Pantsing is the common term for “writing a novel by the seat of your pants.” Steven James and Jerry Jenkins fall into this category.
To a certain extent, I’m a partial pant’ser and mostly a planner. I’ll do a lot of planning work before I start writing. Sometimes I see the scene and I have to write it before I start outlining.
But make no mistake, I’m more of a planner.
Planners determine many things about a novel before you start.
In many ways, being a pants’er means you’re going to have a million false starts on your novels.
In many ways, if you’re a pure pants’er, you’ll never finish your novel.
That’s a “you can bank on that” statement.
If you want to pants your way through a novel – great!
But you have to learn to do at least a bare minimum of planning – or the novel will never be done.
What is your novel about? If you can answer this, you’ve partially planned already.
Who is your protagonist?
Who is your antagonist?
what are they trying to do?
Get that much settled. Get at least the outline settled in bullet points, so you know what’s going where.
Now, that’s where everyone falls apart.
“i don’t want to do that! I want to write, and discover where it goes!”
Okay. you’ve got two months. Go.
How’d you do? is your novel done?
I’m not saying you need to plan like K. M. Weiland does – she goes to the extreme, with synopsis and character bios that run 60 pages. She really knows her novel, and THAT allows for really fast writing.
Yes, your novel takes as long as it takes. But if you ever want to finish it, you need to decide…
- is my present course allowing me to finish it?
- Do I have other ideas I want to write?
- Can I reasonably set a target deadline for sending it to an agent?
- Can I conceivably set a YEAR in which this will be finished?
If your answers are “no, yes, no, and no” – then it’s time to embrace at least a minimum of planning. And if you STILL have not finished your novel…. Nanowrimo.
Finish your novel. Your book must see print.
