“Are you a planner or a panster?”
Whenever this question crops up, there’s often the expectation that you, as a writer, will come down firmly on one side or the other. But what if you don’t? What if you can’t? How do you find a balance between control and chaos without getting in a tangle? And what might your writing process look like as a result?
I found out I was autistic five-and-a-half years ago, after several years of wondering What if…? and many more feeling like there was some secret hack to being a “normal” human being that I’d missed out on somewhere along the way – that if I just kept trying, I’d eventually be able to grasp (and never mind that, by the time I was diagnosed, trying had tipped me into burnout and chronic fatigue). More recently, I’ve also come to realise that I am ADHD, too, and discovering and embracing my neurodivergence has not only created a huge shift in how I view myself, both past and present, but has brought about another change too, this one rather more unexpected: the way I work as a writer.
In true ND style, I’m going to go off at a slight tangent for bit now, but stay with me – I promise it’s relevant. My other half and I have a campervan, and whenever we go away in it, I like to make a detailed plan for the trip before we set off. To this end, I create The Spreadsheet, and work out our itinerary, making a note of campsite locations, phone numbers, check-in and check-out times, and our rough ETA. (I also work out where the nearest supermarkets, doctor and vet are to where we’re staying, just in case we need them.)
But there’s also part of my brain that craves adventure – that, if it has to stick too closely to The Spreadsheet, starts to kick its heels and grumble. So, more often than not, we end up ignoring The Spreadsheet completely and doing something else instead. Sometimes it’s through necessity – the weather changes, or a campsite isn’t quite as nice as we’d hoped. Other times we just feel like a change, or someone tips us off about a location we didn’t know about before we went. As a result, our trips end up being a mix of planning and total spontaneity, which leads to some wonderful surprises. Once, we ended up being shown around a tiny church in East Lothian where I was allowed to play the organ, and afterwards we discovered the church is often used for recording sessions by the BBC. Another time we parked up on a random hillside in Lincolnshire and, after it got dark, realised we’d accidentally stumbled on a Dark Sky site and were rewarded by a spectacular view of the Milky Way, as
So how does this tie in to my writing? Well, before my diagnosis, I firmly believed I should always plan my novels from start to finish before I wrote a single word, because that’s what Proper Writers™ do. Each time I started something new, I’d make a spreadsheet and tell myself that I’d figure out all the beats, and identify exactly what the midpoint was and where it would fall. I’d know roughly how many chapters there were going to be and even what my final word count might be, and…and…
And it never quite worked out like that.
Over time, I’ve come to realise that this is because although I always make sure I know what my “hook” (my story’s central problem, concept or question) is before I start writing, my novels come to life with my characters. And this means that my characters are in charge, not me. They reject the names I’ve so carefully chosen for them and tell me they want to be called something else instead. They take side quests, which completely change their plot and character arcs. That neat ending I’ve thought of? Not gonna work, no matter how carefully I try to work out a framework of scenes leading up to it.
I always used to battle this, though, and it made the process of writing a first draft feel, quite frankly, rather dogged. I was so focussed on how I thought I “should” be working and trying to force my characters to behave in the way I wanted them to that I didn’t leave any room for that part of my brain that likes to go with the flow and have an adventure.
A change of tack was needed. These days, I call my first draft the “Zero draft”, the “discovery draft” or even, if I’m feeling particularly insecure, the “Frankendraft”…although Frankenstein was probably slightly better put together, to be honest. But what this does is acknowledge that my very first draft is going to be a disparate collection of experiments and cul-de-sacs and half-realised ideas, with character names, ages and even genders sometimes switching halfway through (I might do a quick “find and replace”, but often, feeling lazy, I just put in a note to go back and make these changes in the next draft, then carry on writing as if my character has been this person all along). And this frees me from any obligation. No one is going to read this mess, so it doesn’t matter. With many years of work as an editor under my belt as well as several published novels, I know enough about story structure now to have a rough idea of what needs to happen and when – I just need to work out how. And to do that, I need to play, not plan, even if at times that sensation of fumbling around in the dark feels absolutely terrifying at times.
The planning comes in the next stage, when I start to turn this nonsense into a proper first draft – one I’ll (eventually) let my beta readers – who by now are probably sick of the whole thing as they’re the lucky one I run all my plot tangles by and send messages to along the lines of ‘OH MY GOD WHAT IF THIS HAPPENED?’ – read. This is the part of the process I really enjoy, because I’m firmly in control. Now I write out a detailed synopsis, and a chapter plan, slowly but surely herding my characters and story into shape.
It’s not the most efficient method, and can mean I end up deleting and rewriting entire scenes or even sections of my books. It also means that I end up writing several drafts rather than a nice, tidy two, like some of my writer friends. But I have to be efficient in so many other areas of my work and life, otherwise editorial reports wouldn’t get written and the bills wouldn’t get paid, so why not let this be messy, and fun? It’s OK not to be efficient all the time, and in doing so, I’ve found my happy place as a neurodivergent writer.
How about you? Are you a planner? A pantser? Or are you, like me, a bit of both?
Emma Pass is an author, workshop facilitator, editor and mentor. You can book her as a TLC Editor or Mentor now and read more about her here.
