The Pantser Becomes The Plotter

Truth be told, up until recently I was under the impression that a "pantser" was the annoying kid at school who pulled people's gym shorts down for cheap laughs.

Following a recent conversation, though, I learned it actually means someone who writes a novel with virtually no planning at all. That was how I initially approached my first novel, "Human Again". No plan. No plot outline. I just wrote the damn thing, which was a terrific experience at first, tackling it with no creative restrictions.

I went off the rails, man.

Certain characters (especially the antagonist....oh, boy) paraded around doing whatever the hell they wanted. I was killing off secondary characters because I thought it seemed cool? And when the first draft was completed, I had three-hundred plus pages of irrational situations, wild dialogue, and zero plot.

That's kind of where being a pantser totally sucks.

I didn't want to accept the reality that not every first time writer could "fly by the seat of their pants" and nail it on the first try. I thought I had read enough books to know the formula, to bang out something that could maybe pass off as an actual novel. I was dead wrong.

So it was back to the drawing board, getting advice from other writers in the community, diving deeper and learning about conflict, plot points, the set-up, response, reaction, etc. After another few grueling rewrites, I was much closer to having something coherent.

I had a story. Perhaps not the best flowing order of events. But I had something.

Enter Greg Solis, a colleague of mine at the time. It's difficult to remember now, but I must have chewed his ear off about the novel. Greg, who had previously been a Film Producer that split his time between the U.S. and Europe, was no stranger to plotting. And he was cool enough to give "Human Again" a try. When he was done, he said something to the effect of, "I like this, now here is what we can do to make it flow better."

And so we embarked on our journey. We spent lunch breaks in the conference room with stacks of index cards. On each card was a brief breakdown of every chapter. We switched this one here and that one there, undertaking what he explained would be a cinematic approach. I owe Greg a giant heap of credit. He not only showed me how to take what I had and turn into a fluid story, but he inspired the general approach I told myself I would take moving forward.

Present day: here I am working on novel number two, plotting my ass off.

Because I can't help myself, sure, I've written a few chapters. But the real work won't begin until this entire thing is mapped out like some kind of interconnecting Michael Scofield Prison Break-style tattoo.

A giant departure from "Human Again", which was a horror, this next one will be a contemporary romance...a cool, kind-of-bad-ass-in-it's-own-way, wonderful contemporary romance. And I have to admit, compared to my first try at this novel writing stuff, so far the plot is much tighter, the characters much more alive, and I'm incredibly stoked to get this one out. So it's safe to say this guy's pantsing days are done (did that sound weird?).