Pantsers versus Architects
November 15th, 2007 by Ray Rhamey
Relative to the never-to-be-resolved debate between “pantsers” (writers who forego outlines and write by the seat of their pants) and, er, “organizers” (funny that there’s no funny name for writers who outline their novels– how about “architects” for a more colorful handle?), I came across advice by author David L. Robbins posted in a Backspace article that said this:
“…keep in mind that imagination is limitless. Do not, therefore, reduce your story to outlines and sketches, notes and 3×5 cards. You will make your story finite this way and it will suffer because it cannot grow beyond your outline. Juggle your story: by this, I mean keep eight balls in the air and only two in your hands. Let the story - the eight balls - float free, dangerously so. That’s the beauty of watching a juggler: where will those balls fall? Chase your story, believe in your characters and follow them. Do not predetermine every step they take but record what they do, and do the recording breathlessly but with control, as if you just came inside to report an accident or a marvel you have just witnessed.”
Me being a pantser, his words were, of course, delightfully affirming. That’s me, boy, taking in what’s happening and putting it on paper. Sometimes it happens that I’ll be able to see a little further down the road than the immediate scene, say a chapter or three, but that’s as far ahead as I ordinarily go (except for knowing the ending, which I usually do).
But I wonder about Mr. Robbins’s assertion that a story will “suffer because it cannot grow beyond your outline.” Cannot? I’d like to hear from you architects out there on this, but that seems to me to assume that you don’t have the creativity and flexibility that pantsers do. I seriously doubt that, although architects may have to resist a natural resistance to dumping their work, much the same as a pantser does.
While we pantsers don’t have to worry about keeping to or straying from an outline, we are often faced with a need to throw out perhaps thousands of words because our pants have walked us into a blind alley. In my own writing, I now know that when the narrative stalls and I just can’t seem to make it move forward, the problem lies in a wrong fork taken. When that happens, I backtrack and reread until I see the error of my story’s ways, throw out the bad stuff, and my writing is re-energized and the flow resumes. I’ve scrapped chapters, sections, you name it.
It seems to me that architect-type writers must be able to do the same thing with outlines. We pantsers know well how an unforeseen development can steer a scene or a chapter to an unanticipated destination. An architect’s outline may seem perfect at the conceptual stage, but unexpected twists must also happen to them as they write. I don’t think that good architect writers limit themselves, as Robbins suggests, to sticking with the outline no matter what. I’ll bet that they do the same thing I do, only with less waste motion—re-evaluate, find the right path, and then reorganize (same as me rewriting, only a lot less labor-intensive).
For what it’s worth.
Photo by little-sky.
I think all of us do the same creative work; we just may do it in different phases of the process. Some people brainstorm, capture their thoughts in an outline and then get to writing. Others brainstorm as they go. You do what works.
For me it works better to separate the high level architecting from the actual crafting of scenes. So I’m a bit more of a “plotter” than a “pantser”.
I’ve started all my books with a high level outline but I’ve never felt bound to stick to it. It’s like planning a trip using a road map but being willing to make detours, either when there’s a roadblock or something interesting down a different road.
Recently I’ve experimented with writing a more detailed outline and found it helped me come up with a lot of good ideas. So I may be moving even closer to the plotting end of the spectrum but I don’t feel any less creative for it.
I agree, Elena. Neither approach is more or less creative than the other, just different.
Ray
I’m a pantser spirit who’s forced herself toward the architectural ways to prevent too many wrong turns. Now that I’m in the editing phase of things I see that having a solid outline doesn’t mean everything’s going to work out. Sometimes a scene falls flat because you put action over characterization, and the characters feel cardboard, their actions inauthentic. I think it’s important to give characters some free reign no matter what kind of writer you are.
I blogged about a similar issue (Outline = Box?) in the past, if anyone’s interested.
Great post, Ray!
Being a plotter doesn’t mean I’m less willing to throw a work out. Just because I’ve planned it doesn’t make me unwilling to alter the plan.
