Road Trip Writer
Most people in the writing community know what the words "Pantser" and "Plotter" mean.
A Panster is a writer who "writes by the seat of their pants," beginning with a small grain of an idea and allowing it to grow into a story as they write, with little to no forethought.
A Plotter, by contrast, is a writer who "plots out their stories beforehand," so they know what will happen and then proceed to write.
George R.R. Martin's famous variation of this same binary is the "Gardener" and the "Architect." Architects create a blueprint (an outline) before they begin, while Gardeners start with a seed of an idea, with a vague notion of what kind of story it is, and allow it to grow as they work.
The truth, however, is that this is a false dichotomy. Rather, it more like two opposite ends of a wide spectrum. Some writers land smack-dab on one end or the other, but many, including myself, fall somewhere between them.
For a long time, I struggled to fully define where I landed on this spectrum. I never felt comfortable on either side. So, I set out to define my identity and, thus, codify my method of writing. After some years, I finally settled on a metaphor and an approach that worked best for me.
I am neither an Architect, nor a Gardener; I am a Road Trip Writer.
First, some backstory.
When I started taking writing seriously as a college student, I believed myself to be a pure Gardener.
I'd been writing stories since I was nine, and I always wrote with a seat-of-the-pants approach. I just sat down and wrote. There was a problem with this approach though. Many of the stories I wrote, while competently written (for a nine-year-old), were largely incoherent. They made little sense. Things just happened, and the endings were never really satisfying. Once I started to become serious about the craft, I began to study the craft more intensely.
I tried, briefly, to do the opposite approach. However, as it had always been for me, I hated outlines. I couldn't stand them because outlining made it seem as if I'd already told the story. All the urgency and excitement drained out of me, and I couldn't bring myself to write the stories I'd outlined.
Therefore, there was only one recourse left to me. I needed to hybridize my approach.
With some exception, I always begin devising a story with a character. Character is, in my opinion, the most important element of fiction writing. Books that people usually loath, despite being held in high regard for other reasons, are almost always books that have characters about whom no one cares. Readers don't care what happens in a story if they don't care who it's happening to and why.
So, I'd construct a character by daydreaming them. I give them a name (which really begins the construction of their personality, I find), and then I figure out who they are through a kind of "self-interrogation."
I ask myself questions about them until I come up with satisfying answers. Who is this person? Where do they come from? What do they like? What do they hate? What makes them special? What do they want? Of what are they afraid? Once I have those answers, I can begin constructing story beats.
I then. start thinking out a story ahead of time, devise the vaguest of plot beats in a sort of "We start here, then this happens, then this happens, and we finish up with this," manner.
This gave me a loose skeleton to work with because I could work out the inner logic of progression beforehand. But I would write none of it down. No notes. No index cards. No reams of documents meticulously detailing every single twist and turn. I'd keep it all in my head, and as I'd write, I'd let all the things between those pre-devised beats fill in themselves.
More than anything, I found the two most important scenes to pre-devise were my beginning scene and my final scene. This gave me a place to start the story, a place to show the central problem of my Character's story was, and the finish line, the place I wanted my characters and my story to end up.
This goes back to one of my character questions: what do they want? Once I figure out what my characters want, I have to devise clever ways of keeping it from them, before deciding finally if I will give it to them or not (I'm usually magnanimous in that regard).
Thus, what I create is a vague "road map." I have a point of origin (an opening scene). I also have a final destination (the closing scene). And in between, I have several--in my experience now, between four and five--roadside attractions (story beats), that I want to experience along the way. The writing process then becomes a matter of navigating from one scene to another and leaving a lot open to possibility.
The first time I put this method into practice was with a story I wrote my final year in college titled "The Crippled Trumpet Player." Trumpet Player was about a--you guessed it--professional musician, who was suddenly struck with a debilitating bout of Bell's palsy, which rendered him unable to play. The story then follows him, shortly after he's recovered, as he begins to regain both his "chops" and his confidence as a performer, before finally ending with him recommencing a concert tour he put on hold as a result.
Even in that summary, the method comes through: a character who wants something goes through a struggle, full of peaks and valleys, until finally, he gets what he wants.
That's my method though. I've found that it's worked for me. I've found that thinking and approaching my craft with this metaphor in mind has helped me to become a more productive author over time, and, one day hopefully, it will be the method that brings my fiction to a level worthy of publishing. As always though, when it comes to writing advice, you should keep in mind that everybody does it differently, and you should do what works for you.
