What type of writer are you?

Are you a planner? Or a fly by the seat of your pants writer?

I fly by the seat of my pants. I have a novel concept, general plot and a main character. And then I start. See where it takes me. It gets more depth. Subplots crop up. Characters develop and become more important or less important. I do have small notebooks per novel where I write notes as I go along about characters, running plot ideas and any other detail I need to keep in mind as I go.

I am not a planner. Because plans change the moment you put the pen to paper. Or the fingers to the keys I should say. You have to have flexibility for the creativity of the writing process. I once tried to outline. And it was a fantastic outline. Only the novel ended up nothing like the outline because of a few fundamental twists I made while writing that shifted the course of the novel.

I like the idea of being a planner though. To have it all organized and thought out. Character profiles. And an outline of the plot down to chapters even. Yes, I love that idea. But that doesn’t seem to be how my creativity works. It works as I write and it just changes the flow of anything then. But maybe it would be a good exercises nonetheless for me to do this sort of pre-work. It does give you a solid frame work.

So I have decided for this years writing month, since I am choosing a novel idea that has not been touched by me and in fact I am saving for November, I will do some pre-wrting work. I will do an outline. Some character profiles and history. Some world-building profiles. And see if this depth before I touch the keys in any way affects the experience at all.