Yeah, we're all saying it's fine to do outlines if that's what works best for you. It doesn't matter that it doesn't work best for some of the rest of us. I think we've all made our points. The end result is what counts—the stories we write—not the method we use to get there. And insisting we can't possibly get there unless we follow your path ...ermm ...well, maybe that's not what you're doing, @Jon Sikes , but it's beginning to sound like it. Anyway, I've said my piece, and I'm offski now. Good luck with your method. Like mine, it's tried and true!
Jon, do you do nothing in your life without an outline? Me, I might look up on a Saturday morning and say, "I feel like going out." I'll go out, get a cup of hot chocolate at the coffee house as I pass it, look in the bookstore, have lunch, look in the fabric store, check the new books shelf at the library, and go home. I didn't have a written outline for that. I didn't even have a specific plan. So by the same logic you're using for pantsers, you might say, "How do you know that you won't wander into the street and get killed? How do you know you won't get on a plane and end up in Nebraska? How do you know that you won't get in a car as a hitchhiker and be one of a string of serial killings? How do you know that you'll end up eating something?" I know because while I'm out there walking, without a written plan, I'm still occupying my brain. Un-planned creative impulses can still be regulated by goals and rules.
Was my outline created through 'Seat-of-my-pants' logic? But I made up that outline on the spot! So as am 'pantsing' I have a few parts of the outline rolling in the back of my head. All these ideas come to me and I decide which ones to do as write, maybe even changing the direction of my original outline if I find something better that gives me the result I'm looking for. On the other hand the pantser does the same with a much less detailed idea of what they are going to do. Still the same process though. So I outline, but I'm not calling Pantsers outliners, anymore than I call myself a 'pantser.' I'm getting this impression that pantsers think outliners are calling them out, but I'm just saying that you can't write a book without 'pantsing.' And outlining isn't much more than a creative barrier on your pantsing. Fair enough @shadowwalker ?
I'm mostly a pantser although I've been working on an outline for my current novel. Basically, I'm just writing a sentence or two describing what happens in each chapter. I've got about six chapter outlines done. I have an idea of where the story is going, but I am also open to the story and characters morphing in a different way than I currently envision them now. Being a planner or a pantser is fine. IMHO it's when you don't let the story take shape organically because you are rigidly clinging to an idea you had x-time ago that's the problem. It's fine to follow your own methods- but most people at least have a solid grasp and mutual respect for the other method and fellow writers in general. The mullet was fabulous at one time. Hairstyles evolve. Don't be afraid to let your story do the same.
Hey, mullets will always be fabulous. I still rock a mullet. It's not the hairstyle it's how you rock it
LOL @Ares Desideratus as I was posting that I was thinking- really hope no one here has a mullet. It was all in good fun- and you are absolutely right- confidence is everything!
What's wrong with mullets? They're cool. Even mohawks are cool. Just about any hairstyle is cool. I don't know why people suddenly despise something they liked last year. The style didn't change; people just point and laugh at what they used to wear themselves. Next year, they'll point and laugh at what they're wearing now. People are brainless about this stuff.
Some of us just have the whole story come to us like a lightning bolt. Is that pantsing or outlining?
Fair enough. I think a lot of 'pantsers' just get tired of being told by 'plotters' that we can't possibly be doing what we do simply because they can't. Very frustrating...
I don't think he wasn't intending to specifically hate on mullets. He was just trying to illustrate a point. And honestly some mullets, like the one in that picture, are pretty darn goofy looking.
Hipster glasses, worn by over half the forum, look as goofy as mullets. Give it ten years and everyone will be laughing at that also.
It was a tongue-in-cheek reference to illustrate my point in a light-hearted fashion- definitely didn't mean to start a debate or offend anyone.
Aren't both pantsters and plotters at the same point after the first draft? Most of the work comes afterwards, so I really don't see a difference in the long run.
Some people do a lot of work after their first draft, others don't. Hey, let's have a fight about THAT! We can call it... revisers vs. remainers? changers vs. keepers? single-passers vs. multi-passers?
Holy Toledo, you got some strange ideas about pantsers. First of all just cause I don't write things down doesn't mean I'm not constantly thinking about what's going to happen next. It's impossible not to. Think of a cake - you don't mentally pour in ingredients without thinking of the outcome and whole while you're working on it. Same goes for Jackson Pollack dripping his paint - there's method even when their doesn't appear to be any, motivation even when things seem spontaneous. I totally pants my short stories. But I don't think and write per sentence - I think in scenes. I have an initial scene idea ( for Not Pink it was robot embarrassing his owner in the shower, for Moonshot it was moon workers skimming for a rare something is a lava like brew, for John's Thumb it was a man deciding what finger to cut off ) and by the time the scene is complete I've usually embedded something for the next scene and so on. As motivation becomes clearer a plot starts to take shape and I start to steer my characters towards that goal. But I'm never writing 'blind' I'm always thinking ahead.
Ermm... I think we've already had that fight. Something about the people who fine-tune edit as they go, so they don't have to make changes at the end, versus those of us who do the rough sketch first. I seem to recall a barney along those lines. Again—like the conflict between pantsers and heavy-duty pre-planners—the proof of the pudding is in the eating. What is the finished story like? As long as it's good, it really shouldn't matter how we get there.
I can only speak for myself of course, but I definitely DO NOT Look down on people who are pantsing (as I understand some of you took offense from our comments I wanted to clarify that). Rather the opposite, to me it all sounds a little mysterious, like How do they do it? but in a good, curious way. It's one of those things I wish I could do, because it sounds really creative and exciting, you know, not knowing where the story is heading, but I'm afraid I really am a hopeless plotter. Besides, I really like that part too.
George RR Martin once described something which reminds me of this discussion. He said there were two main styles of writer. The first kind is the gardener. The second kind is the architect. Basically the gardener just likes to take his tools, and go out into the garden, and get to work. It's spontaneous. Unplanned. He just starts digging to see what will happen. IIRC Martin said the gardener would "spill some of his own blood into the garden and something would grow from it". But the architect is the opposite. He likes to plan everything out. First he comes up with where to build it. Then he draws out a plan for it, or a blueprint, and he follows this plan, building slowly but surely until he has crafted the very thing he imagined. I don't tell it like the way he tells it. Partly because I am lazy and stoned right now. But I think you can get the point. These are two extremes at opposite ends of the writing spectrum. Both of these types of writers exist, and both have great success. I'd bet there are many successful authors who fall somewhere in between these two categories as well. E. According to Martin, he would fall under the "gardener" category. If I recall correctly
