In US English, a ‘pantser’ is someone who writes ‘by the seat of their pants’. While the latter expression is in common use in the UK, the word ‘pantser’ is not in any English dictionary that I can find (and Word keeps underlining it in red, so it can’t be real).

It means that I write without a structured outline of my novel before I start writing. Now I can’t write with no idea of what I’m writing about (despite claims by some to the contrary!), so I do have a reasonable idea of the elements that will make up my story (or stories in Sudden Deaths), but I do not have anything written down. I start to write and the characters appear on the stage and do whatever it is they want to do. At some point I do have to make a note of who they are, why they did what they did and where and when they did it. Of course, when I have finished the first draft I have to check carefully that what happens is consistent: it often needs a lot of re-writing at this point.

Is it a good way to write? It works for me in that it allows my characters to tell their story and I sometime feel that I’m just along for the ride, which can be uncomfortable, but feels truer than if I told them what they had to do all the time.