I’ve heard it said there are two kinds of fiction writers: plotters and pantsers. True to their name, plotters have a plan for the plot before they start writing—typically some kind of outline.
Pantsers, on the other hand, write by the seat of their pants. They don’t know the end from the beginning, and they don’t write from an outline. Instead, they just write, figuring out the story as they go, conjuring the characters and following their lead.
You might say pantsers write like Abraham in the Genesis narrative, whom God famously told to leave his country, his kindred, his father’s house, and go to a land God would show him (Genesis 12:1). As the New Testament letter to the Hebrews puts it, Abraham “set out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). Abraham was a pantser.
Are Real Writers Pantsers?
From listening to interviews with writers over the years, I would say most literary fictionists are pantsers. There are exceptions—Amor Towles, the critically-acclaimed author of A Gentleman in Moscow, is more of a plotter (this podcast is evidence)—but most literary folks tend to write like Abraham. And this makes sense: by definition, literary fiction centers characters and language, not plot, so it stands to reason plot would be secondary (at best) for most writers of literary fiction.
In fact, some literary pantsers seem to think plotting can't produce good fiction at all. For example, in his book on writing craft, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, the famous American short story writer, George Saunders, says,
“A plan is nice. With a plan, we get to stop thinking. We can just execute. But a conversation doesn’t work that way, and neither does a work of art. Having an intention and then executing it does not make good art. Artists know this.” (p. 161)
Elsewhere in the book, Saunders says,
“...the thing we would have planned would have been less. The best it could have been was exactly what we intended it to be. But a work of art has to do more than that; it has to surprise its audience, which it can do only if it has legitimately surprised its creator.” (p. 114)
Saunders' idea seems to be that writing from an outline or plan entails that the writer no longer think about where the story is going once the outline is done. The plotter simply fills in the details, something like coloring in a coloring book, which everyone knows is not genuine art (sorry kids). Such a process, says Saunders, eliminates surprise for the writer, which, in turn, strips out surprise for the reader, thereby causing the piece to fall short of genuine art.
Confessions of a Plotter
I began writing fiction as a plotter, more or less. When I started my first novel manuscript, I had ideas for scenes and a trajectory for the story, all of which I wrote down in a sketchy outline. Then I wrote in-depth character studies that totaled over 100 pages themselves. Finally, with this framework in place, I began writing chapters in linear sequence, telling the actual story.
Because I began my fiction practice as a plotter and retain that approach in some of my writing, the claims of the pantsers have always worried me. Is my novel manuscript unsurprising and artless by definition, simply because I wrote it from a plan? To boot, the approach of the pantser always seemed mysterious to me: how does writing a story by the seat of your pants produce anything but an incoherent mess?
This summer, in an effort to grow as a writer, I decided to try pantsing. I signed up for a fiction workshop that was part of a larger conference for artists called The Glen. Jamie Quatro, a celebrated fiction writer and teacher, had us write 300 to 500 words before each workshop session and then read our pieces aloud for critique. Each day we wrote from a different prompt, which Jamie gave us one day in advance. With the additional conference events outside of the workshop—morning yoga, afternoon walks, evening panels, concerts, and craft talks—there was no time for plans or outlines. I had no choice but to write into the void, spontaneously, by the seat of my pants.
The workshop was illuminating. Despite my worries, I didn't produce incoherent messes. Rather, I wrote the beginnings of three short stories that I actually like and want to develop further. The workshop pushed me into subject matter I might never have taken up: complicated father-son relationships, synthetic meat production, the anxieties of living in an aging body, and my insecurities a writer. In exhilarating bursts of intuition and freedom, writing by the seat of my pants called forth words from my subconscious, my gut, and my body that I didn't realize were there.
Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom
Despite this revelatory workshop experience, I remain skeptical of the dogma that plotters cannot produce art. Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, the idea that artful fiction must surprise both reader and writer—an idea I think smells a bit fishy and deserves further probing—plotters still have plenty of room for surprise. Why can't a plotter experience surprise when outlining the story? Indeed, I was surprised at many points when sketching the framework for my novel manuscript.
Also, why think a plotter "stops thinking" and merely "executes" once the writing begins? Plotters are not computers; they don't simply march through an outline as if it were Python code, obeying the steps pre-planned by the coder.
Rather, if they're good writers, they're constantly thinking as they write from the outline, evaluating and adjusting both outline and story as needed, deepening the characters with rich backstory and description, and writing the setting, narrative, and dialogue that move, delight, and, dare I say it, surprise the reader.
I suspect dogmatic pantsers are trapped by their own approach to writing. This is understandable: we often project how things are for us onto how things are for everyone. Nevertheless, the view of the dogmatic pantser is too confining. Why not "let one hundred flowers bloom," as Mao once said? The fact is, different writers write differently. Indeed, my experience has been that even the same writer (me!) might approach different projects differently, plotting some and pantsing others.
In my view, the task of the writer is to intuit the best way forward for the particular project they're working on. For many writers of many stories, perhaps an outline is unimportant and tends to get in the way. But for a historical novel, such as the one that launched me into writing fiction, I suspect an outline of some kind is critical.
Indeed, I have a hard time believing George Saunders followed his own advice when writing his Booker-Prize-winning historical(ish) novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. Surely he had some idea or plan for the novel in advance, however loose or unwritten. How does one even land on subject matter for a historical novel without some kind of intention or plan?
In any case, whether a fictionist writes from an outline or by the seat of her pants, it's a certainty that she can't know everything about her story in advance. Writing fiction—whether plotting or pantsing—will always be a step into the unknown, an act of faith in the mold of Abraham. Perhaps that's the grain of truth in the dogmatic pantser's position.
