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Pantser or Planner?Ah, yes, we’ve entered the old debate: are you a pantser or a planner? The idea is that you’re either flying by the seat of your pants (pantser), writing as you go with no real plan, or you’re a planner, plotting out your project in detailed outlines before sitting down to write.
While the choice is largely one of temperament, in my experience, most writers are a mix of both pantsers and planners. As we mature as writers, we quickly figure out that at least a little planning and outlining is a really good idea. An outline is like Google maps for our project: have a clear road map for where you’re going ahead of time, and you’ll get there a lot quicker (and with a lot less stress).
Still, there is an idea out there, particularly among literary writers, that we need to write “organically.” In other words, we don’t plan, but take a meandering journey towards finding structure. And there is something to that. Writing literary is different than writing commercial fiction. In his blog on this menu, BC writer Bill Stenson likens writing literary fiction to planning a vacation. You may organize the flight and hotel, but you want to stay open to the serendipity that pulls you this way and that along the way. That approach to finding plot can be fun, but also discouraging and just plain hard.
Why is finding plot and structure for a literary novel so difficult? Well, with each (literary) project, we are reinventing the wheel. Here’s what my mentor Jack Hodgins had to say on the subject in a discussion he and I had by email (used with his permission):
“Something in me (the someone in me who almost became an architect) feels that structure is as important to a novel as it is to a house. Every house has its own structure suitable to the functions of its whole, and so does the novel.
Well, most genre novels (except the very good) are more like those rows of wartime houses, the structure being mostly the same for all though the content might (should) be quite different. "Literary" novels should have (I think) their own blueprint appropriate to the content and intent.”
I took the winding road approach to finding the unique plot of my first literary novel and it took me seven years to write. Seven frickin’ years!
I finally clued into the fact that if I didn’t put the time and effort into really understanding plot and structure, and planned ahead, writing a novel would take a very long time and be so much more frustrating than it had to be.
So, I learned about structure and outlining and hey, the next literary novel took way less time. I actually wrote it in about two years. And as my first novel had been, my second was also short-listed for the ScotiaBank Giller Prize, thank you very much. Lesson learned.
I now plot and outline all my projects, big or small. Outlines aren’t just organizing tools. They are, more importantly, brainstorming tools that help me find conflict, because outlines keep me focused on story goals.
Okay, so what does plotting look like exactly? Here’s how I, at least, approach plotting a novel.
