What Planners Can Learn From Pantsers

If you’ve been in the writing world for even a short amount of time, you’ve likely come across the great debate: planners versus pantsers.

If you’re not sure what a planner or pantser is, essentially a planner is a writer who thoroughly plans and outlines their novel before they begin writing, while a pantser is a writer who writes “by the seat of their pants,” choosing to forego an outline and instead jumping right into the drafting stage.

While there are writers who fall into one of these two extremes, usually writers fall somewhere along the spectrum between planner and pantser but often leaning towards a preference for one way of writing over the other.

I truly believe there is no one “right” way to write a novel, and both approaches offer pros and cons. When I first started writing, I was a die-hard pantser, jumping right into drafting with little more than a story concept in mind. As I’ve grown as a writer, I’ve started incorporating more planning ahead into my strategy, but I still don’t create a full, detailed outline before beginning a draft.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of advice for pantsers about how they can embrace planning and how plotting more ahead of drafting can be beneficial for their writing process. And while none of this is wrong, it got me thinking about the opposite: what can planners learn from pantsers? So, here are my thoughts.

The Power of Discovery & Flexibility

One of the biggest reasons pantsers argue they could never work with a structured outline is that they don’t want to feel as though they are “stuck” with particular plot points. They want room to allow their story to unfold and develop organically and feel that’s the fun of writing.

One of the perks of jumping into a draft without a thorough outline is that there’s room for surprise as the draft unfolds. While a writer might have an idea in their mind about how the story will develop or how the characters will grow and change throughout, sometimes ideas change as we get deeper into the story.

We’ve all heard of the writers commiserating that their characters don’t always want to cooperate with the author’s plans, and this is the moment where pantsers shine. Rather than feeling locked into a predetermined plot, leaving room to follow developments that arise during the writing process allows them to follow that curiosity and see what happens if they go with it.

The downside of having a full outline ahead of time is that writers will sometimes ignore ideas that come along during the drafting process, convinced that they need to stick to their outline. However, some great ideas only arise once we get to know our stories and characters more deeply during the drafting process, so allowing room for flexibility and deviation from the outline leaves the door open to new ideas that may fit the story better.

Embracing Imperfection

One of the biggest mindset struggles writers deal with is overcoming perfectionism. While we might recognize cognitively that a first draft will never be perfect, it can be hard to convince our brains to go along for the ride and produce a manuscript we know isn’t perfect.

Planners can often fall into this trap since their detailed outlines create a vision in their minds of what the finished story is going to look like, so when their first attempt at drafting that story doesn’t feel like that perfect story in their minds, it can be tempting to slip into believing they’re not a good writer and give up on the story altogether.

But since pantsers jump into a first draft without a solid idea of where the story will end up, it can be a little easier to wrap their minds around the fact that this draft won’t be perfect. Going in with the mindset of “let’s see what happens and where this takes me” automatically alleviates some of the pressure for this draft to turn out perfect by the end. They’ve already accepted that this draft is about exploration and seeing where the story takes them.

Allowing room for imperfection and exploration takes the pressure off, which allows your creativity to shine through. There’s a reason the writing process includes multiple drafts and rounds of revision. No writer can possibly do everything they need to do in just one draft. Reminding yourself this is only the first draft and there will be time to make the story stronger later on can allow you to let go of perfectionism and just get the story down on the page.

Trusting Your Own Instincts

While I have started to incorporate an element of prior planning into my writing process as I’ve grown as a writer, I don’t know that I’ll ever become a full planner convert. The reason for this is that I tend to be more of an intuitive writer. I don’t always know how I’ll end a scene or a chapter, for example, but I trust my instincts. I trust that I’ll know the chapter is finished when I get there. After years of reading and studying writing craft, I know on an intuitive level how story works, where the pacing should be slowed down or sped up, and how to end my chapter to encourage readers to continue reading rather than setting the book aside.

While I’ve come to recognize the benefits of having a general story arc outlined ahead of time, I trust my ability to get myself from point A to point B without feeling the need to plot out each step of the journey ahead of time. And while wanting to plan more thoroughly ahead of time certainly isn’t wrong, I do think writers sometimes spend a lot of time in the planning phase because they aren’t confident in their own ability to find the story as they go.

But if you’re a writer, you’ve likely read a lot of books. Even if you weren’t consciously dissecting the story elements as you read for pleasure, you’ve absorbed the basics of what makes a story work or not as you’ve read. Trust your own intuition and have faith that you’ll know whether something is working or not as you work through the writing (and revising) process.

While there are absolutely benefits to plotting out your story ahead of time, don’t allow the plotting to overtake the story so completely that you forget to trust your own instincts. If something doesn’t feel right or if you get to a section of the story and have an urge to go in a different direction, trust that your intuition is telling you something.

If you’re a planner, it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever decide to abandon your outlines and planning altogether and dive right into a new manuscript as a total pantser. However, I do think there are things both sides can learn from the other as both methods of writing have strengths and weaknesses.

Are you a plotter, pantser, or somewhere in between? What have you learned from the other side? I’d love to hear your tips for blending structure with spontaneity!