What is a 'Pantser'

One of the things that writers often talk about on forums is the spectrum ranging between pansting and plotting. Outside of this context, I don't know if most people will have heard this word before. “Pantsing” is a reference to the phrase “flying by the seat of your pants” or improvising. Writers who write without planning out their book (or without planning much of their book) beforehand are often called 'Pantsers' in the writing community while at the other end of the spectrum we have the 'Plotters', those who detail what the plot of their book is before they write it.

But if we consider the 'Pantser' if the writer doesn’t know the story, then how can they write it? Surely a story can’t be written if it isn’t known, right?

In my own experience as a Panster, I’ve found that the writing process often feels like a journey of discovery. At the beginning of writing a scene, I may have an idea of a premise or what needs to happen. Beyond that, I leave the slate blank and I start typing, letting my imagination work as I write. 

In this way I’m working out the story as I’m taking it down. You might imagine that I’m taking dictation.

As I said before, I may often have a general idea in mind. This was true for my first book. I knew what I wanted for a few key scenes in the book. It took me about a hundred and fifty pages to get to that scene but once I was there I knew what I wanted to happen. Sometimes I had no idea what was supposed to happen next. That’s fine – in a first draft that’s where a writer spends most of their time unless they’ve outlined the whole book before they’ve started writing.

The process itself is fairly straightforward. As I move forward in the book, I’ll have to decide how to start each new scene. If there is no gap of time between one scene and the next, and there’s no Point of View (POV) shift either, then I could go right ahead and start writing the next scene. But if there’s a gap in time I’ll have to sit back and decide when the story will pick up again and where. Through whose eyes will we see this next part of the story?

The second book I’m writing has been pretty straight-forward since I’m following one small group of characters, for the most part, and each scene directly follows the next. Imagine, however, you are writing an Epic Fantasy which sprawls over a map between two or three kingdoms with some kind of great quest or war going on. In this case it will take a good amount of awareness to juggle what is going on at any one time in different parts of your invented world. Whether your story will be told in parts, with halves (or thirds, quarters, etc) of the book devoted to a character or region, or if you spend a chapter at a time with one character, you’ll have to find a way to manage keeping track of where everything and everyone is at any one time.

This is all to say that, for the Pantsers out there, a bit of organization can go a long way. I’ve been watching some videos about charting out chapters of a novel to see who is in it, who isn’t in it, where the turning point it, and other vital information.

Why?

So that when someone asks you, rather than flipping to page 164 to figure out whether there is enough conflict, you can glance at a chart and see that you’ve had three chapters in a row where things have got better for your protagonist. Entering all the information into a chart can be tedious, but the payoff could be very handy, especially if you were to move into a long period of revision with your novel.

Despite the idea the name brings about, it doesn't necessarily have to be done with no plans made at all. As I said before, the "Pantsing/Plotting" argument is on a spectrum, so some people who plot out their books will make much more detailed outlines than others who will only do a rough sketch of what they want their book to be like. Some pantsers will say "I want to write a Mystery" and sit down to start their first draft. Others might take a little time to flesh out a few characters, the basic plot and maybe the setting before the go forward with the first draft.

In the end, Pantsing is just another way that writers get the job done. Some Pantsers may plot a little, some may not plot at all and let the story develop as they write it. Each chapter they finish will inform the next chapter that they write. And so chapter follows chapter to form a book and book will follow book as writers as different types keep at their work.