Pantsers - what do you actually know about your story when you start writing?

[TheRedChamber]

So this kind of came up in my thread about serendipity which just got, if not necroed, than at least jolted back into life, but I think it's an interesting enough topic by itself to warent its own thread.

For those who don't know, 'planners vs pantsers' is a common phrase for distinguishing writers who make substantial plans for their work before starting to write against those who 'fly by the seat of their pants' and start to write with little idea of where the story is evenutally going to end up. From previous threads, I'm probably nearly as far along the planner end of the spectrum as it's possible to be and thus am frequently bewildered by writer who claim they know literally nothing about their stories before they start to write (and seemingly I bewilder them just as much).

So my question is thus very simple. As a pantser writer, you have a whole afternoon free to write, you've got nothing in progress (at least nothing you want to work on), and you open up a new document file (in the format of your choosing). As you strike the first key, what do you actually know (or suspect) about your story? Characters? Settings? Events? Length? Genre? Sexual activities?

 

[Omenainen]

It’s not always the same. For example, for one of my stories I had the opening scene: man sits alone in a hotel lobby bar and gets drunk. So I was like… why is he there? Why is he alone? And it grew from there.

Another was an answer to “if I would write a gay romance, what would I write?” So with that one I knew the genre, and what kind of sex was going to happen. But not what the story would be about. Theme of the story turned out to be acceptance of mental illnesses.

For me it would be boring to write a story if I already knew what was going to happen. Why bother writing at all if there’s no surprises?

 

[lovecraft68]

Often its a sex scene or perhaps the lead into one. From there its who are they, what led to this, and after that I decide-by feel mostly-who's POV I want. From there, its just winging it.

I hazard to say I might be the biggest pantster here, an entire novel written with no outlines, and a 900k series written by never looking past the chapter I was writing. Readers would be "can't wait to see what happens next" and I'd be like "Me neither!"

 

[TheseLegs]

I have never heard that phrase (architects vs gardeners is one I have heard that seems to mean the same thing) but I am such a panster. I will pick a setting and a character, usually the character has a problem or goal in mind, and just see what happens. This is the reason editing is so important, and also why I have about a hundred stories started that just never ended up going anywhere.

 

[MrPixel]

Readers would be "can't wait to see what happens next" and I'd be like "Me neither!"

I resemble that remark!

Happen to be writing a "surprise" sex scene this very moment!

 

[Omenainen]

As you strike the first key, what do you actually know (or suspect) about your story? Characters? Settings? Events? Length? Genre? Sexual activities?

Actually, now that I look at that list, I’d say that the one thing I never know is the length. Some of the others but not all of them all the time. And they might change.

 

[SamScribble]

I don't write sex stories. I write short stories (and, occasionally, novels) with sex in them - because there is sex in real life. If you are lucky, there can be quite a bit of sex in real life. Although not all of it is good.

When I start a new story, I start with a character. Sometimes, two or three characters. And then I set them loose somewhere. What keeps me writing is my desire (a little like the desire of Lovecraft's readers) to find out what happens next.

These past few days I have been putting the finishing touches to a mainstream novel in which I kept expecting that the main character was going to win an important prize. A fair few of the other characters also expected him to win the prestigious prize. But he didn't. The prize was won by a character who I didn't even know existed until 60-or-so thousand words had passed under the bridge. Imagine my surprise.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

I'm probably somewhere in between, though closer to pantser.
Call me a sand boxer.
I set up characters and situations that are like waypoints. And the writing is plotting the roads and paths the character(s) will take from waypoint to waypoint. And rarely do I actually know the final waypoints.

 

[oggbashan]

I'm probably a bit of both. Before I start writing a story (with a few exceptions such as Christmas Fairy) I know the ending and usually some of the intermediate plots. But I don't plan in detail. I just write and things might change as the characters develop but they rarely alter the original ending.

 

[Comshaw]

So this kind of came up in my thread about serendipity which just got, if not necroed, than at least jolted back into life, but I think it's an interesting enough topic by itself to warent its own thread.

