Plotters, pantsers and the space between
Plotters vs. pantsers.
How much should you plan before you write? Enough to help you begin, with enough freedom left to find something worth finishing.
- Plotter
- Plans much of the story before drafting, often with an outline of scenes or major events.
- Pantser
- Discovers much of the story through drafting, starting with less advance planning.
- Plantser
- Combines planning and discovery, deciding some things early and finding others on the page.
Before choosing a side
You are allowed to change how you work.
Some writers cannot begin until they know where the story is going. Others lose interest the moment they know. Both groups can spend a remarkable amount of time explaining why the other group needs help.
I understand the attraction of choosing a camp. It gives you a name for your habits and, occasionally, an excuse for them. The plotter is still outlining because preparation matters. The pantser has introduced a seventh important cousin because discovery matters. Somewhere in the middle, the reader would like the first six cousins to do something.
The distinction is useful when it helps you diagnose a problem. It becomes less useful when it turns into a rule about the kind of writer you are allowed to be. You can outline a difficult middle after discovering the opening. You can write a conversation freely inside a carefully planned chapter. You can know the ending and still be surprised by what it costs the character to reach it.
Plotting and pantsing describe where you do some of your discovery. A plotter may find the crucial betrayal while making notes. A pantser may find it halfway through an argument on the page. Either way, someone has to discover it, decide whether it belongs and prepare the reader to believe it.
The question I care about is what your process helps you notice, and what it lets you avoid.
If an outline helps you see a missing motive, it is doing useful work. If it keeps you safely away from writing a scene that might disappoint you, it may have become a very organized hiding place. The same is true of improvisation. Following a character can reveal a story. Following them through another uneventful lunch can postpone the decision that would create one.
Planning before the prose
What a plotter gets from an outline
A plotter makes a substantial share of the story’s decisions before writing the full draft. That might mean a sequence of major events, a chapter plan, a set of scene cards or a detailed document covering several viewpoints. The amount of detail varies. Knowing the ending does not obligate you to know the weather in chapter twelve.
The practical advantage is that you can inspect relationships while moving things is relatively easy. If a character must betray a friend near the end, you can ask what makes the betrayal possible, what it costs and which earlier choices lead there. You may discover that your exciting final scene depends on a friendship you have barely established. Better to notice that while the friendship occupies three index cards.
Planning can also separate questions that otherwise arrive together. During drafting, you may be trying to invent the event, find the character’s voice, control the viewpoint and make the sentences worth reading. An outline lets you settle some of the larger questions first. That can leave more attention for the scene itself.
The risk is treating the plan as evidence that the story works. A note can say that two people fall in love. The scenes still have to make that relationship convincing. A note can promise a devastating revelation. The draft may reveal that everyone would have understood it immediately if the protagonist had opened the second envelope.
There is also the danger of defending an outline after the people on the page have become more interesting than the people in the notes. If a character must suddenly behave against everything you have established to reach your planned ending, the outline deserves scrutiny. You may need better preparation. You may need a different ending.
Mary Robinette Kowal makes this distinction in her essay on imperfect outlines: advance planning can guide a novel while leaving room for discoveries that change its direction. That flexibility matters. An outline is allowed to benefit from the writing it helped you start.
Learning through the scene
What a pantser finds by writing
A pantser, also called a discovery writer, develops much of the story while drafting. The nickname comes from flying by the seat of your pants. It does not mean writing without attention, skill or any idea whatsoever. A writer might begin with a person, an image, a voice, a conflict or an ending they cannot yet explain.
Some things are difficult to discover outside an actual scene. A character who sounded generous in the notes may keep correcting the price of every gift they have given. A supposedly simple apology may turn into an argument about who is entitled to call it simple. Those details can reveal motives that a character questionnaire would politely leave alone.
The pleasure of discovery is real. You sit down to find out what happens, and that curiosity can carry you through work that would feel lifeless if every exchange had already been settled. The draft becomes a place where you listen as well as decide.
The cost can arrive later. A strong voice does not automatically create a sustained conflict. Five memorable scenes may require a missing sixth scene to connect them. You may discover your real beginning well into the manuscript, which means the reader does not necessarily need the journey you took to find it.
That is where a record of what you have written can help. After a scene or chapter, note what happened, what changed and what remains unresolved. Author Kara Jorgensen describes using reverse outlining and small amounts of forward planning to keep track of a developing draft without deciding everything in advance. It is a useful example of borrowing a planning tool while preserving discovery.
