Not All Pantsers “Just Write”

I had an epiphany today: I am a pantser. Most pantsers you hear about write without an outline, without previous character development, without worldbuilding. Most pansters discover their characters, their story’s world, as they write their stories. Since I do a lot of worldbuilding and character development before I even have any idea of what the story is, and I do a lot of imaginary-holographic-video rehearsals of scenes to learn about my characters and my world before I write anything, I’d always considered myself a plotter/planner (they’re the ones who make outlines and everything).

I’ve been experiencing “writer’s block” for lack of better term, for the past year? two years? Not sure exactly when it started… I haven’t been writing consistently in a long long time.

Here’s the backstory for my epiphany:

I was having an imaginary conversation with my imaginary future spouse about my submissiveness and relationship expectations because a novel I’d been reading had a moment of conflict where one character had assumed “officially together” meant “officially exclusive and together.”

Personally, I need the stability of exclusivity in a sexual relationship. I don’t have an issue with polyamory, but if I am involved with multiple partners it needs to be a closed triad or a closed quad.

Why?

Because if it’s open, there are too many ways for my thoughts to get out of hand. I end up stressing about who needs what, who expects what, etc.

Here’s an analogy from my Scandinavian dancing experience.

Scandinavian dances are generally partner dances (although there are a lot of threesome dances too). These are the typical, one partner per song type dances which last however long the song lasts (often the musician can keep a tune going as long as the dancers seem to have continued energy, it’s a symbiotic thing).

There are also “mixers,” dances where you change partners every 30 seconds or thereabouts, making your way around the circle. These tend to be easier to learn if you don’t have any experience, and they are used as a way to make sure new dancers have a chance to meet experienced dancers regardless of whether you’re a lead or a follow.

Mixers serve their purpose, but I hate them. HATE. Why? Because every time I switch partners I have to remember a whole new set of lead-quirks. I have to adapt my dance style to a new person.

For me, the cognitive dissonance of changing parters so frequently during a mixer stresses me out and I don’t enjoy that.

I dance because it is a way for me to submit in a vanilla context. I don’t have to decide anything. I don’t have to ask anyone to dance with me. The only decision I have to make is whether or not to accept an invitation to dance. Then I am free to just follow.

(This is also why I don’t lead ever. Who wants to have to make all those decisions? Dommy types, that’s who. Aka: not me.)

Going back to the exclusivity in relationships thing.

Open relationships, for me, are like the mixers. I have to adjust too often too quickly, I can’t turn my brain off because I have too many things to worry about. (Am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong? Am I supposed to listen to person A or person B or person B’s other person right now???)

Now that I’ve established my preference for exclusivity, here’s the exception:

If my dom tells me to do something with someone else, is directing a scene between me and someone else, thats ok. Or if he tells me to do what someone else says for a specified period of time (eg “I have to focus on monitoring the dungeon for the next two hours so I’m leaving you with PERSON. Obey them until I’m back. They know your limits and safewords.”)

I LOVE getting to play within the framework of boundaries.

That’s how I figured out that, as a writer, I am actually a pantser and NOT a plotter.

I worldbuild, I imagine possible scenarios, I create the rules within which I get to learn who my characters are. I play with multiple possible outcomes of a story in my head, until the characters are making choices that feel authentic to them.

I need the freedom to play within the context of the story boundaries I’ve set for myself. The worldbuilding is necessary for me, but outlining freezes me (for the most part), because I rebel against anything I perceive as a “you have to” or “you must.”

For the first time in a long long time I’m writing in my head to the point where I felt compelled to pull out my laptop and type with all my fingers because it’s faster than typing into my phone while still giving my brain the time to translate thoughts into words (dictation works only sometimes because its harder for me to translate thoughts to spoken words than it is for me to translate thoughts to written words).

I’m a pantser because I need the freedom to learn about my characters and how they interact with their world and each other as I’m writing.

BUT I need the context/boundaries within which to play or I get lost and start doing the same mental overthinking that happens when I’m dancing a mixer.

This is why I hated improv back in my theater days: improv games can stimulate creativity, but the rules are too broad for me. Anything goes as long as it’s a “yes, and” or “no, but” to keep the scenario from stalling out.

I need more context than “anything you can think of” or I get overwhelmed by the possible options and end up thinking of NOTHINGNESS. Literally, my mind goes blank when I am confronted with too many choices.

Like that marketing study about jams, where they sold more when they had only three choices than they did when they had all the options at once.

I would love to hear from you if you’re also a pantser, or if you know someone who is a pantser, who doesn’t fit the “pantsers never figure anything out before they start to write” stereotype.

We hear a lot about all the different ways plotters/planners operate at writing conferences and in writing books and blogs but we don’t hear much of anything from pantsers other than “just write,” which personally I don’t find to be very helpful advice. I mean, yeah, if you don’t write you don’t have a written story/article/whatever, duh. We knew that already. 🙄

All of my most productive writing sessions, whether for fiction or non-fiction, books or articles, have been free-writing after extensive imagination-play. There’s a lot of exploration into what I want to say before a single word hits the page, but it isn’t plotting and it isn’t planning. It’s more like a mental simulation of “this could happen this way” or “what would happen if character A decided to do X instead of Y?” And I go through the alternate scenarios that make the most sense within the boundaries of the world rules and the values/morals/personality traits of the characters.

I definitely do not ever write in order. I start with the scenes that I “know” and I work forwards and backwards from there. Or I wonder, if character A starts here and ends up there, how did they get there? What happened to put them in a place they don’t want to be? How did they become a villain/hero? Did they want to be horrible or did it happen through a series of miscommunications and mistaken assumptions?

Oh, usually, the first scenes I “know” are snippets of dreams, or I’m reading someone else’s story and I realize something about one of my characters because they are either similar to or exactly opposite the character I’m reading about.

It would make sense for there to be as much variety among pantsers as there seems to be among plotters/planners. So please, I’d love to hear how you pants your stories.