How Much of Your Plot Do You Need to Know Ahead of Time?

I get this question often when I’m being interviewed on podcasts. I got it from students. Everyone believes it’s the secret to actually making a book. I don’t. It’s about the plotter and pantser approaches to writing.

You’ve probably heard those terms, but if not: plotters want everything planned ahead. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants. They go with intuition from the get go. When I’m asked which one I lean towards, I say, “Both!”

Because I believe most creative people have both elements inside. The need to go with what feels right, and the desire to get organized. Each comes at different times in the book-writing process.

That timing depends on your wiring, your most natural approach to creating.

Plotters

Do you like to know your entire plot before you start writing? Does this give you a sense of stability and sureness with the creative process, so you are clear on your direction? If knowing exactly where you’re going, before you even start out, is super important to you, you may be a plotter.

I admire plotters. I have a yearning, sometimes, to know what’s ahead, but my greater interest when I’m creating is to follow my gut, to try new ideas, to let it emerge spontaneously. I find plotters often love systems, though, especially ones that promise clarity and certainly about how a book is actually built. They lean on the formulas when navigating the murkier areas of writing something new.

Nothing wrong with this!

There are disadvantages, though. I once had a student who was an engineer in real life—he designed manufacturing systems, so he was all about systems and how they are formed to create exactly what’s expected. No surprises was the goal. And he did beautifully, writing nonfiction about topics he loved.

But one day, he got the hankering to write fiction. He wanted to write a love story. And love stories, and much fiction, must contain surprises of some kind.

Why surprise matters

There’s a saying in the world of writing that the reader must anticipate yet still be surprised by where a story goes. Without that element of discovery (the surprise) the book becomes predictable. My student was unable to make a story that was not predictable.

He knew how to engineer predictability. A great gift in his profession. Death to his fiction writing.

I remember suggesting—and I’ve done this with dozens of students since—that he read and analyze the surprise in great novels. Start with the prize-winning ones, like the Pulitzers or Man Booker or National Book Award winners. What made these stories notable? Where did they go unexpected places?

So that’s the downside of the plotter approach: predictability, lack of surprises, no element of discovery for the writer so no discovery for the reader.

I’m pleased to remember now that this engineer learned a lot about the craft of surprises in fiction from his reading and study. He ended up not only writing a love story but falling in love himself. I thought that a beautiful outcome.

Spirit of exploration

You can enter a story anywhere that pulls you in. And that engagement often translates to the reader as a spirit of exploration.

Plotters who are successful in keeping the surprise element usually spend quite a bit of time thinking about their story and taking notes. The difference between engineering the plot and letting it arise organically is this. I’ve known plotters who are not comfortable beginning the writing process before they know the ending of the book, for instance, but they still work in this sprit of exploration.

One of my students kept notes of his plot as it emerged from his daily walks and mulling-over time. He allowed himself a full year to think deeply about the story and each day a new idea would come to him, which he noted on index cards.

Then, like playing a great game, he’d lay the cards on a big table or the floor and begin to sort them into a flow. This is very similar to the storyboard approach I teach in this You Tube tutorial.

There are many ways to flow a series of plot points, and this is where the writer can find surprises and where plotter merges into pantser. Organization is still present but there’s a more organic approach to putting it all together.

It’s very much like the pauses I might make when I get to an unknown point in a specific scene I’m writing. I take a break to imagine it first, fully, inside my creative self. Then I go to my storyboard to plot it out, to test how it fits, before I write it.

Or you can pants it

Every few years, I like to rearrange our rooms. We may get something new, which requires finding a home, or we get rid of a piece of worn-out furniture. The configuration is open to change.

My method is probably unique and makes no sense to anyone else, but here’s how I do it: I stand and stare for a while, I get nudges of what changes might work, but until I actually do it, I can’t tell. My spouse has gotten used to leaving me along, except when I need help shoving furniture around. I need that inner time to “see” the new options in my mind then try them out.

Many times, the idea works. When it doesn’t, no worries. I just stand and stare some more and try another idea. That’s pure pantsing.

It’d drive many people crazy. I garden that way too. I had a friend who drew detailed maps of her garden and researched every aspect before she planted. I go outside and do it. I rotate the vegetable beds each year, a sound gardening practice that defeats bugs (most times), but that’s the only planning I do ahead.

With my writing, I have an idea. I sit down and try it out by writing a scene. It’s an experiment, a testing of what inside and whether it has sufficient life to generate more ideas.

Everything for a pantser is an experiment. Nothing is impossible. It all comes as you write.

Downside? A mess, of course. Redos. The extra time they take. I’ve met many pantsers in my writing classes who bring in 300-500 pages of manuscript that is all over the place. I honor their pantsing ability and show them how to storyboard.

I tell you, the relief they experience is life-changing. As it was for me.

We are all both—maybe plantsers?

Most writers I’ve worked with—and myself included—find something worthwhile in both approaches. I’ll never be the writer who details every step of their novel on cards or in an outline before sitting down to write a scene. I’ll never write a book without some system of organization either.

Rather than responding on podcast interviews that I’m a pantser or a plotter, I just say I’m both. I’ve been writing and publishing for over three decades and I’ve learned the pros and cons of each approach.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Check out this fun article from The Write Practice, which says more about plotter versus pantser and also shares a name for those in between. Or this from Medium, which gives another view.

Which are you? What advantages and disadvantages do you notice about your writing style?