It’s often said that writers are either pantsers (often rendered inaccurately as pansters, probably because it’s easier to pronounce) or plotters. Pantsers as in “write by the seat of your pants.” They make it up as they go along and don’t know where they’re going until they get there.

I think there are writers who do very long plots.

I’m writing this as a writer in the hope that some readers might be interested in the process.

We need to think—a lot. Think about characters, scenes and all the paraphernalia that makes for an intriguing novel. But for a novel that resonates, one that echoes in the hearts of its readers long after they’ve finished, a writer also needs to work out what’s going underneath. The duck or the iceberg of writing, where nine-tenths of it is below the surface. It’s that nine-tenths that decides whether the book, be it Harlequin category, historical romance or kick-ass urban fantasy, will be a game-changing one or not.

Sometimes the superficiality is the story. After all, we all live on the surface for most of the time. Romantic comedy can do that, and still be superb. But the ones that live with us are the ones with depth, something below the surface, maybe an inner sadness that affects one of the characters, one they bravely cover up—most of the time.

But in the true sense of the archetype, a character should stand for something. Something that affects a great number of the readers, something the reader can identify with at a deeper level than the daily routine. When that happens, the character speaks to the reader down through the ages, like Hamlet’s dilemma, something every person who has seen the play remembers and something that in some way reflects on his or her own life.

The plot has to work. Most writers trip up somewhere, but the world has to hold together. In a contemporary romance, the traffic has to go the right way up (or down) Madison Avenue, in a paranormal a dragon who can’t breathe fire can’t suddenly start doing it half way through the book without good reason. Everyone has to act in character, Americans can’t suddenly become French, brown eyes shouldn’t turn blue, unless the owner was wearing contacts, and novels set in the Regency shouldn’t have heroines in crinolines.

The author has to keep all those balls in the air, and at first it’s tricky. A plan is an enormous help, together with whatever tools the author finds necessary. Rewrites can add depth and richness.

A lot of beginning writers are pantsers. They just start, then very often they stall partway through when the story peters out. They learn to write past that eventually.

Me, I’ll take all the tools I can get. But I’m also all about jettisoning them when they’re not working. I don’t think many writers use exactly the same method throughout their careers. I could be wrong, since there are as many different ways of writing as there are writers.

Recently I’ve been stopping half way through writing a book to redo the plot. The characters and the story want to move in a different direction and so I stop. And yet the overall shape of the book remains the same.

So I’m going to try the next book with an outline and let it take me to new places. Wish me luck because this is new to me and I’m a bit scared. And excited!