Are You a "Pantser" or a Planner?

Probably second only to "what's your sign?" (asked on a bad date), the subject question is one that eventually haunts the lives of writers everywhere. Everyone from Gore Vidal to Al Gore has been asked the question and the answers, as you can imagine, range from the imaginative to the outright nutty.

What it means, in the simplest terms, is: are you one who sits at the computer and lets fly with the ideas, allowing your fertile brain to take you wherever it will until you have a story you are content with -- or do you sit down and carefully plan out your novel down to the most minute detail?

As a writer I confess I always felt a bit process-challenged, because -- after a few disastrous seat-of-the-pants stories (that's the "pantser" approach, get it?) that started with great energy and imagination and then stalled somewhere in a literary forest with no evident way out -- I found myself needing to plan right from the initial idea. In fact, I felt as if my plan might be a kind of crutch that I needed because I couldn't just sit and let fly.

I guess I finally became less self critical (always a good thing) when I came to RWA and realized that all plots are plans of one sort or another, and that having to write down a plan in some detail is part of the process. Just how detailed it all is depends only on the complexity of your work-in-progress. Like a lot of other writers, I have sat through plotting sessions at various RWA chapter meetings, learning an immense amount even as I had fun, and always admired those who seemed to be so naturally gifted at it. I felt burdened by a sense of guilt that I couldn't just let fly that way: I had to go home and think about it.

All I knew for certain was that I did not seem to have that same, effortless natural gift. I needed to write down all the steps on the road to my book's end in the kind of detail so that I always knew where I was and where I was going. Furthermore, I couldn't seem to function without such a plan. I was feeling like a kind of literary American-with-Disabilities because my plans always seemed to be so very detailed and extensive. What would begin as a fairly straightforward synopsis would end up being an extremely detailed map of who-did-what and when, where and how. And I didn't seem able to let go of the necessity of doing these detailed plans.

In short, I was not feeling good about myself as a writer. This is, of course, all too common a feeling among writers. One day, we write something, a part of a larger work, and we think -- "Damn! That's good." The next day, we reread what we wrote the day before and conclude it's the worst piece of trash the world has ever seen.

As I read craft books, however, I slowly came to the conclusion that perhaps I wasn't such a cripple after all. People whose work I very much admired were self-confessed Planners, and proud of it. One was Elizabeth George, she of the wonderfully complex Inspector Lynley mysteries, some of which have been dramatized on PBS-TV. Another was Jeffrey Deaver, whose main character, forensic detective Lincoln Rhyme, went to the big screen in "The Bone Collector," starring Denzel Washington. Please note that both of these writers write complex, multi dimensional characters and specialize in plots that twist and turn in a quite Gordian Knot fashion.

But the one that pushed me into a true realization that I was "OK" rather than "Not OK" (apologies to Wayne Dyer) was J.K. Rowling. I am a self confessed Harry Potter fan. I am not what you'd call a fanatic, but I am thoroughly enchanted (pun intended) by JKR's writing. She is a true literary wonder, and better people than I have likened her to both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. When asked in an interview if she were a "pantser" or a planner, she said she was/is definitely a planner. In fact, she defined her planning as "meticulous."

Whew! Redeemed! Thought I. Now I don't want you to think I have the gall to put myself in the ranks with her or Deaver or George. Yes, I write science fiction and fantasy romance, and there are elements of mystery in my works. But I don't kid myself that I am in any league but a definitely junior one. And I don't expect to reach such stellar status as these three authors. But they pointed out to me that the process I engage in (I do have a tendency to write big and complex novels) is natural, even necessary, to the type of book that I write.

I am never going to write a spare, Hemingwayesque 50,000-word novel. My brain is just not wired that way. And that's OK. In fact, I have it on the best authority that it is OK. And I can't tell you what an enormous relief that is!

So, in the final analysis, the teentsy piece of wisdom I am trying to pass along to you this week is: if you are a planner -- or a "pantser" -- enjoy the process. In fact, revel in it. It's your process, after all.