Pansters

There are two main types of writers, planners and pansters. Planners know where their story is going, they know the major arc of the story and may even have a detailed outline down to the scene level.

Then there are pansters. We write by the seat of our pants, never knowing fully what's going to happen. The characters respond with little input from the author. I'm mostly a panster. I may have a key scene in my mind, and a general ending in mind, but how I get there will as much as a surprise to me as to the reader.

I document the story, but after I've written parts. Characters come into being as needed, but then I have to note who they are and what their basic motivations are. You don't want so many characters in a book that your readers lose track, so some characters have to become semi-regular. Even if they aren't point-of-view characters, they need consistency. If you need a certain action from them, it better be established that that is something they'd do.

As a panster, I can easily get derailed into research. What's the geology of a fully water planet? Easier for me, I have a degree in geology, but that's many years in the past and my remembrance of ocean plate tectonics is faded. What type of rock? What would the features be? What's the weather going to be like? Some of this you can make up, but it needs to be believable. So you research.

And when you come to something that you know very little about, then you start to realize how little you know and you're trying to build a base of knowledge in a whole new subject.

🔖Tags:Writing