I am super excited to be starting my first Preptober series on this blog! In the past, I have done guest posts and other Preptober publications, and this month I’m going to be gathering some of those posts to put here. I’ve been an ML in my region for 3 years now (I’m going to write a post about this), this will be my 4th and during my time in this position, I have loved observing and learning for tons of different kinds of writers. So as a first post I decided it might be beneficial to discuss one of the most used, and most confused set of terms in all of NaNoWriMo: Pantser, Planner, and Plantser.
A pantser is a writer that goes into NaNoWrimo with absolutely nothing. No preparation, no planning, no outlines, and sometimes even no idea what they are going to write. They write as they go and that’s what they prefer.
I have tried to pants it before, and though I still won, it was the most stressful experience ever, and I don’t think my personality type benefits from that kind of lack of preparation.
A planner is a writer that will stay up all night thinking about their novels, they will outline, and plan and plan and basically craft their novel into a math equation! (This is me by the way) Some people just need the blueprints. Planners are organized, a lot of the ones I know have binders of notes in categories for their novels. If you write fantasy, planning is your best friend, in my opinion.
And here is the new one! THE HYBRID PLANTSER!
This writer is a happy medium of both living in the moment and living in a premeditated preparation plan. Not obsessively planned out but not ill-prepared, these writers tend to be cool and collected and they kind of just go with the flow. Many that I have seen in my region end up writing completely different novels than they thought they were going to, and that’s totally fine with them!
Overall, it doesn’t matter what kind of writer you are, just as long as you write and keep true to what makes you comfortable! I will tell you this though! Find a mixed group of wrimo types to write with! You should not just pick a writing community of wrimos that are all planners if you are a planner! The variety will actually save your life during November and it will keep everything super interesting for you. There will be less of a chance of you getting stuck in that mid-month RUT! Which is going to be another post in this month’s series!
I hope this helped, let me know in the comments below what kind of wrimo you are!
