Planner vs. Panster vs. Planster. What?

When I finally sat down to write the first chapter of The Half of It (my fondly tentative title for this novel), I did just that. Started writing. No clearly outlined idea of what would happen in the plot. The scene organically formed in my mind, and I needed to quickly get it down on paper before I started to lose the visceral details I had imagined. After writing this first scene, though, I froze. It's one thing to write out a scene, but it's another beast to write an entire novel. I realized pretty quickly that I needed to take a step back and think big picture to make sure the scene actually went somewhere.

Which brings us to the topic of today's post: different types of writing styles. I didn't know this was a "thing" until I was deep into writing the book, but a quick Google search will tell you that it's VERY much a thing, with lots of opinions and preferences.

Planners are the kind of writers who like to plot things out. Outlines, detailed notes, character sketches, and generally seeing the full picture before getting words to paper. Alternatively, Pansters, quite literally, fly by the seat of their pants, jotting down scenes and notes without a set outline or plan for where the story is going to end. For them, writing happens in the day to day.

If you've guessed that a Planster is some combination of both styles, you're totally right. This is where I fall. Somewhere in the middle.

Along the writing process, I found some incredibly helpful writing tools, such as Scrivener and Save the Cat! Beat Sheet (more on those later) that allowed me to better organize my thoughts and create an outline for the overall story arc that I wanted to occur. That being said, I left my outlines pretty vague, with only a couple sentences about my goal for each section or chapter without mapping out in painful detail each and everything that would happen (let's be honest, I'm not that meticulous). Some days, though, I went completely off script and wrote down the ideas swirling around in my brain, seeing where the scene and characters took me. Again, Planster here!

Why does any of this matter? It doesn't, really. If you want to write a book, you'll do it, whether or not you know ahead of time if you're a Plotter, Panster, or Planster... but knowing might just save you a bit of time in the long run. It's probably something you figure out as you go along, though maybe it's somehow tied to personality types or something like that. Who knows. I do think that discovering my writing style has served me well as I move into some combination of imaging and planning out the sequel to this first book, which is now in progress (eep!).

Anyway, I just wanted to share this fun little bit of writing information as I am currently deep in edits and love any reason to procrastinate! Happy Thursday ✌🏼

What writing style do you have? To learn more about writing styles, you can check out these articles that I found interesting/helpful:

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