Go Your Own Way – D.M.K. Ruby

Dodging moguls as I careen down the ski slope, I slide into the line at the chairlift with a smooth turn of my skis, heart pounding, adrenaline pouring into my bloodstream, a huge smile on my face.

That’s what it feels like as a pantser to finish a particularly satisfying burst of character or scene creation. Even when you know you’ll have to edit the heck out of it, even when the plotters laugh at you and mock your haphazard ways, the pantser knows there’s no rush like the dopamine hit of making shit up on the fly and occasionally getting it very right.

I have tried, I really have, to use the tips and tricks of successful plotters such as doing outlines, plot using cue cards, create an elaborate backstory for characters at the beginning instead of letting them develop as I go along my own chaotic way etc.

Perhaps I feel overwhelmed when I know how many scenes have yet to be written. Perhaps I’m a wild pony who hates feeling hemmed in by the corral of cue cards. Perhaps I’m just too lazy to do an outline and plot, but then pay the price of having to spend many more hours than a plotter refining and carving a decent story out of an explosion of words.

Like so many things IRL, there are many gradations between pantsers on one end of the spectrum and plotters on the other. Even extreme pantsers (I consider myself a moderate one) appreciate the expected story arc in genre fiction, to give some structure to our mayhem. But whether you’re a pantser or a plotter, the most satisfying accomplishment is producing work that didn’t exist before. So, in the immortal words of Fleetwood Mac, you can go your own way!