Learning To Pants Again

For most of my writing journey, I've considered myself a Plantser, the kind of writer who goes into a new WIP with a vague outline but also isn't afraid to explore and see where the story goes—even if that means veering away from that outline.

However, for a lot of that time, I've also tried to make myself into a Plotter. Sometimes Planners, they're the writers who tend to do a significant amount of prep work ahead of a new project, which might include heavily detailed outlines, maps, character interviews and similar worksheets, or other exercises. There's certainly merit to this approach. Getting organized early creates a roadmap that can help you get unstuck while you're drafting. It's one of the reasons Preptober, a month-long planning period ahead of NaNoWriMo, is widely considered a must for participants.

And when I was starting to get my footing as a writer, I was sorely convinced that being a Plotter was a must if I had any hopes of being a "real" writer. A lot of the writers I followed on social media, especially YouTube, emphasized the importance of outlining before you begin drafting. The same was true for all of the craft books I looked into, which often included exercises and worksheets to help with plotting. It was all made to sound mandatory.

I did my best to abide by this advice—or, in some cases, commandment—but it'd eventually fall through one way or another. I'd have spent so much time trying to build the perfect outline down to the minutest details, often winding up with a thirty-page doc. And within just a couple of chapters, that outline would be rendered obsolete because the story would veer off that carefully-paved path.

At which point, I'd feel that pressure to re-outline everything to work in that new direction. That new direction would be a one-way ticket to Burnout Town, especially when I participated in NaNoWriMo.

Because, without fail, that new outline would be made obsolete, too.

I held on to a lot of internalized guilt when my WIP would evolve away from its outline. Something on the verge of failure but not exactly failure, but also not something I could see as a Happy Little Accident. I don't know what to call it, exactly. There'd be the frustration and feeling like I'd wasted the time and effort put into the first iteration, and the worry that it'd only happen again with the next inevitable divergence. I'd also have a twinge of imposter syndrome because when you keep hearing that the only surefire way to be a good writer is to be a Plotter with an extensively structured outline, when extensive outlines just weren't working for my brain, it sparked doubt. Could I call myself a legit writer if I wasn't outlining like that? Or was I just a wannabe?

I found myself drifting into Planter territory little by little, landing at what felt like a 70:30 split between Plotting and Pantsing. I still tried to outline and do all of the beat sheets, but they were more like vague reference points. While I wasn't putting nearly as much time into these bullet point outlines, the old vexation and disappointment in myself would start creeping up again as soon as the story would take itself in a different direction.

I think it's one of the reasons A Tided Love has been especially slow-going. I began writing it for NaNoWriMo 2023, doing all of the Preptober stuff beforehand only for most of it to get tossed out the window. Several outlines later, I still don't have things as pinned down as I'd like. That's one of the things that led me to work on a "for-funsies" WIP, Project Scrimmage, for a mental reset so when I do get back to working on A Tided Love, it'll be with fresh eyes and ideally a new skillset.

Because I made the decision to Pants my way through Project Scrimmage. For the most part, anyway. Since it's a football romance, I do have the NFL's schedule providing a rough timeline. Things like away games vs home games, Liam's team's bye week, and the one game they play in London dictate when some events occur, but I'm not using any beat sheets or outlines beyond that. There are scenes I have pretty solidified in my mind, but nothing concrete. I'm just seeing where things go naturally.

And you know what? Writing feels fun again, in a way it hasn't felt in so long that I didn't realize I'd lost that glimmer.

Forsaking the Plotter commandment has been difficult, even though plotting was never something that came easily to me in the first place. Embracing my Pantser side has been a process of growing pains after years of insinuations that a Pantsed novel is a lesser novel and that your readers will be able to tell you Pantsed it.

Pantsing has its drawbacks. So does Plotting. But that doesn't mean one is inherently better than the other. They're just two different methods.

I think Pantsing might be the key to unlocking the fullest potential of A Tided Love. Right now, it's in what I call a marinating stage. It's in need of a major course correction, especially with the interiority, which is equal parts overwhelming and exciting. However, I think the compulsion to perfect its outline has been holding me back. As much fun as Project Scrimmage has been so far, I'm hoping I come away from it with a greater confidence and comfort in my Pantsing.

Pantsers are also known as Discovery Writers, and I think that encapsulates my journey with it: along the way, I've gotten that much closer to discovering my truest self as a writer, and I cannot see what she writes next!