Throughout my twenty year teaching career, I have learned that there are many ways to write. There are efficient and effective ways, and then there are our own unique ways that eventually get the job done. Some ways appear easier than others, but we don’t always have control over the process, so we must find our own path. Taking a writing course is like planning a trip, it shows you the terrain to traverse and possible routes to travel.
As a teacher, I used to praise the handful of students that could systematically construct a writing assignment through a clean process of brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, and polishing. They would take their pencil and look up at the ceiling and within a minute note down a concise idea and plan. Then, they would write a well developed five-paragraph essay within half an hour. I credited them with a finely trained mind. And though that may have been true for many of them, their patterns of thinking were also just the way that their brains worked. Not all of us think that way.
I have never been a methodical writer despite teaching writing for twenty years. I just don’t think in straight lines. Because of my dyslexia, I have creative organization and brainstorming sessions, which become first drafts that must later be outlined, so later I must go back and impose order on my messy initial thoughts. For me, it is impossible to know what I think until I have written it all down and have taken a moment to look at it carefully and analyze it. My stories start as knotted wads of twine that must be disentangled and straightened out before becoming a thread that can be followed.
Most writers fall somewhere between the extremes of organized to haphazard when drafting. It is so common that there are terms to describe these types: planners, pantsers, and plantsers.
- Planners: writers who can think up and plan out an outline and write systematically to the end
- Pantsers: writers who write by the seat of their pants drafting entire stories before knowing what it is about
- Plantsers: writers who combine the big-picture plan with the seat-of-your-pants style
None of these are right or wrong—they are strongly related to how our brains function and how we have been trained.
When reading about writing, a great deal of the advice is created for the small percentage of systematic, straight-line planners. This is because it makes much more sense to teach a process that is systematic, straightforward, and methodical. It is much less frightening if we embark on a huge project believing that we will follow an easy to replicate process. No one wants to hear that they will write a messy first draft that will need to be reorganized later and rewritten again. The complex process frightens us because it is often labor-intensive and time consuming.
However writing a book is much like embarking on a long journey. But, let’s be honest—great journeys go off the rails almost as soon as we start out on the adventure. Even the most methodical brains cannot control an entire book full of plots, subplots, character arcs, and landscapes. Something will change the course at one point or another. This is part of the experience of writing a book, and the extra time off-track often leads to a deeper appreciation for all the people and places.
On the other end of the spectrum, pantsers love to write by the seat of their pants, but sometimes they need to slow down and make a plan. When everything goes well, their stories have momentum and flow that keeps the reader engaged. However, pantsers often hit dead-ends when writing or they have an unnecessarily large mountain to climb when revising. These drawbacks can be averted with a little bit of forethought. By brainstorming a path through the story and noting down character and setting details, the writing will remain coherent throughout the process of drafting.
Now, when I teach writing, I expect that every class will have an organized planner and a creative pantser. This is wonderful because the world needs books that represent the diversity of humanity. No matter where you fall on the continuum between planner or pantser, this course will help you move a little towards the middle because there are both blessings and curses with both methods of working.
My course’s structure forces the pantsers to slow down and think through the big stuff, and it encourages planners to start writing bits of text that can turn into more than just a very nice outline. I intend to help my students balance out to become a hybrid plantser, who structures their creative flow of ideas.
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