What Kind of Writer Are You? A NEW Typology: The Five Novelist Types™
You will often hear people talk as if there are two ways of being a novelist—either you’re an outliner who sits down and outlines your whole book, or what they call a pantser, which is someone who writes by the seat of their pants.
I didn't realize I was a pantser when I wrote my first draft of my first novel, but I was. Outlining has never appealed to me. I am someone who feels like if I've written an outline, I have written the book—the process of writing loses a kind of urgency and excitement and newness. Writing an outline saps my curiosity and thus my creative energy, which is rooted in curiosity for me. Also, outlining to me feels like writing by spreadsheet, and so I'm not a fan.
And yet outlining is the predominant methodology for PLANNING in creative writing education. There exists a prevalent assumption that one should outline something as big as a book. And that is understandable, because the last thing anyone wants to do is spend hours upon hours writing tens of thousands of words only to realize that the thing you've written has no shape or has weird pacing or doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end. Enter, the outline.
But an outline isn’t the only way to ensure that you have a scaffolding for your story.
By the time I wrote my third novel, I knew outlining didn’t work for me, but neither did pantsing. And so I created a middle ground: The Four Notebooks Method™.
The Four Notebooks Method is more flexible than an outline and more structured than just winging it. It involves setting four narrative goal posts that you write toward, and it’s what I teach in the program The Book Incubator™. Since I came up with it four years ago, it has worked for many writers, and you can learn it by applying to The Book Incubator at thebookincubator.com. If you’re accepted, we’ll send you the full, free training on it—you’ll learn the actual method. You don't have to join the program. You just get the training if you're accepted.
Anyway, I’m not getting into the nitty gritty of the Four Notebooks Method in this episode, because what I want to talk about is that, over the last four years of teaching novelists, I’ve discovered that there's actually a spectrum of planning, and writers fall everywhere along the spectrum.
Over time, as I've seen the Four Notebooks Method working for people, I've also seen how people have adjusted it to make it their own, which has made me realize that it makes more sense to preface any kind of training with a sort of self-assessment discussion, so people can be super intentional about what process works best for them.
As a result, I have developed a kind of typology along the spectrum to help you figure out what YOUR ideal writing process is, what is your ideal level of planning to feel good as you write, to feel like you have structure to make you feel comfortable and reassured that you're going somewhere, but enough freedom that you can feel playful and invigorated and not like you are just sitting there redrawing the same line over and over.
My goal with this brand new typology I’m about to teach you is to help writers figure out where you are on the spectrum—what works best for you, so that you can have the best possible writing experience: the process that’s easiest and most natural and organic and pleasurable to you. Because I very much believe that every writer should find what works for them.
So here it is. What kind of writer are you? A new typology.
THE FIVE NOVELIST TYPES
I call this The Five Novelist Types. Clever, right? ;)
At the two ends of the spectrum, we have the categories that everyone is familiar with already: the pantser and the outliner. I've already talked a little about both, but just briefly—the pantser would be someone who goes in and just wings it. You're just writing by the seat of your pants. At the other far end, the outliner is someone who sits down and develops the entire story before they write, or at least before they write very much.
Between these endpoints are three other approaches that range from more liberal to more planned out. I want to talk about each of these in turn.
THE PANTSER
Let's start on one end—the type that likes to do the least amount of planning: the Pantser, not a term I invented, to be clear. This is a widely used term for people who wing it.
But to be an effective Pantser, I would argue, you still shouldn’t be armed with absolutely nothing. You’re just coming in with the least pre-planning done.
In my view, you still need a Big Question. What is the Big Question? The Big Question is the big, thorny, human, existential, ethical question that your story is exploring. Having a Big Question is what is going to carry you to 70,00 words or more. If you don't have one, well, that’s often why stories tend to peter out around 13,000 words.
THE DESTINATIONER
The next level up is what I’m calling a Destinationer. Unlike “Pantser,” this is a term from yours truly, because it adds to The Big Question a second tool that I teach called the Story Destination.
What’s a story destination?
It’s like dropping a pin on a map and then taking off, figuring out the roads as you go.
