Pantser or Planner? Approaches to Plotting Your Novel
Register here to join our CAA BC Chapter as Gail Anderson-Dargatz discusses the different methods of plotting your novel. Are you a Pantser or a Planner? Does one way have advantages over the other?
GAIL ANDERSON-DARGATZ’s first novel, The Cure for Death by Lightning, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the UK’s Betty Trask Award, the BC Book Prize for Fiction, and the Vancity Book Prize. Her second novel, A Recipe for Bees, was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for the Giller Prize. The Spawning Grounds was nominated for the Sunburst Award and the Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award and shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for fiction.
She is the author of the thrillers The Almost Wife, a Canadian bestseller, and The Almost Widow, a national bestseller and shortlisted for the 2024 Crime Writers of Canada Howard Engel Award for Best Crime Novel set in Canada. Her latest novel, The Atlas Keeper, will be released August 25, 2026.
Gail taught for nearly a decade within the MFA program in creative writing at the University of British Columbia and now works as a writing coach and developmental editor. She lives in the Shuswap region of British Columbia.