A Panster is a writer who "writes by the seat of their pants," beginning with a small grain of an idea and allowing it to grow into a story as they write, with little to no forethought.
A Plotter, by contrast, is a writer who "plots out their stories beforehand," so they know what will happen and then proceed to write.
George R.R. Martin's famous variation of this same binary is the "Gardener" and the "Architect." Architects create a blueprint (an outline) before they begin, while Gardeners start with a seed of an idea, with a vague notion of what kind of story it is, and allow it to grow as they work.
The truth, however, is that this is a false dichotomy. Rather, it more like two opposite ends of a wide spectrum. Some writers land smack-dab on one end or the other, but many, including myself, fall somewhere between them.
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| Source: Million Secrets |
I am neither an Architect, nor a Gardener; I am a Road Trip Writer.
First, some backstory.
When I started taking writing seriously as a college student, I believed myself to be a pure Gardener.
I'd been writing stories since I was nine, and I always wrote with a seat-of-the-pants approach. I just sat down and wrote. There was a problem with this approach though. Many of the stories I wrote, while competently written (for a nine-year-old), were largely incoherent. They made little sense. Things just happened, and the endings were never really satisfying. Once I started to become serious about the craft, I began to study the craft more intensely.
I tried, briefly, to do the opposite approach. However, as it had always been for me, I hated outlines. I couldn't stand them because outlining made it seem as if I'd already told the story. All the urgency and excitement drained out of me, and I couldn't bring myself to write the stories I'd outlined.
Therefore, there was only one recourse left to me. I needed to hybridize my approach.
With some exception, I always begin devising a story with a character. Character is, in my opinion, the most important element of fiction writing. Books that people usually loath, despite being held in high regard for other reasons, are almost always books that have characters about whom no one cares. Readers don't care what happens in a story if they don't care who it's happening to and why.
So, I'd construct a character by daydreaming them. I give them a name (which really begins the construction of their personality, I find), and then I figure out who they are through a kind of "self-interrogation."
I ask myself questions about them until I come up with satisfying answers. Who is this person? Where do they come from? What do they like? What do they hate? What makes them special? What do they want? Of what are they afraid? Once I have those answers, I can begin constructing story beats.
I then. start thinking out a story ahead of time, devise the vaguest of plot beats in a sort of "We start here, then this happens, then this happens, and we finish up with this," manner.
This gave me a loose skeleton to work with because I could work out the inner logic of progression beforehand. But I would write none of it down. No notes. No index cards. No reams of documents meticulously detailing every single twist and turn. I'd keep it all in my head, and as I'd write, I'd let all the things between those pre-devised beats fill in themselves.
More than anything, I found the two most important scenes to pre-devise were my beginning scene and my final scene. This gave me a place to start the story, a place to show the central problem of my Character's story was, and the finish line, the place I wanted my characters and my story to end up.
This goes back to one of my character questions: what do they want? Once I figure out what my characters want, I have to devise clever ways of keeping it from them, before deciding finally if I will give it to them or not (I'm usually magnanimous in that regard).
Thus, what I create is a vague "road map." I have a point of origin (an opening scene). I also have a final destination (the closing scene). And in between, I have several--in my experience now, between four and five--roadside attractions (story beats), that I want to experience along the way. The writing process then becomes a matter of navigating from one scene to another and leaving a lot open to possibility.
The first time I put this method into practice was with a story I wrote my final year in college titled "The Crippled Trumpet Player." Trumpet Player was about a--you guessed it--professional musician, who was suddenly struck with a debilitating bout of Bell's palsy, which rendered him unable to play. The story then follows him, shortly after he's recovered, as he begins to regain both his "chops" and his confidence as a performer, before finally ending with him recommencing a concert tour he put on hold as a result.
Even in that summary, the method comes through: a character who wants something goes through a struggle, full of peaks and valleys, until finally, he gets what he wants.
That's my method though. I've found that it's worked for me. I've found that thinking and approaching my craft with this metaphor in mind has helped me to become a more productive author over time, and, one day hopefully, it will be the method that brings my fiction to a level worthy of publishing. As always though, when it comes to writing advice, you should keep in mind that everybody does it differently, and you should do what works for you.
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