The Plot-Pant Continuum

Crossposted to Deadline Dames.

Someone once said, "You don't know how to write novels. You only know how to write the novel you're writing NOW."

Wise words.

Writers fall on a continuum. You have your pantsers, who tend to store things in their head and blithely run through a novel; then you have your plotters, who have a variety of strategies for deciding on what happens in a novel before they write it. (Strategies like outlining, 3X5 cards, mapping a novel on butcher or kraft paper, Post-Its...