Can I turn a pantser into a plotter?

Part 1: Writing is a muscle, not a muse.

In honor of National Novel Writing Month, I wanted to do a series of posts on whether or not a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their pants) can be turned into a plotter (someone who outlines their plot or has some form of organizing structure driving them). I’ve done a few panels at conferences where people were thankful for getting extremely practical advice about writing—less vague notions of “write every day” and “persist” and more “first, take an index card and divide it into two sections...” I’m a writer, but I’m also a social psychologist who is particularly interested in methods, which means my approach to writing is practical and analytical and I am skeptical of positions about writing that present it as an esoteric thing that cannot be tamed.

If anyone’s mad by the title of this post—I don’t know, just hear me out? I have met pantsers who wanted to be more like plotters, but never the converse. Everyone has a different process, and all processes are beautiful and unique, but I want to introduce the idea that processes can change if they don’t work for you as long as you understand that they are not magical, esoteric winds controlled by capricious gods. If being a pantser means you aren’t hitting deadlines, or that once you get stuck on a plot point you can’t move, then this series is for you. There are a lot of reasons why a less organized approach to writing something like a novel can create avoidable problems—all things I will discuss in this series. I have a series of challenges I would like you to consider, and some exercises that relate to plotting.

Writing is a skillset.

Skills can be developed over time. New techniques can be introduced to increase those skills. New techniques should be introduced. This means that no one has to be beholden to an inconsistent muse who doesn’t visit as regularly as you’d like. “I can’t write,” some say, “unless the spirit moves me.” How often do you think Michael Phelps or Simone Biles woke up in the morning and thought, nah, the muse isn’t there today. Why would writing be that different than swimming or gymnastics? If you try to say it’s because sports are physical, this ignores that there are significant psychological components to performance in sports. As a regular weightlifter, there are some days where I go to the gym and I am absolutely in the zone, and there’s other days where I am there going through the motions, but I’m not in the zone. I can’t wait for that zone because it’s unpredictable, and the fact of the matter is that I can actually lift without it being there.

The more you think of your writing—or whatever art you are interested as—as dictated by uncontrollable esoteric things, the more you are likely to be de-motivated by the wrong forces. Think about it: when you sit down to write and find yourself staring at a blank page—the muse isn’t there—is it really that some ephemeral otherworldly being isn’t there, or is it that there is some part of you telling yourself that you are not good enough, why bother, shouldn’t you be working on some other thing, or you will never be as successful as such-and-such. How fast would Michael Phelps be if every time he had a nagging doubt, he decided not to go to swim practice?

When I was in high school and in college, we frequently had tests that required writing formal five paragraph essays to be completed by the end of the class period. You were presented with a question, you took a few minutes to develop your thesis and organize your evidence points, and then you wrote the thing, whether the spirit moved you or not. You had to—you had no choice. We weren’t thrown blindly into this, but spent years learning about five paragraph essays and logical argumentation. Learning skills, that is.

I don’t know what pantsers’ writing process is: I get the sense that they sit down and write and figure out where they are going by the words or characters guiding them to the next waypoint. One of the arguments against writing outlines from them is because they feel they aren’t creative and feel bound by them—they want to see where the characters take them.

Let me pose a question to you. What is writing? Like, literally, what is it? Are you picturing a person typing? To me, “writing” is a lot broader than that. It is me thinking about plot in the shower; me thinking that a particularly bizarre person on reality TV is fascinating, me wondering why I find him fascinating; me trying to figure out why I liked a particular movie, me wondering “What if in Jane Eyre Mr. Rochester’s crazy wife living in the attic was really hot and not actually crazy?” These are the little tidbits form the basis of what eventually becomes storytelling. When I wrote short stories, by the time I sat down to type I typically knew the entire plot and characters and I can sort of see it as a movie in my head. Why is writing an outline not creative? Why would writing an outline mean you can’t deviate from it? Is my first book (probably 80% outlined) less creative than a book that was entirely pantsed? Is my second book (which was like 120% outlined) less creative than my first?

A bit about the “I have to let the characters dictate the story to me” that might get me some hate… This gives me “I wear a lot of beads and shop at Chicos” vibes. Here’s the thing: your. characters. do. not. exist. They do not tell you anything. So you planned one thing and the character took the story in another direction? “I wanted Bella to end up with Jacob, but she just wouldn’t have it! Then I had to rewrite the book!” This is not the character taking you in another direction. This is either you realizing that you misunderstood the character, or that you never filled them in enough to begin with, and now you’re kinda fucked. The more you talk about your character being a thing that actually has volition, the more you are painting yourself as the victim of capricious gods. Of course my plot decisions are driven by character! If you recall, I wrote a post about why you should have a really strong understanding of character before you start doing plot in order to better serve and inform your plot.

How to Build Three Dimensional Characters

A cautionary tale of the king of all pantsers

If you did not know who the king of all pantsers is, it’s George RR Martin, author of the A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series. Below is each book from the series, the year it was published, the page count, the average Goodreads rating, and the gap in time between each book (ostensibly how long it took to write the next book).

