Writers in the Storm

by Julie Glover

This coming weekend, I'll be in Midland, Texas for the Permian Basin Writers Workshop Event where I get to present on choosing the right writing process for you.

In preparation, I've been reading up on writing process and personality and came across an interesting paper published by the National Council of Teachers in English (2009). The authors developed recommendations for writing instruction based on personality type as revealed in the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator (MBTI).

Having long been a fan of personality type, I was curious to see what they suggested. And now I'm sharing with you!

What's the MBTI?

The MBTI has been researched, reviewed, and administered many, many times and found to be a helpful measure. (No, it's not perfect, and you can find plenty of articles that say that, but overall it's earned respect in the psychological community.) You can find a rough version that will provide your four-letter personality type at Human Metrics.

One of the personality spectrums studied in the MBTI is extraversion versus introversion. Some people think of this as being outgoing versus being shy, but that's not what they mean. Rather, extraverts (yes, with an a not o) are energized by interactions with others; that is, they thrive off being around other people. Introverts don't dislike people, but they aren't energized by interactions with others; that is, they get drained being around other people.

Since this is a spectrum, there can be a big difference between a slight introvert and an extreme introvert or a slight extravert and an extreme extravert, but we fall on one side of the other.

An easy way to think of it is this: After an enjoyable day with friends, are you more amped up or do you feel worn out?

What does this have to do with writing process?

The authors of the paper, "Personality and Individual Writing Processes," were a professor at Georgia State University and a staff psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They observed 215 students in various settings and compiled recommendations based on their experience. One in particular caught my eye:

As predicted by theory, the extraverts with whom we have worked write with little planning, though they often feel guilty about not writing from outlines. They sometimes describe their writing process as "quick and dirty" or the "easy way." ... Extraverts often find freewriting a good method for developing ideas, for they think better when writing quickly, impulsively, and uncritically.

By contrast, they noted that:

[Introverts'] basic writing process often follows the prewriting-writing-rewriting pattern. They generally want most of their ideas clarified before writing.... They tend to find writing much easier when much of the essay if written mentally before they put pen to paper.

In other words, the authors suggest that extraverts are natural pansters (write by the seat of their pants) and introverts are natural plotters.

But I'm definitely an introvert, and the one time I plotted a novel all the way out, I couldn't write the prose. I kept getting blocked, because in my mind, the story had been told and I had nothing left to discover.

What do y'all think?

I wondered how many people agreed with the authors' theory and how many were like me, challenging their conclusions with their process. So with the magic of social media, I posted this question on Facebook:

I ended up with 87 replies! What did I find?

Writers tend to be introverts.

Introverts were 66% of my sample with extraverts making up 34%. That's not surprising, given that writing is a solitary activity. You have to be comfortable working alone with your primary social contact being the characters in your head and on the page.

Writers dislike binary choices.

Oh, the number of people who didn't want to choose plotter or pantser! Mind you, these are not perfect labels. They exist on a spectrum too.

You can be a thorough plotter with a color-coded system of index cards and character analyses, a just-show-me-the-blank-page pantser who knows no more than setup or character before you begin, or you can be anywhere in between.

This is why you'll hear lots of other options given: plantser, plontser, quilter, puzzler, outliner. But this wasn't an open-ended question, so I made people pick. (Oh, the horror! ~grin~)

Introverts can be pantsers or plotters.

Good news! We introverts went about halfsies on whether we plot or pants our way through. At least it was good news to me, since it means I'm not alone, nor am I doing it wrong. (Not that I'd change the process that works for me if the results had been entirely different.)

Quite often, introverts answered with some form of "I outline a little, then start writing." That is, many know turning points, foresee the climax or ending, or have a good sense of scenes they'll include, but they don't map out the whole novel.

Then again, there were plenty of strict plotters, whose novel outlines resemble evidence boards. If you know one of those, give them office supply gift cards for their birthday. (Just a tip.)

Extraverts are largely pantsers.

You extraverts who plot are not common. Rather, by a 4-to-1 margin, extraverts pantsed more than plotted.

One interesting response came from an extravert who "was a technical and legal writer, so structure was drummed into me." So it could be that some extraverts plot because that's what they were trained to do. I'm not saying it doesn't work for them—it does for this writer—but that could be how their preference developed.

My Survey Results

	Introvert	Extravert
Plotter	28	7
Pantser	29	23

Should you plot or pants your novel?

For introverts, I suggest you try both ways, try all the ways. Though maybe try it out on a short story before you waste an entire two weeks on a plot you'll never turn into a novel or pants your way through an entire book that turns out to be a heap of chaos.

