There are generally two types of writers… those who plot and those who do not. Okay, obviously, there are hybrids… folks who do a bit of both, and the world is never quite as extreme black and white as all that, but… for the sake of this post, let’s go with it, m’kay? (cue the warnings of impending hyperbole, sarcasm, and other shit)

Plotters maintain that the only way to draft a novel is through meticulous planning. They make lists, detailed notes, outlines, and spreadsheets. There are countless plotting methods and everyone has their favorite(s).

Pantsers, on the other hand, basically sit down to write with some vague idea in their heads and not much else going on. They start throwing words out willy nilly in the hopes that they won’t write themselves into a corner.

Yeah, fine… over simplification, a little ridiculous, and not nice to either. I warned you, right? (If you really want to know more – check out this Goodreads post)

Personally, I’ve always been more of a pantser. I start writing with an idea, a question really – what would happen if… I write linearly – in other words, I write start to finish. I don’t write the end scene, then go back and write the scenes that lead up to it.

Over time, I evolved into a primarily pantser hybrid – sort of sketching out a rough idea of the general story arc and leaving the rest to chance.

I recently decided to try an experiment. After a bunch of genre-blurring work I decided to attempt something that sat firmly in one genre. Gasp!

My favorite genre question has always been: what shelf/section would your work be on in the book store? My answer has usually been: ummm… multiple? (Aside from a horror novella, everything else has been kinda hard to define… which also means kinda hard to market. Whoopsie.)

Back to my point… I decided to write a piece that had a clear genre – one that I was at least already passingly familiar with. Then I did my research – got a better grasp of the genre, read several of the genre’s current top sellers, and a few of the rotten apples as well. Looked at agents and publishing houses that deal with the genre and at their lists – what were they looking for, what do they consider marketable, etc, etc, etc.

Shit. Here I am treating my writing as a business. Dammit. This is supposed to be fun. Oh. Wait. It is. I am having fun.

Ahem…

And so… after doing all of this and coming up with my “what would happen if…” question, I realized that I needed to do some planning. My habit, my experience as a writer would not necessarily take this novel in the direction I wanted to go. So… it was time to learn to plot.

Dun-dun-duhhhhn!

Like the geeky person I am and pretend not to be, I researched different methods and discovered most of them drive me ape-shit-bonkers. Seriously. Bonkers. As in pull-my-hair-out, pound-my-head-into-my-desk. And I love spreadsheets.

After much digging, I finally found an approach that didn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out with a splintery wooden spoon and gave it a shot.

It took a few tries, but I was pretty happy with the result… then I started writing. Pacing is not normally a problem for me. Word count is not normally a problem for me… Yep, suddenly I was struggling to keep the pacing tight, and to actually get enough words on the page. Grrrr…

Still… I kept going. It took three months. Three freaking months… okay, wait… that’s not that bad. In fact, all things considered, that’s not that bad at all.

The results? Well… I accomplished my goal. I wrote a novel that sits firmly within a genre, and I think it’s a pretty damn good story. Whether agents and/or publishers agree… well… that remains to be seen. I hope so. Because I kinda like this piece. In fact, I like it a lot.

Does this mean I’m a reformed pantser? Meh. I dunno. What I do know is that I’ve got some ideas for the next novel… and I’m going to try this method again and see where it leads me and get some more words on the page.

And that is all any of us can ever do… continue honing our craft and our approach to find what works for us. Pantser, plotter, or somewhere in between… it doesn’t matter. What matters is words on the page.