Why Flexibility Matters for Pantsers AND Plotters

Most writers who consider themselves as either pantsers or plotters tend to believe they can only be one thing: This is just how I’m wired. Once a pantser, always a pantser. Ditto for plotters. Finding a drafting strategy that works for you is great—until it isn’t.

Usually there comes a time in your writing career when you embark on a novel that threatens to destroy you. All the old strategies you’ve relied on for years suddenly stop working. If you’re a pantser, you hit a wall and can’t seem to write your way past it. If you’re a plotter, your characters up and run away with the carefully planned story, leaving you bewildered. No matter how hard you try to force your pre-existing outline onto those miscreants, they defy you.

Either way, you’re stuck.

Flexibility is an important writing skill that we don’t talk about enough.

Being willing to try new ways of doing things is key to getting out of the corner you’ve written yourself into. Even though it’s scary. But we’ve been put on this planet to do hard things, so let’s jump in.

You Pantsers…

When you get stuck, I’m boldly going to suggest doing the thing you’ve sworn won’t work for you: yes, you’re going to plot your way out of the problem you find yourself in.

An outline doesn’t have to be that document your Grade 10 English teacher made you prepare with Roman numerals and indented bullet points. Plotting can be much more creative than that. In fact, it can look a lot like doodling or brainstorming or doing a brain dump of all the possible directions your story might take.

Imagine sitting down at the bar and saying to the bartender, “I’ve got this great idea for a novel.” It’s a quiet night, and they want to hear about it, so you tell them the whole story, from start to finish. Write it down the way you’d tell it.

An outline can look like that.

And by the way, plotting doesn’t mean you have to know what every scene or chapter will look like in advance. All it really involves is setting down a few waypoints so when you show up at your desk at five a.m. with a cup of coffee and a blank screen, you’re not panicking.

You Plotters…

When you get stuck, I’m boldly giving you permission to go rogue. Set the outline aside (it’s not working for you this time anyway). Just write.

Without any direction? That’s right.

Without a plan? Also right.

What if it goes wrong? It might. It might also lead you somewhere you hadn’t expected, and that place might be better than your original plan, at least partly (or maybe precisely) because you’re now allowing your characters to be in charge.

Doesn’t mean you have to keep what you’ve written. Nothing is set in stone (as you’ve no doubt already discovered with your outline). You’re just trying on something new to see if it fits.

The Third Way

There is a middle ground between plotting and pantsing. I like to think of it as the Vancouver to Halifax method of planning, but that’s because I’m Canadian. So, how about Seattle to Atlanta? By car.

The journey is your novel. You know where you’re starting, and you know where you want to end up. You know you’re going to stop at the Grand Canyon and at that little town in New Mexico you’ve heard so much about. The big thing will happen in a bookstore in Nashville, so of course you have to stop there.

But the precise route you’re going to take? Where you’ll stop for the night or catch a meal? What you’ll eat? Those are decisions you’ll make enroute.

To translate this into literary terms, it means nailing down some of the key structural turns in the novel before you get started: the inciting incident, the midpoint reversal, the climax, the resolution. The other thing I’d suggest knowing before you get started is what your main character wants out of this journey. In other words, their narrative goal. And not just I want to go to Atlanta, but also the why behind that choice.

It’s worth stressing that you can (and should) allow your characters to grow as the journey proceeds. Which means you might not end up in Atlanta after all. You might veer north and end the trip in Pittsburgh because that’s what your main character needs, rather than what they want.

The first draft is called a discovery draft for a reason. You are figuring out the story you want to tell and getting to know the people who are in it. Even if you’ve plotted and planned and have a wall of maps and Post-it Notes worthy of Michael Scofield, it’s still a process of discovery.

Two Sayings Come to Mind

Man plans; God laughs.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.

Which one is true? Both of them.

There can be creativity in planning—and planning in writing by the seat of your pants. In fact, I think this is almost always the case anyway, and we just don’t realize it. Either way, it doesn’t matter: the right strategy for the project you’re working on is whichever one gets you to the end.

Writers, what method of planning/pantsing works best for you?

Summary for Busy Writers: Every drafting strategy has its limits, and not all strategies work all the time for every project. This post explores the middle ground between plotting and pantsing with the ultimate goal of taking an author to the end of a first draft, whatever it takes.

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