Pantsers versus Outliners…Or Why I Am a Hybrid
An ongoing and endless debate in the world of writing is whether you, as an author, should just sit down and write a book, or outline it first. Folks that just write by the seat of their pants are called ‘pantsers’. Others, that take some time to outline, are called, predictably enough, ‘outliners’.
There is something very romantic about the notion of an author, ensconced in a room with a desk and typewriter, banging away at the keys until, as if by magic, the words ‘The End” appear on the last page. I fell for this romantic illusion myself when I first started writing and within sixty days hammered out an 83,000 word novel. Life was good. I wrote “The End” and felt really good about myself.
I was a ‘pantser’ through and through. ‘Screw outlining’ I said to myself. That’s for folks that can’t get in touch with their muse. Me? I can’t get the muse to leave me alone…
The manuscript went off to edit. I got it back a few weeks later with all the normal stuff ‘fixed’ and the obligatory edit notes. Here is what I read that I liked – “It was a real page turner and would make a great movie.” That’s cool. The muse didn’t let me down. But then I continued reading “You might want to work on character development a bit, the hero is a little one dimensional.” Hmmmmm. What does that mean?
So I set about doing the re-write and realized I had painted myself into a few corners with my plot. How? By not paying attention to the pace of my story. My muse apparently didn’t know anything about pace.
There is an old adage that a good story is pretty simple. You somehow get the hero to climb a tree. When she is feeling pretty good about her tree climbing skills, you throw rocks at her. Then you get her out of the tree. Either by knocking her out with some hefty rocks or letting her descend on her own, torn and tattered. Do that enough times over 80,000 to 100,000 words without losing the reader and you have a novel. Maybe even a good one.
My problem is that my hero spent a good chunk of the early part of my story climbing one tree. And she kept climbing and climbing and climbing. And because my muse sucks at pace, my hero had climbed so high that I had a hard time reaching her with the rocks I was throwing at her. I needed shorter trees. And more of them.
But here is the problem many ‘pantsers’ face. You can’t just go back and easily add more trees after the story has been written. To do so, requires a ton more effort than banging out the original story. Trees need to be planted, and nurtured. Rocks need to be carefully chosen for size and weight. Plus, the muse is easily bored. At least mine is. She wants to help me with the creative ‘new’ stuff, not ‘fixing’ the stuff we’ve already done.
Here is an embarrassing fact. I have spent more time re-writing than it took to write the original story. I suspect that other folks that write by the seat of their pants have the same issue. So I have come to the conclusion that ‘pantsers’ aren’t really writers at all. They are ‘re-writers’. And because my muse and I don’t like re-writing that much, I have decided to do a little more planning on the next novel.
Not a full blown outline mind you. My muse won’t tolerate that. I am convinced that if I subject her to too much ‘planning’ she will run and hide and start drinking bourbon in the morning. But I will definitely do some outlining and planning. So I will become, in the end, a ‘pantser’ with a dash of “outliner’. A ‘pantliner’… a hybrid.
Before I sit down to the write the next novel, I will at least think about the trees I want my hero to climb. I’ll consider where I will plant the trees in my story. How tall each tree will be. How many branches the trees will have. Not every tree. But the main ones to be sure. And of course, I will choose some of the rocks I plan to throw as well.
But I will always leave some of the decisions to my muse. Why? Because when I give her some space, she grows some of the most interesting trees you have ever seen. And don’t even get me started on the rocks she finds to throw…
