In honor of the April session of Camp Nanowrimo kicking off tomorrow, today we’re going to talk about a topic very near and dear to my heart: the debate over plotting vs. pantsing.

If you’ve participated in Nanowrimo or any of its associated events before, you have almost definitely run across this, and probably gotten into at least one way-too-intense discussion about it with someone on the forums who had really strong opinions. And given that a ton of people (myself included) are currently in the final throes of figuring out what the heck they’re going to be writing for the next 30 days, I thought this was as good a time as any, as someone with really strong opinions, to write a way-too-intense blog post about it.

Plotting and pantsing are essentially two different prep strategies for approaching a first draft. Plotters prefer to outline every detail ahead of time, and to know where they’re going before they start. Pantsers, on other hand, fly by the seat of their pants (hence the name), preferring to make things up as they go along and let the story take them wherever it will. “Plotting” and “pantsing” are the terms you hear most often in the Nanowrimo community, but they’re far from the only terms used to describe this divide. George R. R. Martin likes to refer to gardeners and architects, which, let’s be honest, sounds a lot cooler, so I’m in favor of it. Brandon Sanderson often talks about discovery writers and outliners, and has talked a lot about his particular approach, which mixes these two strategies together (which, as we’ll see, is an awesome thing to do).

Unfortunately, no matter what you call it, this strict binary choice between prep styles causes plenty of problems. If you’ve spent more than five minutes in the writing community, you’ve probably noticed that people get really, really into identifying with either plotting or pantsing, and end up locking themselves into a method that robs them of half their storytelling toolbox. In fact, to my great relief, people have started to realize the problems with this weirdly rigid attitude, and at some point the term “plantsing” started popping up to describe a healthy mix of the two methods.

Myself, I’m a firm believer in the merits of plantsing. Refusing to figure out anything ahead of time has rarely worked out well for me, but neither has rigidly planning every aspect of the story ahead of time and refusing to change it because oh, no, that would be pantsing, and that didn’t work last time! Today, I want to make a pitch for plantsing by highlighting two huge issues with the idea of plotting vs. pantsing.

Issue #1: Your story is a big, big place.

Stories are not made up of just one thing. They’re made up of hundreds of thousands of annoying, fiddly little pieces: plot, characters, worldbuilding, narrative style, point of view, theme, tone, structure, genre tropes, plot twists, subplots – the list goes on and on. Telling yourself that you’ve got to plan out how to attack 100% of these things is, I’m sorry to tell you, unrealistic. Go ahead, try it – you’ll be sitting there outlining for years, and there’s only so much energy you can put into outlining before the benefits start to plateau.

On the flip side, improvising every part of your novel is rarely a recipe for a good, fully functional story – or even a fun writing experience. Most notably, not having any outline makes it harder to get out of ruts and combat writer’s block. You didn’t do any imagining up front, and now your imagination circuits have shut themselves down. So you’re just kind of stuck there, waiting for the storm to pass, and probably feeling pretty bad about yourself to boot. This is an example of how even the tiniest bit of outlining up front can save you a lot of pain and annoyance later on.

Now, if you’re just writing a first draft, there’s definitely an argument to be made in favor of swinging more heavily toward the pantsing end of the spectrum. See, first drafts are not supposed to be perfect, well-organized, or coherent. Their purpose is to make the story exist in some form, and to give you the pleasure and fulfillment of creating something. You don’t need an outline to write a first draft and have fun doing it. But if you’re planning to revise this thing, you’re setting yourself up to do a whole lot more work down the road. There’s a reason that around the same time I started actively revising things, I became more of a planner.

Yet there are still elements of a novel that I strongly prefer to improvise. One of my favorite characters I’ve ever written was made up on the spot, because I needed someone to say a specific line of dialogue that wasn’t in character for anyone else in the scene. Sometimes an addition to the magic or tech system will occur to me halfway through, like, Chapter 15, and I’ll have to leave myself a note to go back and add it into the earlier chapters to get the rest of the story to work. The point is that you’ve got to allow yourself the freedom do improvise when it feels right. That’s part of the writing process.

The key to striking a balance here is deciding up front where you want to invest your plotting energy, and where you’d be better served making it up on the fly. And you might need to do some trial and error to work this out. Personally, I prefer to invest a lot of time up front in things like characters, because I like writing super heavily character-driven stories. Plus, if I’m going to be stuck in someone’s head for tens of thousands of words, I want to make sure I like it there first. I typically also outline the basics of the worldbuilding and around a quarter of my plot (not necessarily the beginning part, but usually the first few chapters plus a series of checkpoints throughout the story). The rest I improvise, or outline as I go in smaller chunks.

But you might have a different system! Figuring out what you want to know going into the story and what you’d rather discover along the way is not only a personal preference, but can also vary from book to book. Knowing yourself and putting thought into what would help you the most in writing this particular story is the key here.

Issue #2: Why do I have to decide all this right now, anyway?

Good news, friend: you don’t! Outlining, no matter your stance on it, is an ongoing, dynamic process that lasts for as long as your story does. Your outline should be as much a living document as your manuscript itself. This is where the all-too-common mantra of identifying up front whether you’re a plotter or a pantser starts to hurt people. A lot of new writers stress themselves out to no end over the prospect of changing the outline, and when they find they do need to deviate from it, they throw the whole thing out with a tortured cry of, “Well, I guess I’m pantsing now!”

Only you’re not – you’re still outlining, but now you’re outlining well. The difference between hardcore plotting and smart outlining is the difference between a paper roadmap and the live traffic map on your phone. They’ll both get you to the same place, but your phone will tell you where there’s been an accident, or where construction is blocking the road. And sometimes, accidents happen ahead of us while we’re driving. Do we throw our phones out the car window and forsake all guidance when Siri tells us we can save five minutes using an alternate route? No, because we all know that the dynamic nature of the map you’re following makes it better at doing its job.

So, if you label yourself proudly as a plotter or pantser, are you a horrible, evil person doing a horrible, evil thing? No! Are you making an awful mistake you’ll come to bitterly regret? Not necessarily – you’ll probably find a better method over time, but there’s no harm in starting with one of these options if it sounds like more fun to you. But please, take this whole debate with a big, fat grain of salt. If you’re plotting, don’t be afraid to let your outline change. Likewise, if you’re pantsing, know that you’re allowed to pull over check the map whenever you want to. Rather than adhering rigidly to any one method, think about ways to break these philosophies down into smaller parts that work for you.

And above all, don’t let anyone tell you you’re doing this wrong. It’s your story, and you’re doing it your way, and that’s the only thing that really matters.

Happy writing! (And happy Camp Nanowrimo!)