Are you a Planner, a Discoverer, or a Hybrid writer?
Researchers in my field, writing studies, have known for a while that writers have different “composing styles.” Some people plan their writing in advance, making detailed outlines, and pretty much sticking to the outline, sometimes even drafting the whole piece straight through from the intro to the conclusion. Others prefer to dive straight into drafting, using that process to discover what they want to say and what the structure of the piece will be. They don’t necessarily draft a piece in the order in which it will be read; they move around among sections as they draft and revise. And then there are some people whose process is in between the planning and discovering styles, using a bit of both approaches.
You probably recognize yourself in one of those descriptions.
And chances are, if you raised your hand as a Discoverer or a Hybrid writer, you have probably felt that your writing process was messy, inefficient, and just wrong. Even if you’ve successfully published, you probably have a sense that you “should” be more of a Planner.
You’re probably not a Planner—and that’s fine
But guess what? It seems there are way more Discoverers and Hybrid writers than Planners. And being a Planner does not make you a more successful writer.
That’s what the evidence from one study suggests. Dana Driscoll, Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (my PhD alma mater—woop woop!), surveyed 198 professional and graduate-level academics writing for publication in the field of rhetoric and composition. The results revealed that only 10.6 percent were Planners; 48.4 percent were Discoverers and 38.9 percent were Hybrid Planner/Discoverers.
Now, the people who took part in this survey are experts on the writing process. They not only teach academic writing, they also research the teaching and learning of academic writing. If any group were likely to overrepresent Planners, this would be it. But only 10 percent were Planners. So link arms with your fellow Discoverers and Hybrids, because y’all are at least 90 percent of the fun.
Furthermore, Driscoll found that composing style was pretty much just a matter of personal preference. It didn’t correlate with self-reported expertise, institutional status, teaching load, gender, ethnicity, or how many publications one has produced. The only correlation she found was with publication requirement: people who were required to publish as part of their job were a little bit more likely to use the planning style.
So what does this mean for you? I hope it means that, whatever your writing style, you feel empowered to embrace your process. Do what works for you, knowing that there is no one “right” way to go about it.
What your writing process actually looks like
Additionally, I hope this study might spark a little curiosity for you about what your writing process actually looks like. In addition to the survey, Driscoll conducted case studies with expert academic writers, carefully documenting their writing processes through interviews, writing process journals, and data generated by a tool called Draftback. Draftback allowed Driscoll to view videos of changes the writers were making in their Google docs, as well as to compare the number of hours, work sessions, changes made, and days worked by each writer. She was able to generate analytic graphics of where in the document the writers were making changes over time, which showed clearly how the linear Planner process differed from the more free-form Discoverer process, and how the in-between Hybrid process had features of both. (I thought these visuals were really cool. Geek out with me and go look at them in the chapter?)
Finally, I’ll point out that since Driscoll found each writer’s style to be a matter of personal preference, it’s not necessarily fixed. As the Hybrid writers make clear, you can try out approaches from any style. For some projects, you may find more planning suits you, while for others you want to take a discovery approach. Do what’s working for you today.