I honestly forget what the title of the song is that the line I’ve used for my title of this week’s blogpost comes from. In fact, that may even be the title. I really don’t know. But it relates well to the topic of this week’s post, which I originally was going to call, “Are you a plotter or a pantser?”
You see—and this is more applicable to writing fiction than non-fiction—basically writers break down into two categories: “plotters” and “pantsers.” A plotter writes an outline or notes or in some way plots out her or his book before writing it. Her notes may be so detailed that they take many, many, MANY pages, or they may be briefer than that, but when she starts out to actually write the book, she has a fairly detailed “roadmap” of where she is going with the plot.
A pantser, on the other hand, writes by the seat of her or his pants. She probably has a pretty good idea of what the book is about, who her protagonist is, something of the plot…but unless it’s a mystery, in which case she probably needs to know “whodunit,” she may not even know how the book is going to end. And the twists and turns along the way occur to her as she is writing them. She does not know in advance what is going to take place. She’s as surprised as her readers later will be by the developments in the plot.
Which is the “right” way to write? They both are! There IS NO right or wrong—plotting and pantsing are both equally valid approaches to writing. Some people write more comfortably one way and some the other. But there is one pitfall to pantsing. And now we get back to the title of this week’s post.
You see, the plotter is also more likely to make detailed notes on her main characters—everything from descriptions of their looks to notations about their favorite foods, pastimes, and even vacation spots. Often these notes contain information that never even makes it into the book. But they give the writer a better feel for her characters, who they are and how they will act or react is specific circumstances.
The pantser often has no such notes, although it’s possible to write your book with no pre-plotting and still have pages of descriptions of your main characters.
But I have edited manuscripts for other writers in which on (let us say) page 6 the author has written, “Beverly’s brown eyes grew clouded,” and on (let us say) page 44 the author has written, “Bev’s blue eyes sparkled.” This author either wasn’t paying attention to her character notes or should have created some but didn’t.
A classic example I read about elsewhere—and I wish I had it in front of me now, but I don’t, so I’ll have to paraphrase—had, on an earlier page, words to the effect of, “The pirate loved to tell the story of the hook on his right arm and how he had lost his hand in a battle many years ago,” and later in the book, “As he raised the pirate flag with his left hand he nervously bit the nails of his right hand.”
One last example—this one, as with the first, from a manuscript I was entrusted with to edit—involved a character’s NAME changing in mid-story! Not hair color or eye color or height or weight, but the name of, while not the protagonist, a major character nonetheless.
So if you’re writing a novel (or story) and decide you’d rather work as a pantser than a plotter, I advise you to at least keep either a chart or notes with details about the characteristics of your main characters.
Otherwise they may change name in mid-story, change eye color (without the benefit of special lenses), or even regrow a missing hand!