People say writers are either Pansters or Planners. The Pansters fly by the seat of their pants! They are the writers that start with an image, a word, a character or even a scene, and they write to see where the story takes them, not knowing where they’ll end up. As the name implies, Planners plan. They don’t write a single word of the story until they’ve outlined everything from start to finish. Many writers fall somewhere in between. A little pantsing, a little planning.
If you’d asked me before embarking on my second novel which one describes me, I would have said I’m a Pantser. And that is still how I write my short stories. But having written a novel that had to be completely rewritten, I now see the wisdom in planning a longer piece of fiction. By the way, in life, I am a big planner. I just wasn’t in my writing.
A novel is a completely different beast than a short story. It’s long, for one. It can contain more than one POV or it can alternate time frames, or both. As a result, it can get very unruly. Some planning at the outset probably would have saved me a lot of time. We’re talking months, almost a year. Because I wouldn’t have had to write the first draft all over again. From scratch.
Don’t get me wrong. I learned a lot along the way. That’s valuable. But I know that the next time I sit down to write a novel (I’ve already got an idea brewing!), I will be planning it out. There’s still plenty of room for pantsing – I like not knowing completely what my characters are going to say or do before I write it – but I will know the major plot points and the arc I want my story to follow.
I heard somewhere recently you should write your back cover blurb or your story synopsis before you write your novel. That way you know what your hooks are, you know how your characters change. And you write to get there. You can always change your mind along the way, but a little planning goes a long way.
Why am I such a planner in life and not, until recently, in my writing? I come from a science and engineering background. It’s the way I’m wired, I think. But writing is a creative pursuit. There is no one right answer. Your story can go in infinite directions. It can defy conventions. It can even defy gravity. There’s something liberating when you let go and see where your story takes you, like a balloon caught on the wind. This is your chance to float away and see the world from a new perspective. And that’s why I’m still a Pantser at heart.