The Dangers Of Being A Panster

No Way Out!

It is a common theme on social media, for authors to bemoan the fact that they have got their characters into a certain situation but can’t find a way out for them.
 
I guess it is a sort of “writer’s block”, but it is one that is avoidable.
 
Authors can be split into two broad types (at the risk of stereotyping); there are the “plotters” and there are the “pantsers”.

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Plotters plan their book in advance, breaking it down to chapters, then scenes and even to paragraphs, depending on how focused they are on the fine detail.

​Some plotters spend far more time planning their books than they do actually writing them (OK, maybe an exaggeration, but they do spend a lot of time on planning).
 
We are not here to talk about plotters. If you are one then move along, there is nothing for you to see here. (OK, stick around and read about how miserable things sometimes get for pansters if you want to).
 
Pansters “fly by the seat of their pants”, hence the name. They sit down in front of their PC, laptop, tablet or phone (some even use a pencil and paper) and just start writing. They have no idea what is going to happen in their book until the words appear in front of them.

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Life as a pantser!

I am a pantser and proud of it. I think I’m more creative because of it. And yes, sometimes I get myself into a position where I don’t know what is going to happen next. But I have learnt from that, so it happens a lot more rarely than it used to.
 
Which brings me to the subject of this week’s blog, which is how pantsers can save themselves a lot of anguish and a lot of time.
 
I now have one simple rule that I live by when it comes to writing: never put your protagonist into a situation unless you know how you are going to get them out of it.

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So, your protagonist gets into a fight and gets thrown down a well. Good bit of drama. No problem.
 
But if you don’t know how they are going to get out, you could end up staring at that screen for a very long time.
 
It could result in you going all the way back to before the fight started and re-writing the whole chapter so that this time they don’t get thrown down a well.
 
Which means you lost a whole lot of time by not thinking about it first.
 
So, here is a hypothetical scenario, as I would play it out in my head.
 
Me. “I’m going to ramp up the action so that my protagonists is going to get into a fight.”
 
Me in my head. “Good idea. How is it going to have a dramatic ending?”
 
Me “He’s going to get thrown down a well, which is too deep for him to get out. And the antagonist then cuts the rope that’s attached to the bucket and throws it into the well with him, so he can’t climb up the rope.”
 
Me in my head “Sounds good, but he’s eventually got to get out, so how will he escape?”
 
Me, “Someone will come past, hear him calling for help and lower a rope down to him and haul him out.”

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Now, you may think that’s good (or maybe you don’t). But is it believable?
 
I mean, is it normal for people to just wander past carrying a bit of rope long enough to reach the bottom of a well?
 
Yes, we expect our readers to suspend their disbelief, but we can’t expect them to believe in miracles (unless it’s a religious story, of course, where miracles are a routine explanation for everything).
 
So, I now have to think about how this person is going to turn up out of the blue, carrying the rope.
 
Me in my head  “Where did this bloke come from and why is he carrying a rope?”
 
Me (after a lot of head scratching) “He’s a bellringer in the local church and he has to replace the rope on one of the bells. He is just on his way to do that when he heard my protagonist calling for help.”
 
Me in my head. “OK, that’s believable. Go for it.”
 
It may be necessary to go back a few pages, or even a few chapters, to introduce the bell ringer, to add credibility to the plot. Maybe we’ll see him with his wife (it has to be a he so he is strong enough to haul a fully grown man out of a well), having breakfast and discussing what he is going to do that day, then we follow him on his walk to the church, which takes him past the well.

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Guess which character is going to die!

But that is easier to do than going back to square one because I haven’t given the matter any prior thought.
 
If you are a pantser and all that sounds like a bit of a chore, then OK. It’s your story, write it your way.
 
All I’m saying is that you can make life easier on yourself by not going hell-for-leather all the time. Just stop and think about what will happen next, especially when it comes to putting your protagonists in the way of danger.
 
And if you think all the above doesn’t apply to you because you write romance, or another genre that doesn’t involve throwing characters down a well, think again!
 
You will be putting your characters into unsuitable relationships from which you then have to extricate them. That is a metaphorical well.
 
Some types of book make it easier to find additional characters at the right time than others. I’ll use a well known TV series to illustrate.
 
In the original Star Trek series, we only saw a small number of crew members. But there was apparently a crew of 430. That made it easy to introduce a new face when it was needed.
 
I’m sure we can all recall episodes where a previously unknown crew member joined a landing party, only to die almost as soon as they were transported to the planet’s surface. But that minor character was important, because his death (it was nearly always a man) alerted the rest of the landing party to danger and ratcheted up the drama levels.

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Other settings allow this as well. Basically, any plot that is set in a large organisation: hospital, military, school, police, FBI, CIA et al provides scope to introduce minor characters when they are needed.
 
When writing a book with a smaller, tighter setting, it is much harder to introduce a new character.
 
For example, in Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe has to concoct a plot about cannibals coming to his island to kill and eat the character who would become Friday.
 
When reading that as a child, I found it hard to believe. I mean, why would cannibals transport a prisoner across miles of dangerous ocean (Crusoe’s ship had already been sunk in a storm to leave him stranded) , when they could do what they wanted to much closer to where they captured him. Indeed, they could even do it at home.
 
Credibility is important when introducing characters, especially if they have an important part to play in the plot, even if they’re only going to be in the book for a short segment..

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Beware of remote locations

So, that is something for you to think about if you are setting your story in a remote location, because drama means threat and threats have to be countered and the protagonist may not be able to counter the threat without help.

​In the film The Revenant (2015) the protagonist, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), teams up with a native American who saves his life when he becomes feverish, so this is a common trope and one that must be planned in advance.
 
Even if it is only 30 seconds in advance.
 
Finally, a word on the use of magic to solve your protagonist’s problems, for you pansters who write fantasy. I include miracles in that as well, even though writers of religious books wouldn’t consider them to be magical. However, the same problem exists.

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If the only way out of their predicament for your protagonist is to use magic, then it’s bad idea.

​If magic is always going to be the solution, there is no point in reading the book. There is no drama for the reader if they know that no matter what happens, the protagonist is always going to be saved by magic.
 
Magic has its place in fantasy, but only when magic is being used against it. Even then it should come at a cost to whoever is using it, so that further use is discouraged.
 
Even Shakespeare, who occasionally used a bit of magic, knew to use it sparingly.
 
OK pansters, lesson over. And all you plotters can now stop gloating and get back to your flow charts.
 
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