This isn’t a physical location where your characters will wind up. It’s an event that you can write toward…and you don’t need to know how things will turn out or what will happen. You just want to pick an event so you can write toward it.
Some examples of possible destinations:
The case is decided.
The clock strikes midnight.
The battle scene.
The body is found.
The killer is discovered.
You don’t have to decide how things are resolved—in fact, I wouldn’t try to.
Don’t spend a lot of time sweating the destination. Your destination may change. That’s fine! It probably will.
In fact, you may think it’s going to happen at the end of your book and wind up reaching it in chapter three. That’s also fine (that always happens to me).
All that matters is that your chosen destination has enough energy to pull you forward, into the meat of your book.
So that’s the Destinationer.
THE NOTEBOOKER
The third type on our spectrum is The Notebooker.
If you are a Notebooker, you are going to have a Big Question and a Story Destination, but you’re also going to add to those the method I mentioned a few minutes ago: The Four Notebooks Method™.
This method breaks down your story into four parts based on the three-act structure. I use the term “notebooks” because, if you want, you can handwrite your book in four notebooks. Each notebook, or a Word document equivalent on the computer, has a signature story goal or milestone.
In the first notebook or segment, you're creating a problem. In the second notebook or segment, your main character is trying to solve the problem. In the third notebook, there's “the big drop”—they fail to solve their problem, so things get really bad. And in the fourth notebook, there's an epiphany or perspective shift.
The Four Notebooks Method gives you sort of story goal posts or milestones to shoot for. It's the equivalent of trail markers if you are going on a hike through the woods. If you want the more explicit breakdown, again, just go to thebookincubator.com to apply for The Book Incubator, and, if you’re accepted, we’ll send you the free training on it.
That’s the Notebooker.
THE PROMPTSER
We’ve covered Pantser, Destinationer, and Notebooker, which means there’s one more new type before we reach Outliner. Between a Notebooker and an Outliner is the Promptser.
The Promptser is someone who wants to use the 52 novel prompts that I came up with about 18 months ago when I was trying to find a way to further templatize the drafting process. This tool—which is just 52 sequenced writing prompts—builds out the Four Notebooks Method on a more granular level. Remember those four story goals? It breaks each of them down into 13 writing prompts, the idea being that if you write toward each of the 52 prompts, you will have a novel draft based on the three-act structure. If you want the first 3 prompts to get you started, you can get them in this previous podcast episode.
THE OUTLINER
Finally, last but not least, there’s the Outliner.
Because outlining is standard, there’s a lot of information available online about it, I’m sure. But surprise, surprise, I have a subversive take even for the outliners.
For people who like to outline, I prefer to teach a method of Outlining called storyboarding that still allows for flexibility. It basically involves taking Post-its and organizing your scenes onto them so that you can move things around easily.
How to Identify Your Writer Type
So there we have it, the Five Novelist Types:
• Panster
• Destinationer
• Notebooker
• Prompster
• Outliner
Which type are you? Can you tell?
Moving Along the Writer Type Spectrum (You’re not stuck!)
I want to stress that you can and will move along this spectrum—it’s unlikely that you’d just sit in one category and never move into another. So picture this spectrum as a slider. You’re the little blue clip at the top of the Ziploc bag. If it stops working for you to outline, then ditch your outline. If it stops working for you to be a pantser, then pop up to become a notebooker. You get to decide. You get to change your mind and change your approach all you want.
And a quick shameless plug:
Here's the cool thing about The Book Incubator: wherever you are on the spectrum, we'll support you. You don't have to be a square peg in a round hole. You don't have to use our process to write your book. You figure out which process is the best for you, and then we support you in doing it that way. It is totally customizable.
So take the assessment if you aren’t sure what you are, figure out where you are on the spectrum, and then use the free tools we recommend as your starting point for the best possible writing experience.
And this is actually the last episode for this season, which means we’re taking a hiatus. But good news—if you’re listening to this shortly after it’s aired, we have a free webinar coming up where I’m going to be teaching this typology live and getting into more detail around the differences in the approaches and how to make the most of your type. So keep an eye on your inbox for registration information—we’ll be sending it out soon.
I hope this was helpful, and I’ll see you next season!
