Melissa Charles author

The term ‘pantser’ is taken from the expression, ‘flying by the seat of your pants.’ Personally, I think of it more as the Ms. Frizzle approach.

“Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”… while flying by the seat of your pants. I usually have the last scene in mind, and maybe a snapshot in my head of the first chapter, but the rest appears on the page as I write. I’m usually as surprised as the reader as to how the heck the book got from a-z.

Being a pantser generally works/worked for me, because although I didn’t outline on the page, I had a vague idea of how things might go. I brew novels in my head, and then as a beta reader lovingly puts it, my brain pukes it out into a document.

Then I rewrite. And rewrite. And rewrite.

For me, that worked… until I tried a different genre.

Going from spec fic (a blend of horror, fantasy and romance in particular) to paranormal mystery/thriller was a massive shift.

Clues needed to be clueing. Mysteries needed to be mysterious. Solutions needed to be… well, you get it.

And that needed some planning. I needed to figure out what clues went where, and how, and when. It was important to me that the Bad Guy wasn’t an obvious target. That bits of information that were woven through the novel resulted in the reader having a bit of a Homer Simpson moment, where details that seemed just part of the background suddenly took on new meaning by the end of the book.

Which is freaking HARD when you start writing a book that you’re not even sure who the Bad Guy is. I literally changed the BG three freaking times while drafting the novel.

It also didn’t help that I approached the draft with the intention of it being a romance, a mystery/thriller with paranormal elements and tried to hit the beats for everything.

As it turns out, you can’t hit the beats of several genres in one novel and have it work. Or at least I can’t. Which is why choosing a primary genre is important, folks. Gives you framework to build on. My original draft was scattered, the plot meandered, and the pacing was unsteady and needed serious teardown and rebuilding.

But I freaking loved it. The characters were alive. Flawed and funny, I enjoyed writing them. They deserved a book that worked.

So, I planned. I plotted. I tore things down and rebuilt them. Better than before.

Side note: did anyone else ever watch the Bionic Woman as a kid? Her and Wonder Woman were amazing!

Anyways.

I found that, for me, pantsing a mystery didn’t work very well. It lacked clarity and needed firmer structure.

So, I became a bit of a ‘plantser,’ combining planning and pantsing. Which turned into reverse engineering the entire thing. Figured out what clues I could work in, how to do it, and restructured everything.

Which brings me to my current situation: trying to outline a novel from the very start. I bought myself coloured notecards, I have dry erase markers, I had sticky notes and highlighters, but they’ve gone missing. Of course, nobody in my house admits to messing with them, so I’m assuming the ghost is pranking me.

(Of course we have a ghost in the house. Who doesn’t?)

The problem is that I find outlining intimidating. If I don’t get everything right, then I’ve failed. Which is ridiculous, of course. But it’s part of imposter syndrome, and something every writer I know has to deal with in one form or another.

I will get an outline done. It may not be perfect, it may not be detailed, it may not cover everything, but it will be enough, because I’m still learning to navigate this structure.

That’s the key to writing, imo: be learning. Always. That’s how you improve your craft. Learning what each story needs to become the best work you can create. There’s always room for growth, from one book to the next.

To me, writing is like any skill or talent. The more you work at it, the better you get.

And the ‘click’ in my head when things are working?

Bliss. Pure bliss.