Recently, I was asked whether I was a “plotter” or a “pantser” — in other words, do I plan in copious detail before I start writing or do I let the story evolve organically as I write?<\/p>\n
The ultimate “plotter”, by the way, was probably Kafka, who is said to have pre-planned not only every chapter but every paragraph! Although this may be an urban (literary) myth, if true I suspect it says a great deal about his personality.<\/p>\n
Tolkien, on the other hand, is arguably the poster boy of the “pantsers”, those authors who roll with the story as it evolves.<\/p>\n
Anyway, my preferred response to the ‘plotter’ vs ‘pantser’ question is that I like to have a buck each way.<\/p>\n
My stories are always with me and I\u2019m always thinking about them and their permutations, which is effectively \u201cplotting\u201d, albeit in my head. Apparently a famous writer (I’m not quite sure who, but if you do, I’d love to know) from the early or mid 20th century called this the \u201csit on the porch and rock\u201d approach to writing. But the one time I sat down and tried to put all this plotting into a \u201cplan\u201d on pen and paper I felt as though I\u2019d already written the story and promptly lost interest in it. Not the outcome I was looking for!<\/p>\n
But in a quote commonly attributed to the Prussian general, Graf Von Moltke, \u201cno plan survives contact with the enemy.\u201d So the moment I begin writing, I find the story and the characters change shape and evolve \u2013 and the further I get from the process of sitting on the porch and rocking, the more I have to \u201cwrite and throw away\u201d to get the story right.<\/p>\n
And to get the story right, I’m willing — if not necessarily happy — to write and throw away as often as it takes.<\/p>\n
Because both “plotting’ and “pantsing” are just different means to an end and from where I’m sitting (on my authorial porch with my rocking chair—suppin’ whisky and shootin’ iron optional \ud83d\ude09 ) writing the story right, however you get to that end, is what really matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, I was asked whether I was a “plotter” or a “pantser” — in other words, do I plan in copious detail before I start writing or do I let the story evolve organically as I write? The ultimate “plotter”, by the way, was probably Kafka, who is said to have pre-planned not only every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-about-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29034"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29038,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29034\/revisions\/29038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}