I would also distinguish uncertainty from confusion. Not knowing whether a character will forgive her brother can be productive. Not knowing which brother is in the room, what he wants or why the conversation is happening can make it hard to write anything consequential. Discovery still needs something to investigate.
An invented example
One wedding cake. Three ways to find a story.
Let’s give all three writers the same starting point. Ada has promised to deliver her younger sister’s wedding cake across Florida. When the bakery van breaks down, she loads the cake into her own car. Her sister, Beth, gets into the passenger seat and asks Ada to drive past the wedding venue.
The example is invented for this essay. None of the approaches below is the correct version. Each shows where a writer might make decisions and where they might leave questions open.
The plotter decides what the journey must change.
Before drafting, the plotter might decide that Ada has spent years protecting Beth from the consequences of her choices. Beth wants to postpone the wedding, but has waited until the family is assembled because she cannot bear to disappoint them. Ada initially tries to solve the problem quietly. She hopes a short drive and a calm conversation will get everyone back on schedule.
The outline then tests that approach. Beth refuses to return. Ada discovers that she has been offering explanations without asking what her sister actually wants. When the family calls, Ada can no longer manage the situation by answering on Beth’s behalf. The ending might have Beth make the call herself while Ada stays beside her, accepting that support will not make the conversation painless.
Now the writer has a chain of choices. The remaining discovery happens inside those choices: how Beth asks to leave, what Ada misunderstands, when the cake starts leaning and whether either sister finds that funny.
The pantser begins with the passenger door.
Beth got into the car carrying the shoes she was supposed to be married in. Ada looked at her bare feet, then at the cake occupying most of the back seat.
“The venue is the other direction,” Ada said.
“I know.”
Ada kept one hand on the gearshift. Her sister had spent six months choosing everything about this day. It seemed unlikely she had overlooked where it was.
The discovery writer follows the discomfort. Is Beth afraid of marriage, certain she should not marry this person, or furious about something Ada does not know? Ada’s first response may reveal more about their relationship than a page of preparation would have.
Suppose the conversation shows that Ada is relieved. She has disliked the groom for years but kept helping with the wedding. That discovery changes the story’s questions. Why did Ada participate so eagerly? What does she owe her sister now? The writer can follow those questions, then revise the beginning once the deeper problem is clearer.
The risk is allowing the drive to become several chapters of amusing exchanges without a decision. At some point, Beth must do something about the wedding, and Ada must decide how much of the problem she is willing to carry.
The plantser fixes a few points and writes the gaps.
The hybrid writer might know only that Beth asks to leave, Ada tries to manage the situation, something makes that arrangement impossible and the sisters reach a different understanding of responsibility. The writer leaves the reason for Beth’s request partly open until the conversation develops.
Those notes create direction without settling every scene. If the drive reveals that the problem is Ada’s habit of speaking for Beth, the plan can change around that discovery. If it reveals a completely different conflict, the writer has to decide whether the discovery deserves a different story.
That last decision matters. Hybrid writing is not permission to preserve every planned event and every spontaneous invention. Sometimes they contradict each other. You still have to choose what the book is becoming.
| Question | More planning | More discovery |
|---|---|---|
| Why does Beth want to leave? | Decide before drafting; test it in scenes. | Explore through the sisters’ conversation. |
| What does Ada misunderstand? | Build the misunderstanding into the outline. | Notice it in Ada’s behavior, then develop it. |
| What must revision check? | Whether the planned change feels earned. | Whether discoveries form a clear, prepared progression. |
These are tendencies, not exclusive rights. A plotter can discover Beth’s motive in dialogue. A pantser can know it before the first sentence. The finished story will not contain a label telling readers which route you took.
Diagnose the actual difficulty
When the process stops helping
You keep planning because the first scene feels risky.
Choose one scene whose outcome you already understand and write it badly enough to learn from it. You do not need the whole book’s permission. If drafting exposes a problem, the outline has gained useful information. If you spend another week choosing symbols for your scene cards, it may only gain nicer symbols.
You have lively scenes but no movement.
Summarize each scene in one sentence describing what changes. Then read only those sentences. If Ada and Beth have essentially the same argument at a gas station, a diner and a scenic overlook, three locations have been asked to disguise one conversation. Keep the version that does the most work, or make each encounter change what the next one can be.
You know the ending but cannot reach it honestly.
Ask what choice would make that ending possible, then what the character would need to experience before making the choice. Work backward a little. If the required behavior still feels false, reconsider the ending. A destination you liked in your notebook does not have a contractual right to survive the draft.
A surprise has made the original plan feel wrong.