What it does insure, however, is when I change a major element of story I’m not throwing out thousands of words with it. I’m only throwing out a slice of the blueprint.
You could say that plotters go through a process of prototyping their story. They are designing their story rather than writing it. At any time, the design can change — without having to toss out all those serious efforts at prose.
For me prose is a rendering process towards the end. By that point I’ve decided what I want my story to be and I can settle into the task of scripting the action and dialogue, line by line.
I tend to think of it as a computer scanning/loading a very large image.
In the first pass, all you see are giant pixels of blurred color. In another pass, you begin seeing smaller pixels of color. Eventually, shapes of the composition begin to form out of collections of blocky pixels.
But you can only go so far in laying the block-like pixels. Eventually, to get your final clarity you have to render the prose, which I consider the final few pixel detail passes. Nothing will be clear until you do that.
However, personally I find it difficult in the extreme to try and do that at the beginning. I end up writing large chunks of prose that go immediately into the garbage can because they’re not telling the story I want to tell.
There is a strong divide between story and text in my mind. The shaping and ordering of things, creating meaning, is far too important to leave to the liberal process of dribbling spontaneous text.
But that’s just my preference.
Hi Ray,
Aren’t all writers pretty much architects? Take the pantsers, myself included, we have a central theme, plot or concept we want to novelize and it stays in our heads. The characters and details then flow from that single idea until the novel is finished.
The architects do the same only they put it all in an outline written somewhere that they reference from time to time.
Both writers change the direction of the plot or theme or characters as they create the novel. Both let the novel write itself. At least, they should.
I usually write the plot or concept first and let the novel flow from it. Not an outline, but pretty much a statement of the concept, plot or theme.
In the same vein take a look at my blog post, “Why do you write?” with some interesting concepts by Rambo author, David Morrell at http://writersedgeinfo.blogspot.com/2007/08/why-do-you-write.html
He says all writers write to resolve a personal trauma.
when it comes to my dialogue, i’m a pantser all the way. but when it comes to the basic outline of my story, i’m an architect. but being an architect certainly save a lot of time and error if i have to backtrack when i find something doesn’t work. of course, i learned that the hard way!!!!
To Anthony–there are degrees of “pantsing” (is it getting weird here?), I think. For most of my novels I’ve started with the opening, the ending, and pages of notes on scenes, incidents, etc., and then just started writing.
However, I totally pantsed one novel, my most recent one about a vampire kitty-cat, writing one 1200-1500-word episode per week, with no planning, no ending in mind, and only a couple of pages of notes. Pulled it right out of my, er, the air.
IMO, it worked–and fulls of it are currently with three agents to see if I’m right.
There’s no right way to write, is there?
Ray
I know in TV, the actual writing of the working script is the last thing that is done, after the story is discussed and developed.
This is how I prefer to work, the difference being I do not have the luxury of a writing team to sit with me in a writing room, so ‘development’ takes a lot longer than it probably should.
I think plotters are no more immune to tossing their work than pantsters. I am an easy-going architect, myself. I’ve known that I want to go from A to B in the subplot but not how to get there and scrapped chapters of material on different attempts. A master architect, I suspect, must throw out as much writing as they revise their preceptions of the novel (I refuse to believe that anyone is capable of completeing a creative work about which they knew everything that would arise), just not fleshy prose.
I agree with Mr Policastro as well–we are all architects to some degree. This may be, though, because I cannot concieve of someone having only one line in their mind (ala Dean Koontz, “My name is Odd Thomas”) and successfully running with it to the end.
Between the arch-pantser and the super-planner there’s a whole continuum of writers possessing both pantsing and planning approaches to various degrees. We all fit in there somewhere. There are probably far fewer writers at the two extremes. Robbins over-simplifies when he suggests planning stifles the creative process. If writers did no planning at all their stuff would be chaotic, like a house built by starting with the brick in the bottom left hand corner and seeing where things go.
I can’t add to what everyone else has already said.
This was a fun read. I am a fan of the Flog.