How to handle being a pantser

While I'm waiting on feedback on a different novel, I'm drafting something new (lofty. I have exactly 2,476 words in Scrivener). I have the characters in my mind, and the tensions I want between them, and the merest, vaguest shadow of a plot.

I'm a pantser, through and through.

Though I'm sure anyone reading this in the immediate future will know what a pantser is, I'll describe it for posterity: a plotter is a writer who painstakingly crafts plot before writing. Tentpole moments are solidified, and the ending is generally known, until the moment it is not. Conversely, a pantser is a writer who writes by the seat of their flaming pants. They open a word processor, commend their soul to the muses, and get stuck about 30,000 words in.

The curse of the pantser is to wander around lost in the murky middle of a draft. Best case, you'll fix it with extensive and time-consuming revision. Worst case, you trunk the novel entirely.

I try to stave off both with two exercises before I get too far.

Deconstruct plots that spoke to you

A deconstructed recipe separates all elements of a dish into its disparate parts: the noodles over there, the cheese sauce over there, and the bacon over there. Do that to the plot of a book that resonated with you. What made you love this plot? Was it the politics? The conflict with the villain? Pick out the shiniest part and set it against what you know about your characters. What would make your character fight a villain like that? What would your protagonist want to do about that sort of government?

Note this is research, not cannibalism. You're not putting your characters at Hogwarts and going what would my protagonist do to star in quidditch? You're asking, what would my character do to master the magic necessary to get the job she always wanted?

Don't worry about complexity yet. Your plot will evolve with the influence of your characters; they will effect change. This is just about establishing a question for you to return to in the middle of your draft.

Write the synopsis first and keep it simple

You love opening a word processor and just going. So do that. Write a page that describes your book from start to finish, right now. Your characters start here, they end here, and in the middle they clearly have to do a thing to get to the end.

It's easier to see the whole picture when you're staring at 500 words rather than 50,000. Again, don't worry about complexity—that will come when you're in the draft. Right now, what's the simplest way that you can see to get your characters from Point A to Point B to Point C?

Give yourself a question to come back to when the going gets hard, and a simple stage to let your characters play on, and dear pantser, this won't be a novel to trunk.

Keep going. Good luck.

-Chris​
Wolfgang Editorial