Instincts and intentions: re-released

This post was originally published for paid subscribers in November 2024. I'm now releasing an updated version for all readers to enjoy, with a bit of polishing up. I hope you enjoy it if you missed it the last time around!

In writing circles, you'll often hear people referring to themselves as "plotters" or "pantsers" as a way of indicating their writing process. For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, the idea is that writers sit on a sort of continuum: on one end of it are the writers who meticulously plan out ("plot") every arc and beat of their story, and on the other end are the writers who never plan, and prefer to tell stories "by the seat of their pants", as it were. The majority of people sit somewhere between the two extremes, but usually state a preference leaning one way or the other. Those who land firmly in the middle and don't have a strong leaning towards either plotting or pantsing have taken to labels such as "plantsters" instead.

The reason I'm talking about plotting and pantsing is because it highlights an interesting dichotomy in writing processes, or perhaps more accurately in creative processes in general: the difference between creating according to an intended plan and creating purely on instinct. As I mentioned in my discussion of the plotting-to-pantsing continuum above, we generally sit somewhere in the middle, using a mixture of intention and instinct when we create things, but a lot of us will rely more on one or the other. However, our preference may not necessarily be the same in all types of work. For instance, I sit very heavily on the side of plotting for any narratives longer than a single scene, but for short pieces or informal essays I don't really plan much at all or, if I do, it's light enough to keep in my head. Different activities might also bring different mindsets; my approach to cooking is best described as improvisational, and I'm so unlikely to follow a crochet patten faithfully that I've more or less given up on using them entirely. On the other hand, the way I plan out my work for Red Pens and Playwriting might be considered overengineered by some.

I'm not sure about you, but I don't remember ever being sat down and taught "this is the process for writing a story" when I was in school. We may have had some guidance about what elements to include or how to shape the writing, and perhaps the difference between a first draft and a final draft, but in terms of how to come up with an idea or put it onto the page in the first place, we kids were, by and large, left to figure it out on our own. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as there is no one-size-fits-all process for creative writing to teach; we all need to figure out our own methods and preferences anyway. But we have to learn the creative process from someone. If we don't have a real writer in our lives to pass on their wisdom, most of us wind up trying to be a writer in whatever ways we've seen it done in media, and I can't recall ever seeing a writer character in a film who started writing their story by making a bullet list!

Writing, like many other creative pursuits, is commonly depicted as an act of inspiration, where one just has to sit down and get in the right headspace, and all the words will come flowing out in a torrent (presumably to be painfully edited down in some future, unacknowledged point in time). But experienced writers, as well as veterans in other creative spaces, know that this is not usually the reality for creation. Sure, we may get easy bursts of activity and creativity from time to time—in fact, I wrote most of this post in one such burst—but simply hanging around and waiting for inspiration to strike is absolutely no way to reliably get anything accomplished. We need to have intention behind us as well, whether we express it through planning out further plot points, setting regular time slots and word count goals to motivate regular progress, doing practice exercises to build up our skills and get into a more productive headspace, working through unexpected problems in the plot, or just establishing a clear purpose and end goal for the piece we're working on.

I have innumerable beginnings of ideas jotted down in old notebooks or computer files that never went anywhere because I had a single moment of inspiration and no intention behind it. The pieces I'm most proud of, and the pieces I've followed through on, are ones that I put plenty of thought into between the inspirational moment and the actual writing part. I've learned through years of learning about my craft and myself that, personally, my inspiration (and my attention span) are very unlikely to last as long as it's going to take to write the thing out, and by the time I get inspired again I'll have most likely moved on to something else. If I actually want to finish a piece that I've started, I need to keep thinking about it, mulling it over, figuring out an end point and how to get there, drafting sentences before I go to sleep, and quite possibly making bullet lists and outlines. In short, I need to make sure I stay motivated and keep coming back to the project, and I need to do so by continuing to feed my intentions for it.

On the other hand, it's awfully hard to create without inspiration, and only the intention to write. It's inspiration that makes creating things most enjoyable, and no-one really feels like they're putting out their best work if they have to slog through the process. As much as we need intention to keep us on track with a project, we also need inspiration to kick us into gear. I'm sure we all remember the awfulness of school assignments that were dictated to us and held no real joy in them—that's what happens when we have a plan but no actual interest in what we're doing. Of course, plenty of people are perfectly capable of spitting out something serviceable yet uninspired (as evidenced by the aforementioned school projects). It can, in fact, be a useful way to pay the bills if you're good at it. But it isn't fun. Satisfying on occasion, perhaps, but not fun. There's a reason my old university creative writing professor advised us against taking writing-related jobs if we wanted to be serious about our own creative work; you end up using all your juice on the stuff you're getting paid for and haven't the inspiration for personal creativity. (Thankfully for me, technical writing turned out not to be creatively draining in that respect, so I didn't have that problem.)

As well as intention and inspiration, we need to consider the role of instinct in all of this. Instinct is the thing that tells us whether our work is any good, and it's instinct that gives us the idea of where to go next. We all have some amount of writing instinct within ourselves that develops as we learn to communicate, built upon the scaffolding of everything we've read before. It's how we know when words sound good together and when they don't, or the difference between a description that is meaningful and one that's nonsensical or bland. As we develop our understanding of how to write well, we begin to hone that instinct into a useful tool. We can then use our more heightened instincts to tell us how to phrase a sentence (no, not like that, let's try a different way), what our characters are like, or where the plot needs to go next. Even without any kind of formal writing education, these instincts can be powerful.

I am (as you would expect) quite keen on writers establishing a foundation of theoretical, grammatical, and syntactical understanding, as I firmly believe that this knowledge is a very useful tool for helping us write more purposefully as well as an opportunity to develop our skills. However, that certainly does not devalue my respect for pure writerly instinct, born from osmosis. I myself learned most of what I know of writing by instinct first, and only delved into the theoretical side later on (when it stopped being boring as hell). Whether you seek out formal knowledge about your craft or learn mainly by paying attention to skilled practitioners and experimenting, you're still bolstering those instincts and making them sharper.

To some extent, if you build up your instincts enough you don't need to make as firm of a plan to follow; when you become really familiar with a particular technique, or convention, or plot arc, you have a better sense of how it'll turn out and how to get there, so there's less need to sit down and work out the details before setting out. I can punch out a sonnet in half an hour if I like these days, because I know the structure of the stanzas and volta like the back of my hand and because I've read, heard, and spoken so much iambic pentameter in my life that it's second nature to me. After so much time finessing them, my sonnet-writing instincts are so strong that I don't need to sketch out a plan or spend much time agonising over my rhymes, but even if I don't have a plan, I still need to have the intention of my sonnet in my head before I begin, otherwise where will I direct my instincts? Even writers who are dedicated pantsers probably have at least some idea of where the story needs to end up or what their characters are working towards, even if the journey to that point is unexpected and changes tack. Our writing instincts necessarily inform our intentions for a piece—what choices and directions are suitable for what I'm trying to do here?—and our intentions also direct the use of our instincts—what is the best way to accomplish what I've planned?

The more I think about all of these conceptual "I" words, the more convinced I am that the creative process is not a continuum, but the entwining of all three aspects: inspiration to get us started, intention to keep us going forwards, and instinct to direct the way. As far as I can see, the only real difference in people's approaches is how much of this complex process they prefer to work through in the middle of drafting compared to working through it before they start. However you like to work, just keep working on those instincts, checking in on your intentions, and nourishing those moments of inspiration. It's a beautiful thing, creating!