I feel like this is the ‘Chicken or the egg?’ of writing. Everyone has their own approach, but the basis of this dichotomy is that you either plan out your stories (you plot them) or you go with the flow and write by the seat of your pants. Let me first say: your mileage may vary; there is no right or wrong approach. There is only the approach that works and I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.
*Please note the below discusses various levels of plot outlining (or lack thereof). Whether a story is plot- or character-driven will be the topic of a different discussion.
Personally, I started out as a pantser. I once started (and eventually finished!) a story purely from two character names I wanted to use. An inkling of an idea is enough to write a novel, right? As long as I was writing and adding more words, it was progress. I could make it make sense later on. Writing like that allowed me to experience the story as it unfolded, sort of like reading it. I still knew more than the protagonist, but only as events happened. It does provide a certain kind of thrill, I must admit. Imagination lets plots develop naturally and wordcount rises steadily.
This can lead to one of two things. One outcome is that the words flow and the plot works and lo and behold, a miracle is born. When that happens, it’s pure magic. Everything comes together and the hell of editing can be temporarily forgotten until you’re done celebrating. Alternatively, you might get absolutely stuck two thirds into the story and resort to pulling your hair wondering why. When all your information about the plot is sitting there on the page, tangled up in other unnecessary words like prepositions and adjectives, you might not know where to start looking for the thread that’s eventually come undone. I used to have some notes along the lines of ‘fix this bit later’, ‘change this character’s appearance from here on’, etc. But that somehow seemed like a loooooot of work.
On the flipside, there is the plotter. This meticulous engineer knows the ins and outs of their work before a single word has been laid on the page. Plots are decided, chapters divided into scenes, transitions mapped. There are pages and pages full of notes on the plot, on the characters, on the setting, and on various bits of research.
The possible advantage of this approach is that if you decide to change the plot after writing a basic outline, you only have to change a few dozen lines as opposed to a few dozen pages. And from then on you can concentrate on writing the more precise details without worrying about insignificant things like consistency and continuity… Adversely, you could become stuck in an endless loop of writing and rewriting your plot because something keeps irking you. And that doesn’t just happen to perfectionists, trust me. No one is more critical of a work than its creator. There’s not much point having a perfectly logical plot if you’ll never write the book that wraps around it.
Me? I’m somewhere in the middle. I’ve always been of the opinion that for each action, there is one most likely reaction when setting and characters have been considered. What that means in practice is I am struck by the lightning of inspiration, but don’t start writing immediately. I partially construct at least my main characters, maybe write out a few words or a page; then I have a think about the world they inhabit and how it’s different from ours in a very general way (i.e. if it’s set in the future, have there been many wars or major conflicts? How’s the situation with finite resources?). After some groundwork has been laid, it’s time for outlining. Sometimes I know the inciting incident, sometimes I know what I want the ending and the middle to be, sometimes… You get the idea. It’s the bits in between that are more complicated.
Assuming I have a mostly fleshed-out character with motivations, wants, and flaws, then this character will react a certain way to a certain situation simply due to their nature. So if Adam finds a wallet on the street, he will take the cash out of it and not lose any sleep over it. But that same Adam would never willingly use a gun for a mugging. For example, if the story starts with a woman having conned Adam and stolen all his money, leaving him with no way of earning or getting the money back, he’ll start off trying to fix the situation. When authorities fail him and his search for justice leaves him in even more debt, he turns to less honest ways of getting cash. Let’s say he turns out to be particularly good at poker and only cheats every once in a while. As he gets used to hustling for his money, he cheats the wrong man out of his money. When a crime family comes chasing after Adam, he will have to resort to increasingly desperate measures to stay alive.
This was a completely made up scenario that I constructed for this post, but you sort of see the point, I hope. If a slightly different character was faced with this situation (let’s say someone more violent or shadier), they might start hunting the woman that conned them. Or someone might suddenly have a spiritual revelation and decide a minimalist life is their true path. I could go through endless iterations of this process, but the principle is the same. Because I’ve set up the characters and the world, decisions have one most likely outcome and that is the path the plot will follow naturally.
Allow me to get a little geeky. The many-worlds interpretation of magic mechanics (I promise those were the scariest and most complicated words I’ll use) implies that everything that could have happened in our world has actually happened in a different universe. There is a whole Doctor Who episode where one of Donna’s decisions affects millions of lives across time and space. So every time you play rock, paper, scissors, or decide which route to take home, or what sandwich to have as part of your meal deal, there is another universe where you made a different choice. And because of that, there is another you who is the same, but a little bit different.
Writing a plot relies on that, for me. Characters are faced with a choice and even though I don’t start my story off with a detailed plan about the plot, they will always decide the same thing in that situation. The story follows that branch of decision-making and the subtle way it affects a character; in turn, that small change will influence the next decision they make, and so on and so forth. Once I start with a well-defined point of the plot, the rest will follow naturally from that. This allows me to make somewhat of an outline, but at the same time I utilise moving the plot along as it occurs to me. And if something eventually doesn’t make sense, I can go back and change it, then think about why it didn’t make sense. Maybe I didn’t know my characters well enough? In that case, is there some detail that needs to be mentioned before a critical plot point? Does the antagonist turn out to be the protagonist’s long-lost twin sister? In that case, have the protagonist’s parents left any clues that could serve as foreshadowing? If so, I can work that in by scribbling a note in the outline for chapter two.
I walk a thin line between plotting and pantsing because that’s what works for me. What works for you?