Can pantsers make extremelly ellaborated and complex stories?

My first book has a complex world and about seven subplots. It also has seventy named characters.

It came about because my young king needed to witness a battle on the queen's base that he wasn't allowed to enter, so I turned him into a bird. The rest of the world mushroomed trying to explain how that could have happened. There is only one God though - well actually there are others but my world is only aware of the one they are living inside. I've designed new races, have multiple cultures etc. I did it by filtering it all through one character and keeping it narrow geographically, bringing everything to him.

I haven't sold it (you can't have an epic fantasy with a contemporary feel apparently). but I did get an impressive review from a reviewer off a major review site (she was waiting for it to be published). And I've only once had a teen who couldn't finish it.

Diana Gabaldon doesn't outline on paper, and she's written the very elaborate OUTLANDER series. That's her story, anyway, and she's sticking to it; though I can't help but wonder how she could keep it all straight in her head.

Generally speaking, I think writing a whole novel without planning is like building a house without a blueprint. But people manage it, so who am I to judge?

Don't confuse the pantser creative process with being unorganized.

I don't outline - though I will occasionally jot down notes for what should happen at a certain location or time in a story.

I have several threads going on in my story, all tracked in timeline software, with different arcs, events and people.

I have family histories and genealogy, history of place names, a rich world with more than 1000 years of history, and yet I'm a pantser...

The difference between me and a plotter here, is a plotter would have written out the history, the family trees, the language nuances, and a detailed outline with timeline before writing the story.

I do these things AS I write the story.

J.R.R. Tolkien was a plotter. The Silmarillion is really not a story, it's the documentation he used to create his world, which revolved around the history and events needed to define the languages - which were his real passion.

There are very few writers would would spend more than 20 years developing the back-story in the same detail that Tolkien did in his many reams of notes.

He was a genius, though most people will only know him for the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings - which were simple side notes in his overall body of work.

Of course it's possible. It just all depends on the individual. Having said that, I personally don't write complex stories. My most complex story, which involves jumping back and forth between two different eras, was such a headache for me. But that could be more likely because of how I started out writing that story -- I had done it for my first Nano and didn't have my inner editor turned on, which I learned I must leave on or else I get confused on the storyline alone. I think that could be the case, because the follow-up book to that one has been a lot easier to write, even though it mirrors the first book and has the same timeline; it's just from a different POV and is a much darker book and has a different (though related) theme.

Just to add, being a pantser doesn't mean you can't keep notes. It's just you keep notes as you write, not planned out beforehand.

To be honest most of it is in my head and although I have done sketches etc I've never kept them.

Skyes said:

I wonder if books like The Silmarillion, or even the Song of Ice and Fire could be written by a pantser who can organize everything in their own head. There are so many characters, families, gods, conflicts, kingdoms, etc. The politic is extremelly rich and complext.
What do you think?

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George RR Martin is a pantser - he describes himself as a "gardener" rather than an "architect", but I think the principle is the same.

Of course. I hate, hate, hate the work "Panser". I have do doubt an outliner came up with it because it does not describe the process well at all.

But throughout history more have written this way than any other way, and some of the longest, most complex novels out there were written just this way.

Why would someone think a writer could imagine what to put in an outline, but not be able to imagine the same thing when writing without an outline? In fact, I'm sure I've never seen an outline as complex as some of the big, complex novels would require. Even most who outline add things as they go, or change direction, veer away from the outline, and make adjustments, adding this, that, and the other as the story needs it.

One of the reasons I don't outline is because I can't get nearly enough in the outline to write a really complex story. The story itself dictates most of the complexities as I write it.

Oh yeah, without a doubt. Speaking from personal experience, I wrote a story online and for the first couple of chapters I just made it up as I went. Then as I began to run out of new ideas I went back to previous chapters and expanded on ideas that I had introduced and in some cases forgot about.

Before I knew it the story became an elaborate and complex web.

So yes it's entirely possible.

Dunno. Here's a recent thought of mine. Yes, I have them from time-to-time.

This guy is a pantser. It is obvious because the story meanders all over the damn place, and it does so unnecessarily. I do realize that this is disorganization, not a problem exclusive to people who write without an outline. However, when you do not know where you are going, it is easier to get lost on the way to Endsville, than it is when you've got a gps.

Skyes said:

I wonder if books like The Silmarillion, or even the Song of Ice and Fire could be written by a pantser who can organize everything in their own head. There are so many characters, families, gods, conflicts, kingdoms, etc. The politic is extremelly rich and complext.
What do you think?

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The answer is yes, because that's what I'm doing right now. So it must be possible!

Why would someone need to have everything planned in advanced to write a complex story? You can build in layers of complexity as you write a story.

neandermagnon said:

Why would someone need to have everything planned in advanced to write a complex story? You can build in layers of complexity as you write a story.

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Indeed

And the best bit is, often those things you put in as a bit of colour, a bit of worldbuilding or whathaveyou, turn out to be Super Important to the Plot. This happens to em every book. And series of books -- I put in a little moment with FMC in book one in the series I'm working on. A throwaway moment where she worked out what to do next. It had devastating consequences to MMC2 in book 2.

I love it when that happens.

GRRM is a pantser, LOTR was lightly planned out but not majorly (and often it got changed as he went) Tolkien stopped writing for a year because he couldn't work out how to get Frodo out of being dead via Shelob. Aragorn was supposed to fall in love with Eowyn and then be so devastated when she died facing the Witch King that he refused to marry, thus ending the reborn line of kings. This is not what actually happened.

