Pantser, Plotter, or Somewhere in Between?
Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash
As many writers prepare for NaNoWriMo, the age-old question looms: to outline or not to outline beforehand?
Of course, this doesn’t come up only for NaNoWriMo writers. The debate over which works better rages on, with some writers swearing by one or the other, or some middle method. There is no right answer – only the way that works best for you, or even simply the way that works best for your current story.
“Pantsing” or just starting your story with whatever image you have in your head, is popular with writers who believe in E.L. Doctorow’s quote:
“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
Some fear that putting too much detail in an outline will kill their creativity. Others need to write the story in order to discover it as they go (which also leads to the more elegant term “discovery writer” as opposed to “pantser”).
The pros of this method are:
You leave yourself open to surprise. “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader,” as Robert Frost said. And it’s true. You can kill your story before you begin by trying to hammer out every detail.
It allows you the time to meander and get to know your characters and tease out your story without worrying you’re veering away from some original precious idea.
If you’re a more literary writer, it gives you the time and space to feel out those big ideas, play with language, and so on.
The cons, however, are many:
You may go through a lot of drafts before you find your story. Discovering your story as you go is a slow process, and you may feel like you’re wasting a lot of time and words that don’t go anywhere.
You may write many pages and find yourself at a dead end, not knowing where the story should go from here.
You may become overwhelmed by the blank page. It can be harder to find motivation to write when you don’t know what’s next. It takes a lot of courage to sit down, day after day, and hope the muse visits you.
You may end up with a big mess of a full draft, and be unsure how to revise it into a readable book.
Plotting, or outlining, can take many forms. It can be as loose or as detailed as you’d like. Doing some form of outlining before you start has many benefits:
You pretty much always know what you need to write next, so there are fewer writing days spent staring at the blank page or endlessly polishing one sentence. It’s also much easier to come back after a break.
You can test your plot for holes before you start, so you don’t write yourself into a corner. You can also make sure there are clear narrative arcs for the action (what happens) and the character (how they develop as a result of the action). It also helps you keep track of minor characters and subplots, and make sure they have a necessary place in the story.
For some genres, like mystery, it’s a given that you will probably want to have a fairly strong outline in place. You need to know the victim, the perpetrator, the clues and red herrings... it is very hard to simply make it up as you go and hope it all works out.
The same for series: if you are writing a series, you need to have an idea of the larger arcs of the series, who does what when, and how it all builds up and resolves.
Outlining does have some drawbacks, though:
You lose some of the spontaneity and surprise. You have to be careful not make a prison of the outline. But this can also be a good thing. If a better idea comes along by all means test it using the outline. You can see what you’ll need to change in the story and if it makes sense without writing tons of pages you’ll have to scrap only after you figure out it doesn’t work after all.
It takes time to come up with a good outline. A week, or several weeks. It’s not generally something you pop off in an afternoon, unless you’ve been thinking about the story for a very long time.
It can make your writing feel flat. Like you’re, well, just filling in an outline. Like you’ve already told the story and now you’re just repeating it.
The trick is to write enough to know the major points – what I call tentpole scenes – so you have signposts of where you need to go. You can fill out your outline as you go. You still have plenty of room to dream and create.
As you can tell, I fall somewhere in the middle. Sometimes I noodle around for a while just to feel out the story. No outline, and only a vague idea of what that story is. That’s okay in the beginning. I want to follow the characters for a while, see if I like where they’re taking me.
Eventually I do create an outline of those major scenes, as I start to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. At that point, I want to know it’s going somewhere.
I’ll talk more about my outlining process in upcoming posts. For now, think about your process. What appeals to you about pantsing? What is the appeal of plotting? Do you fall somewhere in between? And most importantly, is it working for you?
