To Pants or Not to Pants

Back in grad school, a professor once asked my class: “Are you pantsers or outliners?” She explained the difference, to us unfamiliar with the terms. 

Pantser- Someone who writes by the seat of their pants. Disdaining outlines as limiting to the creative process, the pantser may keep 1,000 of every 10,000 words they write, but it’s worth it for the spontaneity. 

Outliner-Someone who creates a detailed (or not so) outline of where their story is heading and why. They write from point to point, eschewing lightbulbs for the well designed story arc. 

Now neither of those descriptions is terribly flattering and both are reductive, but the dichotomy boils down to “do you outline, or not?”

The problem? I did (and still do) both, and neither. It took me a few years to define my process, but in workshops I call in Storybuilding.  For any RPG DM/GMs out there, this will sound intuitive. 

Essentially I get to know the world of my story really well, build out my characters, and then drop them into situations and see where they go. Because I write primarily in the genres of Historical fiction/Speculative historical fiction, I have plenty of plot marker options to choose from.  Often however, I won’t know what story I am telling until it falls onto the page. 

So which method is best? What is going to get you to churn out 50 pages a day of final draft quality work? Well just go to my store and with five easy payments of…Nope. (Seriously, if someone tries to tell you they have a sure fire, best ever method, and all you need to do is pay a ton of money, walk away.   Go to your local library and borrow some of the craft books in my recommended section or find local workshops, seminars, or classes to glean helpful info from.   Artists, writers, and craftsmen deserve to be paid for their time and work, but they are gaming you if they claim a magic one-size-fits-all cure to the process.)

It isn’t a question of what method is capital B Best, but what method works for you. Storybuilding works for me because hardcore Outlining removes the impulsivity that my brain loves so much. True Pantsing is nearly impossible for HF writers simply because there are so many details that one needs to make a cohesive story.   If you have to stop every two sentences to google “Las Vegas diners 1938” or “what did Maine settlers store their hay in the 1670’s,” it is hard to stay in the spontaneous moment. 

There are other factors contributing to your method to consider as well:

• How much time do you have to write? (Deadlines, school assignments, life commitments) For me, writing without an outline takes more mental time and energy to drop into the creative headspace. This isn’t a problem if I keep my schedule open. 
• How much space do you have for your murder walls?: I have visual content on every wall in my office. Being able to stare aimlessly at maps, timelines, spreadsheets, and endless colors of 3×5 cards keeps me on track but Storybuilding in the way takes far more time than either pantsing or outlining. 
• What is your attention span for a project? Some writers jump from project to project, others work all the way through before moving on. An outline can help keep the world intact while your mind is somewhere else or it might keep you tethered to the ideas that aren’t working. 
• Where are you on the perfectionist scale? Everything gets dumped on my first draft pages with my casual mantra “I’ll fix it in edits”; Some of my writing buddies want a polished draft every time; some of my beginning writers anguish over every idea to the point that they never see the page. Creative prep is as much a skill as the actual writing. 
• What is your endgame? Writing for Joy and writing for a commercial audience may or may not look different for you. Also some ideas may never be more than a  rough sketch in a doc folder. Other work might get four drafts and a publisher. 

 I spent a lot of years thinking that my writing process “Should” look a certain way. When I stopped trying to fit a formula and instead started looking at what makes me feel inspired and coming back to the keyboard— not to mention what makes makes me feel productive when I just can’t put words on the page on a given day— I realized that a lot of those “shoulds” are counterintuitive to how my brain works. 

So for now I  pants most of my short stories and all of my flash fiction; I Storybuild my series because I want longterm cohesion. I outline my craft talks and creative non-fiction work because linear thinking is not my forte.  In ten years when I have more free time (yeah right), have tighter deadlines, and two more empty bedrooms for my murder walls, maybe my process will be different. It will be another delightful puzzle to work out.