As a writer, I am a plotter with the heart of a pantser, so I consider myself a hybrid version—a plantser.
The plotter part of me stems from years as an English major in college. Most, if not all, writing assignments required a thesis statement and developing supportive arguments. The method of organizing thoughts before committing to writing became second nature. Honestly, it made life easier to have the points listed out before expounding upon them. And what a time saver, too!
But the pantser side of me surfaces mainly in my writing voice and penchant for coloring outside the lines in my prose. As an author, I prefer a fictional character’s range of emotions to be expressed in poetic refrains or repetition as a passageway into his or her thoughts. And I like sentence fragments to break up the monotony of subject and verb structure.
The element of chance is essential to my writing, Even in my personal life, I leave things open to change. During many college semesters, I dropped and added classes up to the three-week limit. I recall a concentrated summer session class in Spanish that was already two weeks into it and met every day. I hadn’t planned to take the course, but it would have finished up my foreign language requirement. Due to my high grades in previous Spanish classes, the instructor let me in. A few of my former classmates groaned when they saw me enter the classroom. One actually said out loud, “Well there goes the class curve.” I finished with an A grade and, well, you can guess the rest.
Whether you consider yourself a plotter, pantser or plantser, story development doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a process. I’d love to give birth to a brilliant symphony of words sprayed across the pages of a novel. But there’s more to it. I need to devise something akin to a treasure map with significant points along the way to the goal! Following the inception of an idea and central characters, I continue with a blank poster board and draw vertical and horizontal lines and create blocks. That’s the plotter in me, naturally. But then the pantser comes out and I start filling in the blocks with bits of story, maybe even chapter names. I have a sense of what’s happening but I’m not sure what will go into each block until I start piecing it together and begin the writing process. It’s a map, a chart, however I visualize it, and it’s my starting point. I can’t just sit down and start writing without an exercise similar to this one. And then there’s the characters! They have a voice as I start shaping their lives and, quite honestly, I’m thrown curve balls as I map out their stories. Sometimes secondary characters will pop in and demand attention, even if for a little while, because, well, they are important to the protagonist. And who am I to stand in the way?
Admittedly, there was a period of time when, as a writer, I was a full-time pantser, mainly with short stories. I recall a holiday in Toronto and meeting up with friends from Ireland who had a sister living there. It was the week after Christmas and we also planned to spend New Year’s Eve together. Upon arrival in Toronto, I had a bus ride from my hotel to the apartment where my friend’s sister lived. It was nighttime and I felt icicles forming in my nasal passages while waiting at the bus stop. It was sheer torture to be out in the freezing weather. And then, on New Year’s Eve, we attended an outdoor concert. I jumped up and down to the rock band’s music only to distract me from the bitter, feet-numbing cold! All I wanted was warmth and an indoor sanctuary from the frosty, arctic air! Before leaving Toronto, I quickly penned a short story called, “The Bus Ride” about a preteen girl on her way to her grandma’s apartment. Her immediate family—mom, dad and brother—died in a car accident. She was a holdout for the long weekend excursion not knowing it would be the last time she’d be with her family. Her ride was filled with emotions, but by the end something changed inside of her. I’m not even sure if I still have the story, but I loved writing it not knowing where it would take me or the character, other than her grandmother’s apartment. I reveled in the pantser quality of it, the freewheeling and first rush of ideas and thoughts.
As mentioned, I still reserve a bit of that serendipity because, sometimes, a character will come to me that I didn’t expect. It’s happening in my third book of “The Miriam Chronicles.” At first I’m thinking, “Who is this person? Why are they now in the story? How important are they?” Then I keep the character in and see what happens next.
However you craft your story—fiction, non-fiction, memoir—be open to creative flow, change and however the story reveals itself to you. Surprise yourself, because, in the end, you’ll be a more satisfied writer and have a richer experience! Happy writing!