Working from a Plan: Progress Report

I had no idea working from a plan could so drastically increase my productivity.

Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash

For most of my life as a writer, I have been a pantser.

My friend and fellow author Val Griswold-Ford introduced me to the notion of planners vs pantsers.

Though I have defined this before, let me clarify — a pantser is someone who writes by the seat of their pants. They sit at the keyboard or in front of the page and blast out whatever they do.

A planner, on the other hand, plots. To a greater or lesser amount of detail, they come up with a plan for the whole story.

I used to believe that planning was detrimental to creativity. It seemed to me that the rigidity of a plan might stifle creativity overall. How can you be as creative as possible when you have a plan and plot to follow?

When a new idea came to me for not just a story, but a whole sci-fi series, I decided that to make it more commercially approachable — and to give it better direction — I would try being a planner.

So, a lifelong pantser worked on being a planner. I had one idea. Inspired (not at all based on) by the idea of The Clone Wars — what if both sides employed clones for a war? Then, when the war ended — what became of the…