Cartoon found here.
Plotter vs. Panster …
I might have begun my writing career working in a semi-journalistic environment. “Semi” for a defunct woman’s weekly newspaper published in the feminist-driven seventies. I did a weekly feature for the single mother, entitled Alternatives. Of course, as you might have surmised, I was a single parent.
Fast forward to the current contentment of my retired state of mind.
I wrote my first two novels with the passion of a zealot, madly flying from page one, Chapter One to … the end. I considered this to be a mark of my writing talent.
She pulled out a plum and said what a good girl am I. No, she did not. She fell on her head and all the kings horses and all the kings men …
Then I began the painstaking task of editing, revising and rewriting, and the difficult task of finding the inherent weakness in my work. I began searching out different reading material and writing blogs.
Okay, so I will never learn to spell. But I will also never again run a muck with confusing sub plots, unnecessary tags lines, repetitive phrases (especially similar beginnings of sentences and paragraphs) and I now happily search and destroy all extraneous verbiage.
In a recent free workshop from RWA University, I was introduced to the idea of a “plot synopsis.” Mind you, I still cannot function by writing the entire plot of a novel before I begin to write. However, the idea of a plot synopsis appealed to me simply because it can also serve as your final synopsis (with later revisions) and have the bones of the dreaded query letter.
It is also an expanded version of your back-cover blurb, a thumbnail of who, what, where and why. Yes, similar to what I learned in my brief stint in journalism.
Think of this as a trip you have planned. You know where you will begin and have already decided where you want to go. You start any journey at the front door of your home.
Like the first leg or your journey, you are still not that far from home. You are traveling down the same roads you might travel to the supermarket or shopping mall. It isn’t much farther along than meeting a friend for lunch at your favorite eatery.
Then the fun begins.
A smart traveler does not venture too far from home without knowing how to use road maps, how to follow directions and pay attention to sign posts as she speeds merrily down the highway.
A separate Word document becomes my travel planner. How many miles will I travel today, where will I stop for food or lodging, how can I avoid traffic jams or too many tolls along the way?
At the end of the day, I write down what I will do in the next day’s work, still not sure of the route I might wish to travel to my final destination.
Happily, I’ve even discovered that once on the road, I can change directions and end up in a different place entirely. I let the characters “talk” to me, I make unscheduled stops to enjoy the scenery and give the characters a chance to rest.
I continue to use that panster part of myself to do my daily writing, and I have learned that with a modified plot, I can work at my customary speed and produce work, that in the end, requires less revision, editing and rewriting.
In short … I can be both a plotter and a panster, maintain my gaggle of characters and do cleaner, more mature work. It is the old architect’s conundrum of form and function.
When I go off the grid, I get a confused tangle of episodic and mis-matched plots that are not good story telling.
The attempt to win the argument of plotter vs. panster is futile. I have learned that semi-plotting has its place in my life because it brings me the structure I need to write the story that I can’t help but tell.
Because I think we all win, regardless of where we start, the answer for me is to pay homage to structure and form, and once I know where the hell I am going, open her up full throttle until I reach my destination.
Where in your writerly life do you find yourself when you sit to tell your stories?
Do you think the panster can exist without the plotter?
fOIS In The City
