Are you a plotter or a pantser?
Did you know that there are different kinds of writers?
Writing has it's theory and rules, but every writer has a unique way of working, and they are all equally valid. Some writers start by getting a general idea of the characters before thinking about a plot, others prefer to create a world and then imagine what story will fit in it. Some may prefer to know what kind of story they want to tell before deciding how the other aspects of the story will be.
Regardless of where you start, there are two general ways in which writers create their stories that have been defined as plotters and pantsers.
Some days ago, I had a friend tell me that he was a mess at writing because he couldn't plan what he was going to write. He just sat down with the idea of what he wanted and wrote and wrote until he shaped a story. He believed his way of writing was weird and "probably not how you are supposed to do it".
He was surprised when I told him that his writing process wasn't something strange and that, in fact, it even had a name. What he did is what we call a pantser.
Plotters and pantsers difference each other by their writing process. Let's break them down individually:
A plotter is a person who "plots" their story before sitting down to write it. Plotters spend a long time creating their story, characters and world-building before starting to write. This means that their preparing process is long,
but that they will spend less time during reviewing because they will have solved a lot of plot-holes and possible problems before actually writing the first chapter.
A pantser work process is the opposite. Pantsers get a general idea of what they want to do; maybe they know the characters that will appear, and what the plot is overall. But, instead of taking a lot of time to prepare everything and tie down every knot, they prefer to start writing right away and discover the story as they go. This means, of course, that their reviewing process will be long since they will have to change a lot of aspects of the story and characters as they invented
most of them mid-way through the story.
None of this methods of writing is better than the other, they just offer different ways of creating a story. Writers tend to feel more comfortable working with one or the other process, although a lot of writers aren't 100% plotters or pantsers.
For example, I would say that I am 80% plotter and 20% pantser. I like to take my time to shape the story and the characters before writing anything. I spend a lot of hours getting to know my characters, deciding their part in the plot, what story they need to tell, how is the world that surrounds them, how that shapes them... and a large etc.
But, once I start writing my chapters I may come across new ideas that I implement half-way through the writing process. A lot of the times I am writing about a character and I feel that what I wanted them to do feels forced because, now that I am getting to truly know them, I figure they would never do or say what I thought they would. So I have to change those little things and, during revision, make sure that they are all coherent with the rest of the work.
What about famous authors?
Between plotters we can find Brandon Sanderson, J.K. Rowling, and John Grisham.
On the other hand, George R.R. Martin, Stephen King and Margaret Atwood identify as pantsers.
So, how is your writing process? Do you identify more with plotters or with pantsers?