Is there really such a thing as "pantser"

Another thread got me to thinking, is there really such a writer as panster or is he/she just a person that takes the long way around to finally writing a finished product?

Stephen King says he is a panster. But you can't tell me he doesn't know the ending of a story before he starts.

To me a panster is just someone that starts writing "stream of conscious" like. But no one's first draft is any good. So in the end, after starting the re-write, the panster and the planner are now the same?

 

Yes, I do it with short stories. And I had a first draft that was good enough to submit. Got rejected, with a note from the editor saying he didn’t like the ending. Rewrote the last couple paragraphs to change the ending and it sold. That’s about as close to selling a first draft as I’ve come. I had no idea where the story was going when I sat down and started typing, but as you can see the ending needing to be tweaked.

I can write a short story this way and not have to know where it is going. For longer works I don’t do it.

 

What do you mean by "stream of conscious"-like? And why do you believe no one's first draft is any good?

 

Why? Can you explain your reasoning here?

 

Why do you think pantsing is the long way around? I used to spend ages coming up with outlines, then toss them out before I'd got half-way through the book. To me, the outlining was a complete waste of time.

Harmful, in fact, because I'd also start writing other novels and get bored because I'd already written the outline and taken all the fun out of writing because I knew where the story was supposed to go.

My most popular novel so far was the one I wrote in NaNo with only a vague idea of where it was going ('French foreign legion... in space!'), finished in December, and published in January.

The Stand, man. The Stand.

I and the other pantsers I know edit as we go, so the first draft is pretty much ready to publish. But we might have revised and rewritten the first half of the book three or four times, and will have gone over the last half at least a couple of times, so it's probably closer to a third or fourth draft for a rewriter.

For example, in the novel I mentioned above, the original chapter one ended up as about chapter six, because I realized after a while that I'd started the story too late and had to go back and write the opening the story really needed. That's the kind of thing a rewriter might have done after they finished their first draft (and then they'd have to make the whole of the rest of the book consistent with the new opening).

 

Stream of Conscious: just talking or writing what ever pops into your head at the moment.

I wonder how J.D. Salinger wrote The Catcher In The Rye.

That is definitely arguable...are first drafts any good? I don't know who first said it, but it is an old adage that "writing is re-writing".

 

First, it is just my opinions for arugument's sake. But IMO, you can't just start writing something without having some notion of how you want it to end, whether you are aware of it or not.

 

Stream of consciousness, in a writing sense, is generally seen as a style of writing - making the final product feel as if it's someone's spontaneous thoughts. But it could take a great deal of work and polishing and thought and revision to produce effective writing in this style. (By the way, I don't think Catcher in the Rye is a great example of Stream of Consciousness... I can see some connections, but I don't think it's pure by any means).

In terms of rewriting - I think that tends to be in the form of polishing or re-arranging, rather than changing the plot, structure, etc. Not that these elements couldn't be changed in a rewrite, but I don't think they have to be.

 

It's arguable as to whether Hemingway even did that, or just said it because he got fed up with people asking him the same old questions about how to write.

Lionel Fanthorpe used to dictate his novels into tape recorders, get his wife's typing students to transcribe the tapes, and send them off to the publisher with no revision. But then, his books aren't generally considered to be among the best of their genre .

 

Maybe, in a sense. But only really in the sense that you have an antagonist and a protagonist and one of them is going to win at the end. Everything else can be wide open.

I mean, in my last novel I knew the protagonist would beat the werewolves, but I had no idea he'd end up fighting them in a cargo hold full of burning toxic waste. That came completely out of nowhere.

 

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God, I certainly didn't mean that re-writing is starting completely over. It really means editing and maybe restructuring here and there. Stream of Consciousness doesn't mean there isn't a subject you have in mind, so it can just be releated to this so call story you are writing.

 

I think it was the 70s, so I wouldn't bet on that . I'd guess they probably did a copyedit, but I doubt much more.

As far as I remember, they'd send him a picture of a book cover with a title and tell him to send them a novel that would fit the cover by the end of next week.

 

Why can't you?

Do you find it just as inconceivable to start thinking about a story, or start outlining a story, without knowing, as a flash of inspiration at the instant that you start, how it's going to end?

 

I would argue that what you have here is an "outline", if only in your head.

I think we are quibbling over the words "the ending". I don't mean a specific detailed ending but a general idea, like what you said, it is definitely the good guys who win.

 

Yeah, I usually rewrite the opening of the book a few times before I know who the characters are and where the story is going. But, after that, it pretty much writes itself aside from the usual middle-of-the-book plot block(s).

I used to sit down beforehand and write out character sheets, but then I'd discover six chapters in that Siobhan is terrified of goats due to a bad experience on her first movie, and I'd never have thought that up if a goat hadn't appeared in that scene for no particularly good reason. In fact, I still don't quite know why goats keep appearing in my books. Maybe playing too much Goat Simulator.

 

Yeah, but it's not what most people think of as an outline.

When I started writing Rebellion I had an idea that he'd run away from Britain, join the French Foreign Legion and rescue his sister from the bad guy, but if that's considered an outline then pantsers really don't exist in any meaningful sense. And I wrote a completely different ending in the book.

 

Of course you can. This is an example of something common on writing forums, which is “I can’t do it that way, so no one really does/can.”

 

Yes. Closest I ever got to a pro-level short story sale was a story I wrote over a weekend and sent straight off to the editor at five to midnight on Sunday. They said they turned it down because it was right at the word-count limit for their publication and they wanted to publish a couple of shorter stories instead.

And all I knew about that story before I wrote the first sentence was that two guys were stuck on a hotel roof in a zombie apocalypse with a zombie they'd attached a remote-control unit to. It ended up being a weird romance with Rob Zombie jokes.

 

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