Plotter vs Pantser: What Novelists Actually Do

A plotter outlines a novel before writing it, and a pantser writes it "by the seat of the pants", finding the story on the page with no outline. The same split is called outlining vs discovery writing. Most novelists sit somewhere between the two, and plenty move along the line from one book to the next.

The book laid out in the Outliner

Where Do the Words Plotter and Pantser Come From?

"Pantser" comes from "flying by the seat of your pants", pilots' slang from the 1930s for flying by feel, without instruments. Writers borrowed it for writing without a plan, and "plotter" became its opposite. Both are workshop and online slang: across all 254 Art of Fiction interviews in the Paris Review archive, neither word appears as a name for a method. The only near-hit is Edmund White calling himself "a weak plotter", which is about skill, not method.

Novelists who do sort writers into two kinds use their own words.

George R.R. Martin: architects and gardeners. Talking to Scott Simon for NPR in 2019:

"I often say that there are two types of writers, architects and gardeners. ... They plan their novels out in advance - what's going to be everywhere, every turn, every twist, everything. They have these very detailed outlines. And then there are the gardeners who dig a hole, and they plant a seed. ... And they hope that something comes up."

Gardeners still "have a general idea", he says: "They know whether they planted an acorn or a tomato plant." And his own place is a matter of degree: "I'm much more a gardener than an architect."

Brandon Sanderson: outliners and discovery writers. These are the terms Sanderson uses in the writing class he teaches at Brigham Young University, and the reason "discovery writing" is the polite name for pantsing.

For writers who do both, the community has a third word, "plantser".

The Plotters

Iris Murdoch is the most absolute:

"Well, I think it is important to make a detailed plan before you write the first sentence. Some people think one should write, George woke up and knew that something terrible had happened yesterday, and then see what happens. I plan the whole thing in detail before I begin. I have a general scheme and lots of notes. Every chapter is planned. Every conversation is planned."

Even she has a second phase: "The second stage is that one should sit quietly and let the thing invent itself."

John Irving ties planning to endings:

"I love plot, and how can you plot a novel if you don't know the ending first? ... All the important discoveries, at the end of a book, those are the things I have to know before I know where to begin."

He also answers the usual objection to outlining, that it kills surprise:

"I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. ... The more you know about a book, the freer you can be to fool around. The less you know, the tighter you get."

Vladimir Nabokov describes structure without sequence:

"The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the novel is done."

The Pantsers

Stephen King makes the strongest case against plotting, in On Writing (2000):

"I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible."

His method is to start from a situation: "I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free." And his verdict on the alternative: "Plot is, I think, the good writer's last resort and the dullard's first choice."

William Maxwell gives the clearest reason for refusing an outline:

"...if I saw the whole unwritten novel stretching out before me, chapter by chapter, like a landscape, I know I would put it aside in favor of something more uncertain, material that had a natural form that it was up to me to discover. So I never work from an outline. ... But in general the thing creeps along slowly, like a mole in the dark."

James Thurber, recalling a collaborator asking what to do next:

"I'd say that I didn't know and couldn't tell him until I'd sat down at the typewriter and found out. I don't believe the writer should know too much where he's going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint, old man propaganda."

E. L. Doctorow supplies the most quoted line in the whole debate, and the version in circulation is usually wrong:

"I tell them it's like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

The common paraphrase, "you can only see as far as your headlights", drops the second clause, which carries the point. The image is not about limitation. It is about having enough.

The Middle, Which Is Where Most Novelists Are

Anthony Burgess, asked whether each book is charted in advance:

"I chart a little first, list of names, rough synopsis of chapters, and so on. But one daren't overplan; so many things are generated by the sheer act of writing."

Peter Taylor describes the plan changing under him:

"I know one ending. But before I've worked on a story very long I know another. ... I often reverse my understanding in the course of writing a story."

Italo Calvino outlines seriously and then throws it away:

"I spend a lot of time constructing a book, making outlines that eventually prove to be of no use to me whatsoever. I throw them away. What determines the book is the writing, the material that's actually on the page."

The outline did its work by being written, not by being followed.

Plotter or Pantser: Which Should You Be?

It is a spectrum, not a binary. Murdoch plans every conversation and still waits for the book to invent itself. Martin is "much more" a gardener, not wholly one. Burgess charts a little and distrusts more.

Knowing the ending is a separate question. Irving needs his first; Taylor expects his to reverse.

Planning and surprise are not opposites. Irving's argument is that a map produces "constructive accidents". King's is that a situation produces better ones than a plot does. Both are after the same thing.

The practical test: try both on something short, see which one produces pages, and treat the answer as a method for this book rather than an identity. A book outline template makes the test easy: a full chapter-by-chapter version for plotting, and a five-line one for pantsing.

How much to plan is one decision among several. How to write a novel puts it in order with the others, from the premise to the finished draft.

How Do You Plot or Pants a Novel in Deckle?

Deckle is a novel-writing app, and its Outliner is a board of cards, one for every document in the book, each with a synopsis. The same board works both ways.

To plot, build the book before writing it:

1. Open the Outliner on the Draft.
2. Add a card for each scene with Add › Scene, in order, and write what happens in its synopsis.
3. Open a card and write into the plan.

To pants, write first and outline afterwards:

1. Add a scene with Add › Scene, name it, and open it.
2. Write until the scene is done.
3. Back on the Outliner, write in its synopsis what the scene turned out to be.

The synopsis serves both. Filled in before writing it is a plan; filled in afterwards it is a reverse outline, a map of what you found. Either way, documents reorder by dragging in the Outliner, so a scene written in the wrong place moves without cutting and pasting, and an outline you throw away, as Calvino did, costs nothing.

For a plotter's first framework, the three-act structure and the Snowflake Method both build an outline step by step. For a pantser, scene and sequel works scene by scene without a whole-book plan.

Common Mistakes

• Adopting an identity. Martin calls himself "much more" a gardener, which is a position on a scale, not a camp.
• Quoting Doctorow's headlights line as a limitation. He said you can make the whole trip that way.
• Assuming outlining kills spontaneity. Irving argues the opposite, and so does Murdoch's practice.
• Assuming pantsing means no preparation. Martin's gardener knows "whether they planted an acorn or a tomato plant". Burgess charts names and rough chapters first.
• Treating an unused outline as wasted. Calvino threw his away by design.
• Deciding once. Many writers change method between books, or partway through one.

Sources

Retrieved 25 October 2026.

• The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction interviews, for Murdoch (No. 117), Irving, Nabokov, Maxwell, Thurber, Doctorow, Burgess, Taylor, Calvino and White.
• Scott Simon, George R.R. Martin Really Does Know You Want Him To Write Faster, NPR, 19 October 2019 (transcript).
• Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Scribner, 2000). Read through the Internet Archive's lending copy (archive.org).
• Brandon Sanderson launches new generation of BYU authors, BYU News, 28 November 2017.
• Pantser, Wiktionary, and fly by the seat of your pants, The Phrase Finder, for the term's origin.