I’ve been thinking about the planner vs. pantser debate a good bit lately as I’m starting work on one novel and gearing up to do revisions on another. If you’re not familiar with these terms when it comes to writing your story — “planner” is probably pretty obvious, someone who plans things out before they write. “Pantser” refers to someone who writes “by the seat of their pants,” a.k.a. not planning. Plansters are somewhere on the spectrum between the two.

“Plansters,” as you can probably guess, lie somewhere in the murky middle.

But the more I think about it, the more I can’t escape the conclusion that technically EVERYONE is a planster, and that it’s almost, if not completely, impossible to be entirely one extreme or another. Even the most pantsery pantser who ever pantsed had SOME sort of plan when they started out, even if it was just the seed of an idea that got them started. And even the most compulsive and dedicated planner is going to let the flow of creativity carry them along at some point, even if it’s only when it comes down to their specific word choice.

Which got me wondering whether it was really even a useful delineation after all. Should we really be debating planning vs. pantsing when we know that ultimately we’re going to have to do a little of both?

Personally, I’ve wandered around back and forth on the spectrum during my writing journey. I was certainly originally pretty much as far on the “seat of the pants” end of things as possible. I would get an essence of an idea, race off to start writing, only to fizzle out a few pages in. And I’ve been a lot further along the lines of a planner than I currently am at certain points — I spent weeks and months outlining and planning Implant before I wrote it.

I would say my current approach tends to be pretty close to the middle. I always do some planning first, and I always come up with an outline that hits certain important points of the story, deciding on the very basic events of each chapter ahead of time. But other than that one-to-two-sentence summary, I mostly just let the details come as I’m drafting.

And while I definitely agree that we are going to have tendencies more towards one side or the other, I think it’s important to realize that it really is good for everyone to implement a little of both. Planning is a good thing. It’ll save you time and keep you grounded in that miry middle section of your story. But planning too much can get you too much in your head and keep you from really experiencing a story you can be immersed in and get excited to share with readers.

So after all this thinking, I’ve concluded that my advice to myself and to others is this: are you naturally more planner-ish? Try to let go a little bit and explore parts of your story that aren’t completely, one hundred percent nailed down. Are you more the play-it-by-ear sort? Give outlining a go. Just sit down and make the very simplest, shortest plan, even if you feel like it’s cramping your style. It’s fine to “be who you are” as a writer, but it’s not good to be so set in your ways that you can’t expand and experiment and discover ways to be better and more efficient in your storytelling.

Let’s all wander the spectrum together, and maybe in the process we’ll learn a little more about our stories, our craft, and even ourselves.