Meanwhile, if you're an extravert who pantses her novel and someone tries to tell you that's not the way to do it, they may not have a clue what it's like to be you. Your personality type may well be best suited to grabbing the pen and paper or the laptop and just getting started.

But all in all, the writing process you should choose based on your personality type is...drumroll, please...the one that gets books written.

Seriously, go look up the writing processes of multipublished, bestselling authors and you'll see both plotters and pantsers out there.

As my Gen-Z sons would say, my best advice here is YOU DO YOU.

Are you an introvert or an extravert? Are you more of a plotter or a pantser? Have you tried the other way, and how did it go?

About Julie

A long time ago, Julie Glover administered the MBTI in her master's degree internship. While still a fan of personality type, she now writes cozy mysteries, supernatural suspense, and young adult fiction. Be sure to check out her co-written Muse Island series, which begins with Mark of the Gods.

And in case you're wondering, Julie's more pantser and her co-writer is more plotter. But ta-da! Finished books.

by Janice Hardy

I work with a lot of new writers, and a common frustration I see is getting tangled up in the details of the story and being unable to see the larger problem. These writers have a general sense of what they want their novels to be about, but they keep focusing on the specifics of individual scenes and not the bigger picture.

Say your novel is about a couple who reconnect years after their relationship ended and rekindle their romance. You know there’s a history between these two, and that they broke up over trust issues, but you’re not sure exactly what happened. You feel confident you’ll figure it out later and write (or outline) away.

You create a slew of decent scenes that show them rediscovering each other, feeling that spark again, feeling unsure because it didn’t work out the first time, but also feeling the pull and urge to try again.

Then you start having trouble, because the setup is over and it’s time for the actual conflict to begin. You have them fight, but over silly, general things, so it feels superficial and not at all what you want.

So you tweak.

You change the job of the one character and the goal of the other. Instead of a clerk, he’s a sales manager, and instead of wanting to go back to med school, she wants to open a bakery. You create a whole mini-arc about his need to hit an impossible sales goal that’s creating all kinds of trouble in the romance. You give her a nemesis who wants the location she’s trying to get for her shop.

None of this addresses the issue of why they broke up or what their baggage is, so the plot still doesn’t work.

You change things further, connecting his sales problems to her bakery in some way so they’ll have something to fight about and create that much-needed conflict. You make the nemesis an old flame of his to add to the pressure.

And you still can’t get past the general setup of the novel.

By this time, you’re ready to rip your hair out and throw your laptop across the room, sure the novel is doomed and you’re never going to get anywhere with this story you love so much.

And you’re right, because you’re lost in the details and ignoring the bigger picture. No matter how many things you change, nothing actually changes because the real problem isn’t being addressed.

Luckily, there’s way out of this mess.

Step Back and Look at the Big Picture

Your novel has a main problem, and that problem will drive the plot (the core conflict). Your main characters—particularly the protagonist and antagonist—will have goals they need to resolve by the end of the book. It’s possible you’re lost because you’re not sure what that main problem is yet, or only have a vague sense of the premise. Being fuzzy about what the goals are will make if difficult to know what needs to happen in your scenes.

You can’t fully understand how the story details fit if you don’t understand the larger conflict behind it all. Knowing the couple has “a bad past together” doesn’t give you enough information to write their scenes, or know what’s really behind their romantic problems. Was that past infidelity? A lack of attention? Attempted murder? Know what happened matters.

Even when you know a little about it, such as “trust issues,” that often makes it worse, because now it feels like you know the reason behind the conflict. And you do, sort of, but the details are still missing. Those details are necessary to understand the backstory, and thus create the conflict that will drive the plot. How was the trust broken? Who broke it? Have circumstances changed that would prevent the same thing from happening again?

If you don’t know, you can’t choose the right details to bring the scene to life. You wind up choosing random details that don’t serve the story about past lovers torn apart by trust issues.

Look to Your Characters’ Goals and Motivations for Guidance

The goals might not be fully developed yet, but knowing what your characters want will guide you to crafting the right plot for them to get it. Ask what they want. Ask why they want it. Ask what they’re willing to do (and not do) to get it.  If you can’t answer those questions, or can only give vague answers, that’s a red flag you need to spend more time fleshing out the goals and motivations of that character.

It could also mean you haven’t given enough thought to their backstory, which typically explains why they want that particular goal or why getting it is a problem. The stronger the character arc, the more likely the backstory matters to the plot. Past wounds will play a big role in how that character behaves.

Maybe you chose the goal before you decided why. It’s not unusual to know your character needs to do X for plot reasons, but have no idea why from a character perspective. Using my reunited lovers as an example, you might know they need to not trust each other because of their past history, but without knowing the details of that history, the mistrust feels weak. There won’t be any real conflict in the scenes to cause that mistrust, and the characters end up looking childish and petty.

