If you’re a writer, or even someone who took one creative writing class on a whim back in college, you’ve no doubt heard the question arise at some point: are you a plotter, or a pantser? Even within creative communities we’ve found the need to split ourselves into categories, and the way that writers write has been no exception to this. For years there’s been some debate both inside and outside the classroom as to whether the pantser or the plotter method is the correct, technical way to go for writers–particularly writers putting together a larger project such as a novel or book series. But, like all categories, belonging to one or the other is completely subjective. One way works for some, the other way works for the rest.
For those who are unfamiliar with these terms, let’s break it down:
The Plotter
It’s in the name: a plotter plots. For the typical plotter, a story cannot even begin to be written until profiles have been made for each major, and even some minor, characters; a world-building portfolio has been compiled; maps have been sketched out, and a basic three-act structure has been carefully outlined from beginning, up through the middle, to the end.
The Pantser
It is also in the name, but less obvious. A pantser is a writer who, more or less, “flies by the seat of their pants.” This is the writer who basically just puts pen to paper and goes for it. Most of their characters and worldbuilding are pieced together as they write, pulled up from some magical, natural flow of the imagination.
For the first several years of my writing experience, I thought being a plotter was a mandatory thing. At least, it seemed to come highly recommended by teachers, peers, and the authors of all the technical books we were required to read. And I can definitely see where outlining comes in handy, especially for those writing a three-book fantasy series. It’s good to have at least some vague idea of where your plot is going, how your characters and your world are going to change over time, and what obstacles they can expect to encounter from some of these changes.
But I think I’ve always naturally been a pantser. Back in the golden years when story ideas seemed to come to me in my dreams every night, my first impulse was to write as much as I could of what my imagination was offering me then and there. It felt very natural, and almost effortless. I could write several pages in a matter of minutes, with no break in the creative flow.
And then I’d hit the wall.
From my experience with my first book, the wall hit me smack in the middle of things. I had a beginning, and I knew how I wanted it to end. But I had no idea how to get from point A to point B. And there was only so far pantsing could take me from there: at this middle point in my story, pantsing only seemed to be adding more plot–and unnecessary plot, at that–instead of simply connecting the beginning with the end.
So, I drew up some outlines. They went chapter by chapter, briefly touching on the characters featured within that segment and what sorts of obstacles–internal and external–they would face, and how they would recover, and where that would take them from there. Little by little, I began to connect the dots between characters and situations that had before seemed so blank and open-ended.
Basically, from my experience I’ve found both plotting and pantsing to have their uses, but I tend to fly by the seat of my pants more than anything else. It works for me personally because it helps me tap a little into my subconscious and uncover details / twists and turns that I might have normally skipped over if I was putting too much focus on structuring points 1A through 4A before heading to B. But I now know that, no matter what I write, I will eventually hit that wall again and have to carefully map my way around it. And that’s where the plotting comes in handy.
So, to sum up: there are typically two categories of writers: ones who plot, and ones who just write and see where the writing takes them. Both are subjective, and can be intermixed, depending on the writer and the situation. I personally consider myself a “plantser.” When starting a book, I now outline just enough to give me a sense of where I am and where I want to go, but from there I just write. I write to see where my characters choose to take me, and what little surprises from the plot manage to pop up along the way.
Night Owls, are you a pantser, or a plotter? Or maybe a plantser or a plotser?
