Plotters vs Pantsers: Prior Planning Prevents Proper Piss-offs
I liked the Game of Thrones finale. Fight me.
Much like the last episode of Lost, it couldn’t absolve all the sins of the final season(s), but the episode in itself was satisfying. In my last post, I was critical of the last two seasons of Game of Thrones, arguing that the writers were prioritizing spectacle over storytelling. And now, looking back over how it all went down, it’s really perplexing to me that they didn’t use all this time to better set the ground for Dany’s heel turn.
In a post that’s gone viral, Daniel Silvermint suggests that the series has moved away from the “pantser” ethos of GRRM towards the “plotter” approach of showrunners D&D. Silvermint does a great breakdown of what these terms mean, so I suggest reading it, but I’ll do a brief summary for you: “plotters” are writers who list out the major plot points of a story before they start fleshing it out; whereas “pantsers” discover the story as they write it, they fly by the seat of their pants. Tolkien is often referred to as the ultimate plotter because he designed the maps, languages, and lore of Middle Earth before writing LOTR. Conversely, GRRM is the ultimate pantser because he claims that he loses interest in a story once he learns the ending.
Silvermint lists the advantages and disadvantages of both. With pantsers, the story feels organic and spontaneous, but can eventually become unwieldy. I think that’s a pretty accurate description of GRRM’s journey through his series. GRRM describes himself as a gardener who plots many seeds and sees which ones grow. Certain decisions a character made in the last book can have disastrous consequences in the next. However, the garden seems to have grown into a jungle now and he can’t get it under control. Conversely, a plotter can really stick the landing on the major plot points because they know exactly what’s coming, however the story can feel stiff and the characters slaves to the plotline.
My issue with this distinction is that it is far too simplistic. I’ve never met a pure version of either of these tendencies. Even Tolkien, who’s considered the ultimate plotter, was much more spontaneous than most realize. In The History of Middle-earth, you can see Tolkien’s process (Matt Colville does a great job breaking it down). Sure, Tolkien had a rich mythology that he’d developed prior to putting pen to paper, but most of the time it happened ad hoc. He’d be working through the story, run into a problem, then go back to the drawing board to see how he could make adjustments to the mythology to solve his problem.
Whether you’re a pantser or a plotter, writing is always a process of discovery. You go in with a plan, get turned around, make adjustments, and come out with something often unexpected. That’s part of the fun. It’s like archaeology. You might think you’re digging up a triceratops but turns out it’s actually a stegosaurus by the end of it. Or maybe a dragon 
