fbpx

Can You Submit with Confidence?

Now you can with the Complete Submission Checklist!
For a Limited Time…

Are You Losing Your Readers?

Keep Your Readers Avidly Engaged to the End and Wanting More!
For a Limited Time…

Revise Your Manuscript Like a Publishing House Insider!

For a Limited Time…

Plotter vs Pantser

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. At some point, regardless of whether or not you are a plotter or a pantser, you will have to outline your book. It’s just a matter of when.


PlotterPlotters
outline up front. They figure out in advance what they want the story to do and where they want it to go. It can be a way to save time during the writing and editing because they already have a plan in place. (I confess that I am a firm plotter. I know, it’s hard to believe what with my fly by night and loosey goosey attitude towards life in general. Oh, wait. That’s literally anyone else.)

PantserPantsers do still often need to outline, they just do it after the first draft. That’s when they sit back down, read through, and see if there manuscript is working the way they want. They have beta readers see if they story seems to flow the way it should, and if (or when) it doesn’t, that’s when they outline their existing story to see what they may be missing.

In the end, whichever kind of writer you are depends on what works best for your mood and temperament. I’m a tried and true plotter. That’s just the way it is. But however you write, you will at some point need an outline. Fortunately, I have the thing for you.

While still working on my story planning masterpiece, Story Slices, I came up with the following outline:

Story Slices Framework

So which is it? Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Related Posts

One Page Summary: Questions to Ask

One Page Summary: Questions to Ask

One page summaries can be deceptively simple. After all, you’re just distilling thousands of words into 500. What could go wrong? Ask any author that’s sat down to write a one page summary only to have it be five pages, and they’ll tell you just how difficult it can...