The Pantser’s Guide: How to Write a Novel Without an Outline

Writing from the Heart…without Much of a Plan

When I graduated from college, my first completed novel took nearly three years to write. It was a massive, turgid fantasy monstrosity interspersed with a couple of solid scenes. The beta readers—the ones patient and brave enough to actually finished it—were generous and honest and completely baffled. My favorite piece of advice was, “If the ki-blades were basically light sabers, you should include that before page 500.” 

I’ve written two novels from the seat of my pants, so I can only speak from my own experience. The podcast, Writing Excuses, came up with the term “pantser” or “discovery writer” as someone who writes a novel without an outline. To get through the first draft, pantsers tend to feel their way through each scene. They pick up on new ideas as they go, and the work evolves. Where a discovery writer might have a solid ending in mind, it changes radically. For me, the stakes felt much higher. Every fifty pages was an existential crisis. “Where the hell am I going?” 

The writers I’ve known and the ones whose process has been documented, there is a pattern of literary authors writing their books without an outline. Haruki Murakami said in an interview that he had a clear scene in mind of a man making spaghetti and listening to music but didn’t know much else about the story. From that riveting bit of material, he made The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. 

Writing this way, for me, was like digging out an underground complex beneath my basement: exhausting, nerve-wracking, and confusing. It took years to get through the first draft. And, once my beta readers were through with it, I had to completely start over with the first and third act. (I have whatever the opposite of the ‘sagging middle’ problem is in most of my work. Beta readers consistently say it’s the best part.)

When pantsing, the edits were way more time, effort, and words than the original draft. A speaker at a writing conference—a definite pantser—once said that writing was like an old proverb. It’s easy to carve an elephant. Take a block of stone and cut away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. But with writing, you must first make the block of stone. Everyone in the crowd sighed, pens scribbling. I thought I was going to throw up. 

It was the precise moment I realized that I was never going to be able to write pure literature.

Writing is Making Choices

Every word is a decision. What is left on and off the page, the rhythm of the sentences, and every detail is a choice for the writer. Pantsers prefer to make them on the page and in the moment. They seem to prefer the surprise at the end, perhaps as some kind of motivation. “Holy crap! It’s an elephant!”

Six Tips for Effective Discovery Writing

1. Trust Your Subconscious: Discovery writing directs your subconscious to link details in ways a rigid outline can’t. Trust those small, recurring images or themes that crop up in early chapters—they are often the dream logic that can shape the story.
2. Write Toward a Scene or Event: You don’t need a detailed map but a direction helps. Maybe something as simple as “The sidekick dies of carbon monoxide poisoning” or “They find the body.” Think of them as lamposts, guiding you through the dark. Feel free to abandon the original route. 
3. Use Yes, And for Character: If it occurs to you that a character would make a surprising choice in a scene, don’t delete it because it wasn’t planned. If it was in character, just keep typing and figure out what happens next. 
4. Don’t Fix the Sagging Middle Until It’s Done: Pantsers often stall in Act II. If the middle feels muddy, just keep typing. The purpose of a discovery draft isn’t to be right; it’s to make the stone so you can carve the elephant later. Discovery writing means spending more time editing. You’ll clean it up later. 
5. Plant Empty Seeds: If you’re stuck, have a character mention a secret or an object they’re hiding. Place Chekhov’s gun on the table. You don’t have to know where it leads yet. Eventually, the story’s alkaloid structure will provide the answer, making you look like a master plotter.
6. Use Atmosphere: When the plot feels thin, lean into the mood and setting. In PNW Gothic, the fog, the damp, and the isolation are characters themselves. Let the setting dictate the pace until the next plot beat reveals itself.

Benefits of Discovery Writing

When pantsing, the work tends to be more present, more reactive to its own internal logic. Some scenes are so vivid. The subconscious of the writer stitches the details together into something completely unplanned and possibly surprising. The emotions tend to pervade everything. But it’s why our favorite literary writers, working business hours, produce a novel every eight years. The original draft and sometimes the final is inconsistent. Pantsing empowers the writer to pick the next scene in the context and tone of the scenes before it. 

Compared to the square salt crystal of an outlined book, the structure of these novels tend to be more organic, more variable, like the feathered structures of alkaloids. It makes me think of Margaret Atwood or Jess Walter’s books. These are collages, scintillating and beautiful, the kind of shapes discovered after the ninth total rewrite. Maybe they started with something simple, but the work accretes. 

But writing from the seat of your pants is slow, requires huge rewrites, and what happens if you don’t know what you’re making? This is where my MFA professors shout and shake their fists. “It’s art!” Chuck Tingle makes art; it’s just that the literati don’t deem it so. 
Discovery writing creates beautiful alkaloid structures, but it can be a brutal process. In my next post, I’ll be diving into the opposite end of the spectrum: The Art of the Novel Outline.