- Pantsing vs. Outlining -

One of the greatest writing battles has arrived, and it is between pantsers and outliners.

Um… I couldn’t find a good K-pop GIF for this, so Appa and Momo will have to do.

I’ve read and heard mixed things about pantsing and outlining. When I was doing my research on NaNoWriMo, I read accounts and watched videos of past participants and winners and took note of how they had approached the challenge. Some of them offered their tips and tricks in navigating through the month while others recalled their process and explained what they did to win the challenge. Their insight was helpful for me since this was my first time taking part in the writing challenge, and I will admit that I used some of their tips and tricks.

But there was one thing I noticed, and it was that they recommended creating an outline before starting the challenge.

Creating an outline, or planning, before NaNoWriMo is a good idea, in my opinion. As a matter of fact, some writers use the month before NaNoWriMo to plan and plot their story (there is an acronym for it, but I have forgotten what it is). They use all—maybe not all—thirty-one days to plot their story so that they know what to write and won’t have to write on a whim.

Honestly, that advice was not a total surprise for me. My teachers and professors would tell me (and their other students) to plan ahead whenever they assigned huge assignments, and not to forget, my family and friends always tell me to think ahead before planning something. It’s recommended to have some kind of “plan” so that you know what to do and how to respond if something goes wrong.

But for stories, I am in the middle….

I do pantsing and outlining, and sometimes, I do one over the other when I write. Looking back at the stories I wrote and posted here, I would have to say that I was a pantser. When I was writing them, I did not have an outline to go off of. I had no predetermined scenes or ideas or notes; I wrote whatever came to my mind and went with the flow.

But after working on those stories, I realized how unprepared I was for my other stories. The stories I want to write and post here are longer and more complex than the ones here. Some of them require extensive planning so that their plot makes sense. After looking through the notes I had made for them, I figured that I would have to spend time towards creating an outline.

The story I wrote during NaNoWriMo is a chaptered story, and it required careful planning. Though it follows a straightforward plot, I still had to have some kind of “plan” in order to write 50,000 words for it. So an outline would be ideal for this challenge.

Creating an outline happened…

But it also did not happen.

I will admit that I did pantsing and outlining for my story, but overall, I was a pantser. I had created an outline before starting on my story, but it was vague. The notes, characters, and ideas were not detailed, so they left room for me to change or “improve” on them as I work on the story. I guess what I’m trying to say is that an outline acts as a “set of guidelines,” but that does not mean that it will always be followed.

When I started writing, I already had a basic summary of how each scene was supposed to happen. I then put each summary on its respective index card so that I would be kept on track while writing. My summary consisted of the following:

• The scene’s beginning in one sentence
• Important events that happened in the middle (e.g., a character interacted with another character for the first time)
• The scene’s ending in one sentence

I would like to admit that I should have added more because there were some instances in which I had to write without a plan. Though I used Scrivener’s corkboard feature, most of my ideas for dialogue, descriptions, and how each scene would turn out came to me while I was writing. It was only after I had written them did I put them on my index cards. If I have to describe how I wrote my story (mainly the dialogue and descriptions), I will say that I was writing sentences and hoping that they would lead to something more.

Basically, I was channeling my inner Michael Scott this past November.

If you’ve reached this point of the page, you’re probably wondering this: Why didn’t pandacathy plan her story from beginning to end?

Well…

For me, whenever I create outlines of stories from beginning to end, I become less motivated to write them.

I know this is weird, but please bear with me.

After creating detailed—I mean really detailed—outlines for some of my stories, I found myself not wanting to write them. Creating concise outlines of how each scene pans out, how my characters act and interact with one another, and how the story ends makes my story seem “complete.” I’m putting in so much time and effort towards my creating an outline that it seems as if I’m writing the story. I guess what I am trying to say is that making a detailed outline, for me, is alike to reading spoilers for a movie before seeing it for the first time.*

But that does not mean that I don’t regret not planning my story! As of now, my story has a concrete beginning, but I can’t say the same for the middle and end. After rereading what I wrote, I wish I had spent more time plotting my chapters and scenes before diving into NaNoWriMo. Though my story follows a straightforward plot, I still struggled with certain aspects of it. An outline, one that is not vague but not too detailed to the point of me seeing it as a completed story, would have saved me time in determining what to write and what I wanted to happen. It also would have prevented me from coming up with things right off the bat.

Do I regret pantsing?

Nope! Pantsing was not entirely bad since it made me more determined to complete the challenge. It was nice to get an idea out of nowhere that made me want to develop it, and that led to me writing for a long time.

But pantsing led to me experiencing something, and that something…

Will be covered in the next page of this blog post!

*This is just what I think based on my personal experience. Outlines work for some writers while they don’t for other writers. Each person has their own writing habits and style.

Coming Up: Burning Out (Many Times)

P.S. Which one are you: the pantser or the outliner/planner? Or are you a mixture of both? Why not answer the poll below?