The first time I heard of the term pantser, I imagined one of those rude people that will run up behind some unsuspecting person, grab their pants and pull them down to their ankles. Imagine my surprise to find out that I’M a pantser… and it has nothing to do with my skills at dropping drawers.
For the uninitiated, a pantser is someone who writes by the seat of their pants… they don’t plot anything out (okay, maybe minimally), they just go where the story takes them. We are the wanderers, the ones who will possibly follow the path for a short while, then trudge off into the underbrush, hacking and slashing our way through.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have our plotters. These are the people who will set up their story, laying out the framework and the settings… possibly creating character sheets and mini-biographies for each of them.
So, we have these two… factions of writers. Pantsers and Plotters… and each faction has their own scale of intensity. On the far left side of the pantser scale, you have the individual that will get an idea and start writing. They make no notes and don’t have anything to refer to except what they’ve already written. This extreme pantser will also write completely out of order, no chapter or scene following the one that will eventually come before it. As we head to the right side of the pantser scale, we get the author that has an idea… expands on it… writes down a few notes… does some research… has a good idea of where the story will eventually lead, but not the specifics. On the plotter end, we bump into the pantser we just talked about, but this time, the notes are a little more concise… they may have plotted a chapter or two… given word count goals for their scenes and chapters. At the far end of the plotter spectrum, we get the person that has EVERYTHING planned. They have character sheets, each and every scene has a description of what is going to happen and how many words it will take. Before they even begin to write, they know exactly how many chapters there will be… the word count of the book… and even the exact day they will finish writing if they complete their goals every day.
Both sets of people write books. They get it done. And by the time you get to read these works of toil and labor… we are none the wiser for it. There’s no way to distinguish whether the author was a pantser or a plotter.
Why mention this? Because you need to know what you are. Are you a far left pantser? Then you probably aren’t going to need much more than your basic word processor. Far right plotter? Better be looking for that program with all the bells and whistles that’ll make your life easier.
What about that pocketbook that has moths fluttering out of it? Well, it’s a good thing there’s many options out there, because we’ll get you covered, no matter your budget.
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