P is for Pantser

 Hi, my name is Lisa and I'm a pantser. This is an admission made only in hushed tones in some author circles -- those where plotting reigns supreme and pantsing is the mark of an amateur. Indeed, I once attended a luncheon where the keynote speaker, a multi-published author, told the audience outright that if we were pantsing we were doing it wrong.

What, you may wonder, is pantsing?

In writing circles, panthers are authors who fly by the seats of our pants. We start out with some elements of our stories -- a beginning, an ending and a vague road map from one to the other, perhaps -- but we don't plot our stories out ahead of time. We just sit down, write, and see where the story takes us.

Admittedly, this can lead us down roads pitted with potholes, wrong turns, and detours. But, for some of us, it's the only way to travel.

For me, it's all about the traveling companions. Although I don't plan out the trip ahead of time (and that includes not always having a concrete destination in the form of an ending), I do spend time creating my characters before I begin to write. When I wrote the MAC series, Marita and Charli were the most well-defined at the outset. Marita's parents, Angel, and even Bets all grew from their interactions on the page, with each having a say in how they sounded and how they developed over time. Having never seen Gilmore Girls before writing Casting the First Stone, I still marvel at how similar Marita, Charli, and Rosemarie are to Lorelei, Rory, and Emily. I had no idea those television characters even existed (which I can hardly imagine now!), but I suspect that they'd get along very well with Marita, Charli, and Rosemarie.

Writing a story without plotting it out first is a lot like having a dinner party. You invite interesting people whose company you enjoy, and how the party goes depends entirely on how they interact. Sometimes, people with very different beliefs get involved in heated conversations. Sometimes, your sweet friend brings her husband, whom she loves, but no one else can stand. Sometimes, your kids don't go to bed when they're supposed to and they add their two cents to the evening's festivities.

As long as I know who my characters are, I can imagine how they'll respond to the situations in which I put them, and that's where the fun begins. 

A part of me envies writers who are plotters, but my mind just doesn't work that way. When I get stuck in the middle of a novel, trying to decide how to shake things up, or flesh out the spark of an idea that has somehow become central to the story, I think it would be really nice to have a neatly sorted set of plot points to help me become unstuck but, alas, no such tool exists the world of a pantser.

Though I remain impressed by those who can plot out an entire story -- complete with subplots and rising and falling action -- before setting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), I don't really want to change places with them. With my characters to keep me company, writing is an adventure, one in which they regularly chime in regarding choices, solutions, and destinations. We make the journey together, planning each stop along the way.

It's not practical, but it sure keeps things interesting.