A Game of Thrones (1996); 700 pages; 4.44; unknown

A Clash of Kings (1998); 750; 4.41; 2 years

A Storm of Swords (2000); 1,000; 4.54; 2 years

A Feast for Crows (2005); 750; 4.16; 5 years

A Dance with Dragons (2011); 1000;  4.33; 6 years

The Winds of Winter (forthcoming); 1000+; 12+ years

A Dream of Spring (planned)

It’s unclear how long it took him to write the first book—the last novel he had previously published was in 1983, and between 1983 and 1996 he published a variety of short stories, novellas, and comics. Martin sent a pitch letter for Game Of Thrones—originally intended to be a trilogy—to someone (unclear to me if it was his agent or his publisher) that is dated to 1993, noting that he had 170 pages of text written. Of note, he writes:

As you know, I don't outline my novels. I find that if I know exactly where a book is going, I lose all interest in writing it. I do, however, have some strong notions as to the overall structure of the story I'm telling, and the eventual fate of many of the principle characters in the drama.

I would generally never rely on Goodreads ratings as a reliable measurement of quality (Sarah J Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses has a 4.2 while Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved has a 3.94…), but I generally agree with this rank ordering: A Storm of Swords is the best of the series so far, and A Feast of Crows is the worst. Though we don’t know about the first book, he sure as hell was writing at an extremely fast pace for the 2^nd and 3^rd books. (And that doesn’t mean he took two years to write each of those books: consider that I turned my manuscript for my last book in December 2022 and that it is coming out in February 2024—so he might have written each of those two books in as fast as one year.) The first substantial hiccup with Crows, which also happens to be the worst of the books.

Martin has talked before about the “Meereenese knot” and about how it is the thing that stalled him out. (This is when one character is stuck ruling in the city of Meereen for an extended period of time and it is not particularly interesting). From Westeros.org:

Interviewer: Part of the difficulty of this particular novel was what you called the "Meereenese Knot", trying to get everything to happen in just the right order, pulling various plot strands together in one place, and part of the solution was the addition of another point of view character.

GRRM: The Meerenese Knot related to everyone reaching Dany… there's all of these characters trying to get to her. So the problem was to figure out who should reach her and in what order, and what events should happen by the time they've reached her.

The story absolutely stalls out when Dany is in Meereen. And GRRM isn’t a person who is writing an A plot and B plot with a handful of characters: there are literally dozens of plotlines and characters. This is effectively saying “I’m going to build a tower with a variety of different materials but I have to do so with no plan, because if I have a plan I will get bored.” Not to rag on him too hard… but if you’re the sort of person that gets bored of writing if you already know the end, how on earth do you work with an editor on rewrites??? Might you also be.. the sort of person that potentially can’t finish a series that already sold 90 million copies?

The task Martin has set up for himself is braiding with dozens of strings, with no blueprint on how to braid, but also he’s midway through so people have expectations for him. He has referenced, repeatedly, people’s expectations for the series and how it’s paralyzing him. I think he’s forgetting that he’s a really good writer— even if the actual plot points aren’t that shocking, he’s a good enough writer to take a meh plot and make it really interesting. I’ve long thought that the bad show ending would be really good in his capable hands.

Writing yourself into a corner is bad, but fixable. It’s not an insurmountable obstacle because remember, you’re the one who wrote the corner.

Have you ever tried to make a poster that says DEWEY FOR PRESIDENT or something and you start writing the thing, but then realize you’ve gotten too far to the right side of the posterboard and you have no space left because you should have made the letters smaller? And then you think, shit I should have done this in pencil first, because now I’ve wasted a posterboard and this looks stupid? Yeah, that’s what Martin did.

You can always write yourself out of a corner unless you’ve already published the walls that are boxing you in. Draw the walls in pencil, you can erase them, move them around, change them however you see fit.

Let’s just push aside arguments that the real reason he can’t finish the series is because he was distracted by being involved or influenced by the HBO adaptation—he did plenty of other writing, including wholeass books and a history of the Targaryens (which honestly I kind of liked).

To me, the notion of writing a thousand page novel (upwards of 300,000 words, if I’d have to guess) without a clear plan is terrifying: writing a massive series without one just seems dangerous. There is an entire population of fantasy readers out there, burned by people like Martin and Patrick Rothfuss who are refusing to read series until they are finished. This sets an awful precedent for writers, by the way, because publishers can cancel a series if any one of its parts doesn’t do well. But I see the logic to it: why should I invest in something that I will never get closure on?

So..

I issue this challenge to you. Over this series I’m going to present some ideas and exercises about how to work on plot. When I’ve talked to people who got MFAs where they spent 2-3 years learning craft, all of them have told me that learning how to plot was no part of this. (I have whole other thoughts about why that is, which I’m sure you will hear). Plotting is a skill. Plot isn’t precious. Plot is something you can learn.

If any of the below questions applies to you, consider giving the activities in the series a real try.

Are you missing deadlines?

Do you have to do multiple heavy rewrites?

Do you write yourself into a corner and then feel paralyzed?

Are you told your plots are weak?

Do you know the beginning and the end but tend to only muddle through the middle?

Also.. introducing referral rewards

I am new to Substack and just set up referral rewards here. Of the freebees you can get for referring friends to this substack: a personalized post (where I can answer a specific question you have or write about a particular topic whether this be about craft or “I’d like to hear your take on X”); a query letter or synopsis review (can sub out some other editing task if you’d like); or a choice of signed book or bookclub visit.

Thumbnail photo by Ryan Ancill on Unsplash