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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}