Confessions of a Panster

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Confessions of a Pantser

By Ray Tabler

Hello, my name is Ray, and I’m pantser. Let me enunciate, pant-ser. Not panzer, which is a German armored fighting vehicle. Entirely different than the, mercifully short-lived, middle school pantsing craze of a few years ago. Apparently, that concerned pulling some unfortunate person’s trousers down in public, as a prank. Baffling, but when I was young “streaking” was all the rage. Otherwise sane people would disrobe, and run around nekked at public events; baseball games, concerts, the Oscars. (While David Niven, no less, was at the podium! What cheek.)

No, being a pantser involves another type of lunacy, afflicting primarily writers. Pantser refers to the phrase “flying by the seat of your pants.” Which originated in the barnstorming, early days of piloting aircraft. It carries with it a heavy dollop of daredevil, muscular panache. “I don’t need me no flight instruments. I can fly this here crate by the seat of muh pants!” Meaning, the pilot determines which way is up by the fact that his butt is pulled down into the seat by gravity. Which direction is down can be very important to a pilot. When flying through clouds or fog, down is usually the direction to be avoided. There typically being unreasonably immobile ground that way. You don’t have to be a student of physics or aeronautics to understand that relying on the seat of your pants is not always the best way to avoid collision with the ground. Study up on the infamous “graveyard spiral” if curious.

A pantser author feels his way along, much like that barnstorming pilot. And, just as that intrepid flyboy flirted with fate. It’s much easier to lose your way, and crash. But, I don’t let that stop me.

A pantser is a writer who embarks upon the writing of a novel without much, if any, of a plan for what it will be about, how long it will be, or even how it will end. Even Colombus and Magellan had more of an inkling of where they were bound than the typical pantser, being more-or-less sure that if they just kept sailing west the spherical nature of the Earth would eventually bring them back to familiar waters. We pantsers are true gamblers, not knowing when our works will be complete, if ever. Oh joy!

The polite term for pantser is “discovery writer.” Which makes me feel better about being one. Also, Stephen King stamped his approval on us in his book On Writing. He likened discovery writing to unearthing a fossil. Sometimes archeologists use as delicate an instrument as a toothbrush to avoid damage to the find. I’m not a fan of horror, but Stephen King is a legit, big-time author. So, his opinion carries a lot of weight. And, since it aligns with my view, I will cling to his pronouncements, in this regard, like a rock in the middle of a storm-tossed sea.

Terminologically speaking, the opposite of “pantser” is “planser” That is, someone who lays out the novel in an outline, of varying detail, before commencing to write the thing. As words, both pantser and planser are crimes against the English language. But so are mansplaining, frenemy, and infotainment. No one planned these linguistic abominations, “…yet here we are…” to quote Edna Mode.

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I would dearly love to be a planser. To be perfectly honest, publishers prefer outliners (plansers). They’re more dependable. We pantsers are prone to veer off on some random vector, chasing an elusive, shiny idea until it disappears into the ether. And no amount of frantic scouring with that mental toothbrush will bring it back again. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to depend on me either.

There are any number of excellent software products for setting up and managing writing a novel with an outline. They are all useless to me. I’ve tried to walk this path, and suffered an allergic reaction. It conjured up the mental image of trying to type while wearing a straitjacket… Wonder if there’s a story idea there.

Here is where I have to differ from Stephan King’s analogy of uncovering a fossil. That implies that your story is there already, a static thing only awaiting the dirt to be removed. A story is amorphous, subject to changes you, the author, control. When starting a story, I imagine it like floating on a lazy river, drifting along with the turgid current, semi submerged in an inner tube, sipping a cool, tropical beverage. The stream winds, branches, and twines, allowing languid consideration as to which way the plot should go. Happy, friendly characters wave from the bank, and wade out to join you for the ride.

Then, at some point, the flow of the tale picks up. The direction is hemmed in by previous choices, and almost before I realize it the lazy river has become a steep, Teflon-coated water-slide. The end is visible, straight down hill, and the story is careening along, swirling past rocks, tumbling over waterfalls, and dunking you under at irregular intervals.

You drag yourself ashore at the bottom of the run, coughing up half the river and wiping water from your eyes. Not all of the characters made it this far. Some are strewn along the rapids and floating face-down. None are as happy and friendly as they started out, suffering from post-creative stress disorder. It is done, and you gaze back up the way you came, marveling at what you’ve dragged from your brain.

At least that’s the way it seems to me.