Writing by the seat of your pants: A Quick Guide

2024-04-21

As TVTropes puts it, writing by the seat of your pants is when you write a story (or a piece of art, video game, anything really) without thinking about what comes next. Here is a guide (although not the guide, not even close) on what to expect from that method.

Disclaimer

I would like to point out that this very article is NOT written by the seat of my pants.

Everyone in the audience gasps

I know, I know. Originally I planned to write it like that, but it would be a pretty crappy guide wouldn't it? While I encourage you to make some room for improvisation in your creative life, it doesn't mean you need to type streams of consciousness all the time, unless you're a genius and you can do it, or you like making nonsense with typos.

I would also like to point out that this expression does not have anything to do with how you sit or what you wear under your belt.

The two enemies of pantseatwriting (that word doesn't exist)

You have a past and a future. That is true unless you're a newborn or dead, but those two demographics rarely write stories.

It logically follows that in addition to actually writing, you can do two things to your work:

"Writing by the seat of your pants" usually mean that you don't bother with planning. Your stories might get a bit funky because of that, but you save a lot of time.

As for editing, same thing. Not doing it can save you a lot of time even though you have to get used to the "dirty" part of "quick and dirty".

By combining minimal editing and minimal planning, you can get things done much faster.

Less editing

This one's easy. You just stop pressing Backspace, Left or Up on your keyboard.

More seriously, of course you can make small edits like typos or cutting/moving a paragraph when it really doesn't fit. However, don't think too much about it, and when you spend more than five minutes on a block of text, follow the teachings of a character named David Goodenough who once said:

Eh! It's not that bad. *shrugs*

It also helps if you think of your work as something with authenticity, spontaneity, immutability in mind (wow, lots of big words there). If you ever log your dreams when you wake up, it's a bit like that.

Less planning

This one's even easier. You roll a die every time you need to make a plot decision.

More seriously, of course you can have a bit of planning here and there.

Today I made a comic on paper. I started by drawing the cells' outlines, but just the left sides of the leftmost cells and the right sides of the rightmost cells, just because those are the only constant bits. Then I just started to draw a story between those vertical lines, only planning one or two cells in advance so that I don't have awkward cell sizes when I run into the end of a line/strip.

The final page isn't a complete story, but it reads like part of a bigger, more meaningful story. I can use this page as a building block and start making more building blocks. It even gives me a basic benchmark on how long I can complete a page (in this case, about 20 minutes; the good thing with "no editing" is that I used crayons directly, saving time in the process).

Maybe it only works for short works though. Who knows?

The consequences of such a method

Let's face it: writing like that will ruin your creative carreer. In the worst case, you'll make convoluted plots barely holding together, detached slices of basic stories, or neverending silly comedies.

But is that better to release nothing?