Write down what the discovery changes before tearing the manuscript apart. Which earlier scene would need preparation? Which later event no longer belongs? Try one consequential scene in the new direction. That gives you something to evaluate besides the excitement of having a new idea.
For a longer manuscript, the Manuscript Revision Map can help you examine what each chapter contributes. Its job is different from deciding whether you are a plotter or pantser: it helps you see the shape of the work that already exists.
A practical trial
Give each approach a fair afternoon.
You can learn more from a small experiment than from choosing an identity based on the description that sounds most flattering. Use a premise you care about. Keep the exercise short enough that changing course feels inexpensive.
Two sessions, one premise
Try planning. Try discovering.
- Session one: spend ten minutes planning a scene’s goal, obstacle, choice and consequence. Then spend twenty minutes writing it.
- Session two: take a different scene from the same premise. Start with a person who wants something and write for twenty minutes without a scene outline. Spend ten minutes afterward recording what changed and what you discovered.
- Compare: where did you begin more easily? Where did the characters surprise you? Which scene has a clearer consequence? What would each need in revision?
This is a working experiment, not a personality test. Different scenes and the order you try them can affect the result. Repeat it if the answer is unclear.
Pay attention to the kind of difficulty you experience. If advance planning makes the prose stiff, try planning less. If free drafting gives you a voice but no reason to continue, add a few consequential events. If both work, you have two useful tools.
The amount of planning can also change across a project. You might discover the first chapter, outline the next several chapters, improvise a difficult conversation and reorganize the ending during revision. There is no need to explain this to a committee.
My way of combining them
Where the Paperboat Method fits
The middle ground is often called plantsing, and writers have been combining preparation and discovery for a long time. My contribution is a way of organizing and explaining how I work. I call it the Paperboat Method because I want enough structure to carry the story and enough freedom to follow what I find while writing it.
I begin with four loose turning points, the Folds. The Release brings the character into the main trouble. The Vortex changes their understanding of it. The Waterfall makes their old approach fail. The Harbor shows how they live with the outcome. Those are directions to investigate, and I can change them when the draft gives me a better reason.
The Current is the actual drafting, where scenes and people complicate the notes. The Waterline Test is revision: examining what changes, what repeats, what needs preparation and what the reader still needs to understand. That last stage matters because a promising discovery and a finished story are different amounts of work.
Continue with the full method
Four landmarks. Freedom between them.
The master class follows one invented story through the Folds, drafting and revision, with examples of dialogue, worldbuilding, humor and the choices that make an ending feel earned.
Read the Paperboat Method →A detailed outliner may want more preparation than I do. A discovery writer may prefer to find the Folds after drafting. Both can use the questions without adopting my whole process. The goal is to produce a story you can understand well enough to improve.
A few useful distinctions
Questions writers ask
What is the difference between a plotter and a pantser?
A plotter decides much of the story before drafting, often through an outline. A pantser discovers much of it while drafting. The difference is the amount and timing of advance planning, not whether the finished work needs structure.
What is a plantser?
A plantser combines plotting and pantsing. They may plan major turning points while discovering individual scenes, or draft freely and outline the developing story as they go. There is no single required balance.
Is one approach better for beginners?
I would begin with the approach that helps you complete a small piece of work, then examine what was difficult. A short scene or story gives you something concrete to revise. You can add planning if you get lost or leave more open if the plan drains your curiosity.
Can I write a mystery without outlining?
Yes, but the finished mystery still needs a coherent account of what happened, what the investigator discovers and what the reader is allowed to know. If you discover the solution late, revision must prepare it fairly where the kind of mystery calls for that.
Does pantsing work for memoir or nonfiction?
Free drafting can help you find memories, voice and connections. It does not make invented events acceptable as fact. In memoir, check the limits of memory and available evidence. In explanatory nonfiction, test the argument, source the claims and organize the material around the reader’s needs.
Is the Paperboat Method the first hybrid writing method?
No. Writers have long mixed planning with discovery. The Paperboat Method is my particular framework for combining loose turning points, exploratory drafting and deliberate revision, taught through the Folds, the Current and the Waterline Test.
Further reading
Other writers on the work
These first-person accounts offer useful perspectives on flexible planning and discovery. They support the discussion above; the sisters, cake and sample scene are original teaching examples created for this essay.
- Mary Robinette Kowal: Really, your outline does not have to be perfect. On allowing an outline to change when the writing reveals a stronger direction.
- Kara Jorgensen: How to Outline as a Pantser. On recording a developing draft and planning small steps ahead.