotters, but plotters don’t understand us nearly as well.
And that's a shame. They could learn a lot from us.
Stay tuned for “Plotter Wars III: The Return of the Plotter”
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