For those who don't know, 'planners vs pantsers' is a common phrase for distinguishing writers who make substantial plans for their work before starting to write against those who 'fly by the seat of their pants' and start to write with little idea of where the story is evenutally going to end up. From previous threads, I'm probably nearly as far along the planner end of the spectrum as it's possible to be and thus am frequently bewildered by writer who claim they know literally nothing about their stories before they start to write (and seemingly I bewilder them just as much).

So my question is thus very simple. As a pantser writer, you have a whole afternoon free to write, you've got nothing in progress (at least nothing you want to work on), and you open up a new document file (in the format of your choosing). As you strike the first key, what do you actually know (or suspect) about your story? Characters? Settings? Events? Length? Genre? Sexual activities?

I don't just sit down and say, "I'm going to write a story, or at least the beginnings of one." Usually that story idea has been bubbling in my brain for days, surfacing from time to time to let me know it's there. Eventually it pops into my brain and no matter what else is going on, what I'm doing at that time, I have to slap my butt down in my chair and write. When the muse demands I do, I do.

Like Sam I write short stories that have sex in them. They are character driven tales of love, hate and the human condition. But unlike Sam I also write sex stories, designed and written to showcase the sex more than the characters. They are nothing more than a fuck fest, a stroke story, a verbal aphrodisiac for the mind. My "12 days of Christmas" is such a story and to be honest I enjoyed the hell out of writing it! Sometimes that's what my deviant little brain wants me to put down, so I do.

Comshaw

 

[Voboy]

Precious little. I just posted this in your other thread, and I don't feel like typing it all out again...

TL;DR: I keep a stable of characters I've written about, whom I think of as real people. They have thoughts, opinions, motivations, beliefs, and behaviors. Occasionally I get struck by my muse, asking me a "what if" question about something I've seen on the news, or observed at work, or read about. Then I pair a character with that "what if" and just start typing. The character comes to life in my mind and starts making decisions. My function is to write it all down.

It helps that I've always been a curious sort. I was the kid who opened an encyclopedia and allowed it to lead me around for hours, just soaking up knowledge. I still do that, only now, I often turn that knowledge into stories.

Some stories get more thorough planning, but all the stories I've ever abandoned are in that grouping. Just recently, I bailed out of a story after hours of [enjoyable] research and nearly 11k words. I've learned that the more time I need to spend planning before I write, the worse the story is likely to be.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I start a story in one of two ways:

The first, most common, is an image or a very short scene (often only a sentence, or at most, a glimpse) and the story progresses from that, in complete discovery. A Girl on the Bus demonstrates that, in 750 words. Most of my stories start that way, with characters showing up in the space of a paragraph.

The second "start" might involve a few more ideas and possibly even a last scene - but no idea how I'll get there. I rarely know which voice it will be written in, until the first paragraph is written.

 

[XerXesXu]

I'll start with a theme I want to write about, a couple of characters, a beginning, and an ending. I don't know how I'll get from the beginning to the end, but I'll follow a classic story structure and proceed by dead reckoning. I'll insert characters and rewrite extensively to shape the story.

 

[Duleigh]

As you strike the first key, what do you actually know (or suspect) about your story? Characters? Settings? Events? Length? Genre? Sexual activities?

I know all of that, and I also know I didn't waste hours of my life overthinking a simple fantasy.
We're not rewriting War and Peace here pal, these are simple expressions of our imagination.

 

[TxRad]

Most of my stories start with a single picture. I put the ones that I think have potential in a screen saver and let it rotate around. That gives me time to see what I can see in the picture both as is and what if. Then at some time my Muse will slap me in the back of the head and say write and off I go. I have no idea of characters except for the one in the picture and I have no idea where the story is going or who will show up.

My Summer Lovin' story is a perfect example. The picture shows a young woman walking in a creek bed wearing nothing but a breach cloth and two feathers in her hair. 20k words later I had "A Walk in the Woods Indian style" finished.

