Perils of a Pantser
How does winging it impact your story development?
Notebooks crammed with half-finished stories are the trademark of a writer.
Even famous authors, from Ernest Hemingway to Stephen King, left a trail of half-developed ideas and incomplete manuscripts in their wake. Not every idea progresses into a fully formed short story or novel. Some stories hit a creative dead end and there’s nothing you can do except toss those ideas aside and start fresh on developing a new story filled with new characters.
Shepherding a story idea into a more concrete form carries a greater degree of difficulty when you take a “pantser” approach to writing. I say this as a writer who fully embraced this method of storytelling in my earlier years.
Confessions of a Former “Pantser”
I can’t tell you how many times a cool idea popped into my mind, and I started churning out a rough draft for a new story right away. I never paused to flesh out any characters or the plot. My mind focused on one thing alone: write, write, write! Channeling my creative energy through a pen into a notebook offered such a thrill that I pushed all other considerations aside.
This approach didn’t work out well most of the time. I typically hit writer’s block only a few pages into my story. The creative train fully derailed at that point, and I ended up setting aside a half-finished story that I never figured out how to restart.
On the surface, taking an unstructured approach to storytelling seems like a brilliant concept. It’s fun to let ideas run free like wild horses and just follow whatever random path they choose to travel. That’s creative energy in its purest form, right?
Sure. But it doesn’t mean spontaneity is a foolproof method for constructing a story. Spontaneous writing only helps you reach a certain point in a story before it degenerates into spontaneous creative combustion.
I never paused to flesh out any characters or the plot. My mind focused on one thing alone: write, write, write!
Flaws in Pantser Storytelling
Unstructured storytelling is littered with flaws. You don’t gain a firm enough grasp on characters or plot when you simply wing it as a pantser. If you complete a rough draft, extensive rewrites become required so you can eliminate major plot holes and flesh out your characters.
My original rough draft of Alien People gained existence through a pure pantser approach. I wrote the 400-page draft in only three months when I was 18 years old. I took pride in what I accomplished, and I had every right to do so. How many teenagers sit down and write a full-length novel? Still, my first stab at Alien People read like a bad direct-to-video sci-fi movie. Characters were inconsistent at best and scenery-chewing cardboard at worst. My dialogue turned out overwrought and cheesy. And violent action scenes popped up left and right without advancing the story in any meaningful way.
Building a Framework
Before completing later drafts for Alien People, I went back and started fleshing out the world hidden in my story. I sketched out everything I knew about my primary and secondary characters - their personalities, physical appearance, life history, interests, fears, and any other relevant information. I jotted down notes about the planet Calandra and Xttra called home. This included geography, history, culture, biology, technology — anything playing a role in framing the story.
I outlined key plot and character beats for each chapter. And I ended up rewriting Alien People in a profound way. The story’s basic framework stayed unchanged, but I executed many scenes in radically different ways after extensive off-the-page world-building. I scrapped entire scenes and chapters from the original draft, cut out some secondary characters, added new characters, and completely rewrote the final act of the story. Putting extra thought into building a world between the lines, turned Alien People into a seamless, suspenseful, dynamic story that perfectly captured my vision.
Spontaneous writing only helps you reach a certain point in a story before degenerating into spontaneous creative combustion.
Compromising Between Pantser and Plotter
I learned my lesson from my early days of writing and now plan out important elements of my stories before I put pen to paper or fingers on the keyboard. Sketching out characters and major plot beats within the story helps me know where I’m going and gives me a rough idea of how to get there.
Sticking rigidly to a structured outline can be a mistake though if you let it interfere with your creativity. Spontaneous writing does have a place in the creative process. My chapter outlines usually serve as a starting point rather than the final destination for a story. I change things on the fly if character personalities require the plot to go in an unintended direction. It’s fun and does have a ripple effect on how the story is built. When I published Dark Metamorphosis, for example, the final story veered away from the original outline enough that only about 1/2 of the chapters turned out how I originally intended. I repeatedly adjusted how story beats played out to fall in line with how my characters influenced key situations.
Melding a pantser and plotter mindset is the best approach to storytelling. Creating a basic framework, while giving room to spontaneity as you write, delivers a story that readers will not be able to put down.