I love writing. In fact, unlike Dorothy Parker, I love writing more than I love having written.

Nonetheless, there are a handful of writing topics guaranteed to make me grind my teeth so hard I risk popping a blood vessel.

Save the cat.

Are audio books real books?

You must/must never write about ____________.

You must/must never _____________ in your writing.

Plotters v. Pants-ers

If you’re not familiar with the latter, a plotter are writers who works from an outline or at least a thorough roadmap of character, setting, and plot. They may deviate somewhat, but overall, they have a strong sense of what comes next.

The term pants-er comes from the phrase seat of your pants. A pants-er generally has an overall feel for their story and their main character, and may have an ending in mind, but is happy to figure out other details – characterization, conflict, setting, and supporting characters – as they go.

Two different but equally effective approaches. We could have lived forever without labeling them or ourselves, but humans love placing themselves into categories. As you might guess, writers also love to argue about which approach is superior, with superior defined as “the one I use” or “the one Famous Writer A” uses. Beginning writers beg to know which works best, as though success is based on method. Hence my teeth grinding.

My view? Sit down, STFU, and write. No one cares how you do it. Use an outline or don’t. Neither method is better. The only thing that matters is whatever gets to you The End.

Am I a plotter or a pants-er? I’m a little bit from Column A and a little bit from Column B. Honestly, it’s not something I’ve ever cared to examine or define.

Until today!

In a post on Writers Helping Writers, Jenny Hansen identified a third type of writer occupying the space between plotters and pants-ers: The Quilter. “Story Quilters are writers who divide books into individual scenes that they stitch together later into a cohesive story,” she says.

Unlike outliners or discovery writers, Quilters develop their story as a number of individual scenes or stories, which they shuffle and connect until the story feels right. Why does this work for some people? For some writers, the idea of tackling a whole novel can be daunting, until stress becomes inaction. Writing shorter pieces that can be fit together later results in more manageable projects.

A piece might be an entire chapter or a series of shorter scenes that can be placed together or in different parts of the story. Length doesn’t matter, but pieces usually have a beginning, middle, and end.

This concept comes closest to describing my process. Like a plotter, I usually have a general roadmap of how my story will begin, progress, and end. Like a pants-er, I leave big open areas where I know something has to happen, but I haven’t yet figured out what. This is often where I develop theme or decide what the story is “about.” But when my butt hits the chair, I write scene by scene, jumping around through the story and often rearranging to achieve the tone, dramatic tension, and plot escalation I’m seeking. I’m a quilter.

So, which approach is superior?

I’ll never say.