The first story I ever wrote started with a memory of a front porch, a young lady, and a storm. It ended up being a twenty chapter novel. An unedited version of it is posted here. "Sweet and Spicy Horny Toads."

I'm a total pantser. I've never wrote an outline in my life.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Sometimes a fully formed story falls out of thin air, just needing dialogue and a bit of sex to have it ready to go. Mostly it's just a line or a situation that kicks off the process.

The only stories I've planned to any extent are my three "Cricket Anyone? India vs Australia" ones, and only because they had to tie in with Sweetdreamsss' stories about the same female characters. Even then, there was a lot of making it up as I went along.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I'm probably somewhere in between, though closer to pantser.
Call me a sand boxer.
I set up characters and situations that are like waypoints. And the writing is plotting the roads and paths the character(s) will take from waypoint to waypoint. And rarely do I actually know the final waypoints.

The term for someone in the middle is 'plantser', but I think I like your phrase better.

I know all of that, and I also know I didn't waste hours of my life overthinking a simple fantasy.
We're not rewriting War and Peace here pal, these are simple expressions of our imagination.

Most of my planning is done during daily walks where I'd only be fretting about something more mundane, so it's not that much of a waste of time. In anycase, I wonder how the average time spent writing a story varies from planner to pantser - I've heard it said that what pantsers save in the planning they lose in the edit and visa versa. I doubt one or the other is consistently faster. From the pantser list in the other thread, George R.R. Martin is the classic example of a pantser writer who clearly isn't a model of writing efficiency.

It usually starts with a particular image in my head. For my Summer Lovin' story, it was a girl riding a mechanical bull.

For "Missed Connections" it was strangers in a train car with a camera between them. For "Cry Little Sister" it was a guy cooking while holding a small kid. "Neighbor's Shadow" started with the image of a girl standing up with blood dripping down her arms. "Bully's Birthday" started with a girl in a mermaid costume smiling and curling ber finger in a "come hither" motion. "Blood Wine" started with the image of a girl standing between two guys, one looked older and kindly, the other looked almost predatory, but the grip the kindly-looking man had on her shoulder was very possessive while the predatory-looking man had her hand curled in his in a protective way.

Everything started with a single image in my head and ballooned from there into fun and glorious chaos.

I'll ask this with Erozetta's quote as she's expressed it quite nicely, but am really asking all those who've said they start with an image - does this image have to come in the first scene of the story? Do you ever start by writing the scene around the image, but then go back to add another earlier scene as a 'more appropriate starting point.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'll start with a theme I want to write about, a couple of characters, a beginning, and an ending. I don't know how I'll get from the beginning to the end, but I'll follow a classic story structure and proceed by dead reckoning. I'll insert characters and rewrite extensively to shape the story.

This sounds a lot like how I do things, although I definitely think of myself as more of a plotter than a pantser. The difference might be that I usually spend some time outlining the classic story structure before I start and relying perhaps somewhat less than you do on dead reckoning. I often depart from the outline as I write, and I try to rewrite as I go so I won't have to do major rewrites when the first draft is done.

 

[NotWise]

The stories I wrote before Lit and my early stories for Lit were by the seat of my pants. For me it was a problem when I started to write a short story, and it became a novel, so I gradually added more planning. Before that, I generally had two characters and an opening scene, and I wrote from there.

I used images to help me visualize Rachel and Penny in "Watch Me!" The image I picked for Penny ended up as my wallpaper for a while, and because of it she grew from secondary character to a main character.

I'm contemplating a story now based on a photo. It's an (apparently) antique photo of a geisha, looking straight into the camera with her robe drawn to the side. The photo didn't translate into a scene. It translated into a character and a plot built around her.

 

[Voboy]

It's interesting to me how many of you start with images of people. I've never done that. My characters are all in my mind.

I did a commission once and the guy sent me some pics as "inspiration," but I deleted them. They were a distraction.