Details are terribly important in a novel, so we need to choose the right ones to illustrate our story. But we also have to be objective enough to notice when we’re getting tangled up in the details and forgetting what the story is about.

Don’t get caught up in details that don’t serve your story. Do enough brainstorming to figure out the problems and conflicts facing your characters, so you know the right details to use to drive your plot.

How much do you usually know about the goals and problems of your characters? What methods help you discover this information?

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 Ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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Want more on how to craft strong conflicts and solid story problems in your novel?

Understanding Conflict (And What It Really Means) shows you how to develop and create conflict in your novel, discusses the various aspects of conflict, and reveals why common advice on creating conflict doesn't always work. This book will help you: understand what conflict means and how to use it, tell the difference between external and internal conflicts, see why conflict isn't a "one size fits all" solution, determine the type of conflict your story needs, fix lackluster scenes holding your writing back, and so much more.

by Fae Rowen

Because I've got the October 2 blog date, I get to say Happy Birthday to my mother here. Happy Birthday, Mom!

Thanks for indulging me. And for finding today's target word twice in the first sentence. "Get" and it's multi-tense derivative "got" could be nominated for one of the words everyone, not just writers, uses loosely for coming into possession of.

You could probably list a dozen or more words describing how you can come into possession of something. Some, like "obtain," are definitely too writerly to be used in general cases. "Acquire"—think acquisition— works, but can have a somewhat negative connotation as to how you've acquired something.

"Procure" or "gain" can imply that others helped or that what you got was a for personal use that could be a bit shady. (Think of procuring a prostitute.) "Secure" shows the difficulty in getting something, while "attain" is usually reserved for a commendable, difficult goal.

Our job as writers is to find the right, the best, word for every description, every bit of dialogue, and every scene. As easy substitute for get or got doesn't always work.

Take a moment to think of how I could rewrite the first sentence in this article without using got or get. Typically we use get for its brevity in the context of the sentence. What if I'd said: I'm taking advantage of today's date, October 2, to say Happy Birthday to my mother. Happy Birthday, Mom! We could spend ore time with this exercise, but that's not the main point of today's post.

I'm working on the final edits for PRISM 2: Rebellion, my follow-up science fiction book to PRISM 1: Prisoner Relocation Internment Security Management. In one scene, I noticed way too many gets. That dreaded Find editing feature revealed the truth. I had a get/got problem in the middle of my book. I'd like to share some before with you. I'm not going to share all the fixes (just the most difficult ones) because I'd like you to think about what you'd do. Sometimes, I found, the best thing to do is leave it and go on.

Often, you can remove the get or got with no other work necessary. Example: "I have to get going." Fix: "I have to go."

Example: He got the message. Fixes: He received the message or He understood the message or He read around her words and understood what she couldn't write for others to see.

Example: Dinner was getting cold. Fix: The continuing argument allowed the meal to grow cold.

Example: "You got me with that puzzle map." Fix: "You confused (or bemused, or bewildered, or stumped, or beat) me with that puzzle map."

Example: "The conglomerate owner gets paid a trillion credits a year." Fix: "The conglomerate owner (grosses, pockets, earns, is paid, takes home, rakes in, nets) a trillion credits a year."

Example: "Did the police get their suspect?" Fix: "Did the police (apprehend, arrest, catch, capture, seize, take into custody, detain, put...in jail, collar, nab, bust, pick up, pull in) their suspect?

Are you seeing how getting rid of get allows you to better define not only what happens, but change the tone or put the view in a deeper POV? By taking care of your gets your writing can be stronger in many ways.

Think of how you could rewrite the following. There are a lot of possibilities for each, depending on how you perceive the situation.

I got a skimmer.

She got the flu.

I got a pain in my leg.

I got him on the phone.

She didn't get what he said.

He didn't get the joke.

We got there late.

I've like to get to see her.

She got him to go.

I'll get lunch.

What gets me is how mean she is.

I had to use crutches to get around.

Use a picture to get your message across.

I just wanted to get ahead.

She tried to get along with her mother-in-law.

Jim gets around.

It's not easy to get to those wires.

He had to get away from his co-worker.

Some other "get" phrases to think about: get over, get up, get together, get out, get on, get off, get lost, get down, get by, get back, get back at, get on with, get out of

I hope you see the possibility for enriching your work simply by looking at one short word. You readers will thank you for your extra effort.

Are you having trouble revising a "get" sentence from your WIP and would like to post it in the comments for suggestions? What takeaway is most useful to you about sending your "gets" to the gallows?

About Fae