Plotter, Pantser, Plantster?

Finding Your Writing Process

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably been asked this question before: Are you a plotter or a pantser? The debate between meticulous planners and free-spirited discovery writers is a long-standing one in the writing community.

Some writers, known as ‘pantsers’ write without a plan. They write by the ‘seat of your pants’, without knowing where the story is going or why. Ideas and plot lines flow like a fever dream or an overgrown garden with no care for logic or form or structure. Other writers need control, architecture, design. Ideally they’d like to know absolutely everything about the world, the character and the story before they write a single word. These are the plotters.

Confessions of a Recovering Pantser

For years I’ve been a die-hard pantser. Outlines? Useless. I usually begin with a loose idea, maybe a character or scene, and just let the story flow. The thrill of writing came from discovering new plot twists, deepening existing backstories, and introducing surprising characters. My problem was that I couldn’t stop writing, and my drafts became overwhelmingly complex, filled with too many subplots, unfinished storylines, and excessive world-building.

One of my critique partners once joked that my rate of adding new ideas was comparable to rat reproduction—fast, relentless, and slightly alarming.

Pantsing taught me to love storytelling. It helped me generate hundreds of thousands of words, explore countless worlds, and meet characters I adored.

Yet, none of those words ever formed a complete story; each draft eventually crumbled under its own complexity, left unfinished when the disorder spiraled out of control.

So, I decided to shake things up and try something new.

Enter plantsing—a hybrid approach that blends planning with creative flexibility. Half planning, half pantsing it’s a process that doesn’t fit neatly into either category. Whether we’re reformed pantsers who’ve lost faith in chaos, or cautious plotters dabbling in spontaneity, plantsing lets you have your cake and eat it too - spontaneity and structure.

Rewriting

Rewriting a story is easier in some respects, and harder in others. You’ve got a head start: you’ve already developed the characters, world, and a general story arc. The daunting task is editing or changing an existing draft, tranforming a chaotic mess into something understandable. Editing is full of impossible questions.

How do I keep the story through line simple when every character has layers? How do I murder my darlings—and cut beloved subplots and side characters—without losing the soul of the story?

Part of me always fears that plotting will turn my wild, vibrant draft into a cookie-cutter, predictable snoozefest. As a pantser at heart, I want to believe Stephen King when he says, "Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground ... Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world."

In truth, I’ve learned that I can’t rely solely on pantsing.

I try to find a balance in each draft—structured flexibility. I write chaotic bullet points of things I want to include - from snippets of dialogue to full scenes I’ve already through in detail, to settings, imagery and character details. I can never work from beat sheets or character outlines but will spend hours imagining and reimagining sequences before sitting down to write them. I find day dreaming the most helpful technique to fixing plot holes and uncovering character motivations. Imagining a story from another perspective can unlock a plot twist or reveal a hidden character secret you might never discover otherwise.

So… Which One Are You?

Plotter? Pantser or Plantser? Or something else?

There’s no right way to write—only what works for you. Maybe you’re a pantser for short stories but a plotter for novels. Maybe, like me, you’re a reformed pantser trying to work in some structure into the drafting process.

The key is to stick with it. If your process isn’t working, change it. Experiment. Adapt.

After all, the only rule in writing is: finish the story. It doesn’t matter how you get to the end, just that you get there.