The best laid plans of mice and men are dust in the face of inspiration while in the act of writing.


Anyway, to answer the OP, yes. Yes you can.

I think sometimes these "planner vs. pantser" divisions have more to do with when someone organizes a story vs. whether they organize it at all.

I'm a pantser. My first drafts are, in a lot of ways, just really long outlines - I work out details, wrestle with continuity, and find the shape of the story by writing it. Planners, it seems, do a lot of that work before they start composing.

I don't think either method restricts the potential complexity of a story.

Pantsers can do everything plotters do with a story. I think it just comes down to two different approaches, and people go with what works for them. It is kind of like if I'm left handed, people might wonder why I don't try and write with my right hand. But I don't. It just doesn't work that way. I am a pantser because that is how I write. I've tried doing an outline, but once I sit down to write the actual story I realize I have new and better ideas, and I just go for it. Every time I have made an outline it has proven useless. Kind of makes me wonder why anyone would waste time creating an outline when they could just be writing instead of prewriting. But I get that people have different approaches. And I do believe my stories are complex. I love writing complex stories and doing it on the fly.

I build the basics, then infill as I go. I'm not Tolkien, I'm certainly not a genius, but I will admit to building a universe as a hobby since 1983. Probably never will be done introducing more fractal details into it, but I have managed to get the bulk of my scribbled notes into digital form.
It makes an interesting framework to build smaller stories.

I'd die of boredom if I had to plot out every single thing in a book, though. I set up an idea of a conflict and response, then see what the characters do with it. If I've written/imagined enough about them, the rest just kinda happens. Sometimes with surprising changes, which make me even happier.

Yes. It all depends on how you set things up at the beginning and on how clearly you perceive the elements of the story. (The former is dependent on the latter.)

WriteMinded said:

Dunno. Here's a recent thought of mine. Yes, I have them from time-to-time.

This guy is a pantser. It is obvious because the story meanders all over the damn place, and it does so unnecessarily. I do realize that this is disorganization, not a problem exclusive to people who write without an outline. However, when you do not know where you are going, it is easier to get lost on the way to Endsville, than it is when you've got a gps.

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I think this is a bit insulting to the writing process used by others. Saying because story x meandered and lost focus is due to the author not outlining before hand is equivalent to saying because the growth of characters and changes they underwent during the story weren't taken into account in the end the writer must be an outliner.

The two are not end all be alls of the writing world and it is just as easy to get lost while plotting before hand as it is when you write the story as you go, just as character issues, plot holes, and any number of writing traps are easy to stumble over for either group. It is disengeneous to immediately label someone into either area simply because of a percieved fault in their style that isn't even exclusive to them.

In answer to the OP, yes, it is not only possible for authors who don't outline to write an extremely deep, thought provoking work, in a rich world with vibrant characters and settings but it happens all the time. Those traits aren't inherent in a writting style, only the skill of the person writing.

Absolutely they can.

I wouldn't know how they do it, because I certainly can't, but whatever can be done by outlining and planning by one person can be done by discovery or spontaneous writing by those who work that way.

Well, considering that GRRM is on the pantser end of the spectrum, I'd say that, yes, it's entirely possible. It all depends on your ability to maintain logical consistency through all that complexity. However, I do wonder if this approach is part of what has slowed GRRM's writing pace. Perhaps the plot and world have become too big and complex.

Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle on this spectrum. I like to have an idea of where I'm going, but it's okay if I don't know all the details of how I get there. It can be fun to discover those things during the writing process.

That's also why I can rarely have anything more than a vague idea of what's going to happen a few books ahead in a series.

I would have assumed The Silmarillion and A Song of Ice and Fire were pantsed. Certainly I've heard The Lord of the Rings was pantsed. The Silmarillion is different. It probably wasn't written in order, but it has so little structure that it's hard to imagine it being outlined.

I would think pantsing leads to more complexity. Think about the course of a person who follows a map vs. the course of a person navigating by their gut. Both get to the same destination, but the latter's route is more circuitous. When you plot and outline, you can include what's essential to the story and no more. I should think plotting leads to simpler, more elegant structure.

How do you define a complex story?

I had never heard the terms planner or panster until a few weeks ago. After researching them here, I appear to be a panster.

I have no knowledge which category my favorite writers fall under. Since it seems varied, I am assuming some are one way and some are the other.

WriteMinded said:

This guy is a pantser. It is obvious because the story meanders all over the damn place, and it does so unnecessarily. I do realize that this is disorganization, not a problem exclusive to people who write without an outline. However, when you do not know where you are going, it is easier to get lost on the way to Endsville, than it is when you've got a gps.

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That meandering is due to the writer, not to the method. I'm quite sure one can meander and go down blind alleys using an outline as well, if one pays no attention to the overall story. More than sure, since I've read a few 'final' drafts from outliners that have done just that.

rwm4768 said:

Well, considering that GRRM is on the pantser end of the spectrum, I'd say that, yes, it's entirely possible. It all depends on your ability to maintain logical consistency through all that complexity. However, I do wonder if this approach is part of what has slowed GRRM's writing pace. Perhaps the plot and world have become too big and complex.

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I've long suspected this. Every time I see his gardener vs. architect speech I think, that's all well and good GRRM, but maybe a little architecture would have helped with getting the books out in a timely fashion.

I'm a pantser, and my first drafts do tend to have a lot of dead ends and coincidences, but it's nothing that can't be fixed on revision.