Writers come in two classes: panster and plotter. Which are you?
A pantster is a writer who doesn’t like to plan, someone who likes to write by the seat of their pants. A pantster likes to discover his story as he writes it with plot twists he didn’t anticipate until he started writing.
A plotter likes to plot his stories before he writes them. Some plotters write with minimal plots figured out before they start. Other plotters anticipate every scene, setting, character, dialog and surprise in the outline. They want to know what happens before they write.
Is one better than another? It depends on the type of writing you are doing.
Essays require organization, a strong thesis statement, a development of that one idea, and a conclusion. They require at least a minimal of plotting.
Biographies require some kind of plotting–usually chronological.
Whodunits require a murderer who is one of the characters. Readers today don’t accept villains who come out of nowhere. So plotting backwards is inevitable. I can spot mysteries whose villain has not been well integrated into the story. I feel cheated by these endings. I have invested all this time into reading, and I expect the writer will respect me by providing a clever ending. That takes careful planning.
Some fiction is comprised of self-contained short stories with one factor in common, such as a location or a character. There might be an arc showing development, or there might not be. Individual stories might require some plotting, but the novel as a whole might not. Or the story arc might be vague, such as a little brother annoys his big brother, and the big brother doesn’t like it. These are more pantster than plotter.
Journey stories can be well written by a pantster. You start the protagonist on his way, and then you add one difficult situation after another until he has faced enough perils. Then you end the story with victory. The order of the obstacles doesn’t matter.
The pantster does an awful lot of rewriting. The plotter rewrites too, but not as much because so much writing was done in the planning stage of the story. The plotter seems to finesse his writing while the pantster chucks page after page of irrelevant material. Or maybe he saves it for another book.
Which we are—pantster or plotter—might depend on our personalities. Detail-focused writers might prefer plotting to be sure all the details are included and in the right order. Freedom-focused writers might prefer pantster’s lack of restrictions.
Perhaps the best-loved writers are a little bit of both, using sophisticated plotting paired with imaginative, surprising events.
Which kind of writer are you?
English Writing Teacher 