 

[Comshaw]

It's interesting to me how many of you start with images of people. I've never done that. My characters are all in my mind.

I did a commission once and the guy sent me some pics as "inspiration," but I deleted them. They were a distraction.

View attachment 2176133

This is exactly the problem I have with movies like "Dune". I read the book five times before the first movie ever came out. I KNOW what those characters look like. I know how they walk, the expressions, or lack of, on their faces. Someone else's visual interpretation on screen conflicts with the one I already have in my head, so it sours the movie for me.

Comshaw

 

[Thefireflies]

Like other pansters here, I have no plot, only an idea of a character, or a few characters, and maybe an idea of a scene or concept or goal. Mostly my goal when writing here is to get my main characters laid in a reasonably realistic and natural manner, and in the case of an author’s challenge, to meet the challenge criteria.

When I take a blank Word document and start filling it with words, I usually get the ball rolling with a random scene like others do, and see where it naturally wants to go. Sometimes it takes off, other times it fizzles out. This might sound weird, but I’m sure many would relate, but I see the events unfold in my head with only vague ideas to guide it, and I write what’s going on. Same with conversations, where I don’t know what my characters will say until they speak it. It's only while it proceeds I might think of further ideas for story direction and conversations, adding them to the growing list of random notes at the bottom of the document, but often I later discard them because they don't fit the story. Somewhere I eventually get to a point where I think the story is reaching a natural conclusion, so wrap it up. At editing time I could cut a whole bunch of stuff and reduce it to something more succinct, but more often than not I add to it instead.

 

[KeithD]

I know enough to know I can get a story out of it--and so far I always have.

 

[Bramblethorn]

For those who don't know, 'planners vs pantsers' is a common phrase for distinguishing writers who make substantial plans for their work before starting to write against those who 'fly by the seat of their pants' and start to write with little idea of where the story is evenutally going to end up. From previous threads, I'm probably nearly as far along the planner end of the spectrum as it's possible to be and thus am frequently bewildered by writer who claim they know literally nothing about their stories before they start to write (and seemingly I bewilder them just as much).

I can't be sure, but I think some of this comes down to a confusion between "planning" and "plotting".

There are a bunch of things that might matter to a story - the events that happen in it, the way each character develops, the way they interact, themes, settings, the intended reader reaction, and more. Any and all of those can benefit from "planning", especially for long complex stories, but in discussions about "planning" I often get the impression that people are only thinking about the "events" part of that, i.e. the plot.

So it's not uncommon that I will have quite a detailed plan for my story before I begin writing, but the plot side of that is relatively light. For instance, I might start out with the idea "initially the relationship between S and A is quite unequal, with A being younger and unworldly and S being a kind of mentor, but as time goes by A develops social skills and self-confidence until eventually she's more or less caught up to S, and outgrown the relationship". I might not have much planned at all for exactly how that evolution is depicted via events, but it's still a framework within which I can make things up.

I can't speak for people other than myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of what's called "pantsing" is really more "planned, not plotted". I didn't realise how much planning I was doing myself, until I started working on a how-to on this.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've heard it said that what pantsers save in the planning they lose in the edit and visa versa. I doubt one or the other is consistently faster.

Edit? What's edit? I don't do much of that, either.

I'm fortunate, I think, in that my raw draft is pretty much what you see. I futz with words, a few phrases here and there, sometimes a sentence, and on occasion, might move a paragraph. But I keep it spontaneous and raw, with a rolling edit technique where I review the last bit of writing with the next bit. This keeps the flow rolling, and provides continuity.

I'll ask this with Erozetta's quote as she's expressed it quite nicely, but am really asking all those who've said they start with an image - does this image have to come in the first scene of the story? Do you ever start by writing the scene around the image, but then go back to add another earlier scene as a 'more appropriate starting point.

Usually my inspirational image or scene gets to be the first thing you read, or if it's not, it's a quick few paragraphs to the trigger image that's in my head.