Many writers have difficulties starting their stories.

Some like to plan everything beforehand and have a detailed outline while others just go ahead and write. Which approach is right? As you might imagine, the answer is "it depends".

Generally speaking, writers can be divided into planners and pantsers.

Planners do what the name says. They outline their stories and plan everything ahead. The degree of planning varies Some just use a vague structure like the hero's journey or the masterplots I introduced in an earlier post and see how their stories fit.

That goes something like this:

Inciting Incident: Bill learns that he's the chosen one.

Supernatural Aid: Bill meets a mentor

Crossing of the First Threshold: Bill decides to go on a journey to Mount Evil.

Tests, Allies, and Enemies: Bill kills a few monsters and finds new friends.

Approach to the Inmost Cave: Bill's mentor is killed by the Dark Lord.

The Ordeal: The Dark Lord almost kills Bill, too.

The Resurrection: Bill believes in himself and defeats the Dark Lord after all.

 Return with the Elixir: Bill now gets to become the king, marry the princess, and so on.

Planners tend to have a vague list of bullet points of things they want to happen in the story (like you see above) and then they simply connect the dots between them. Other types of planners go even further. They will write a summary for every chapter they want to have and then flesh out those later.

Pantsers are just the opposite. Pantsing is short for "writing by the seat of your pants". They just start writing. Okay, that's not quite true. Normally, they come up with the perfect opening scene and imagine how the story can continue from that. It's a bit like those writing prompts you often see here on Wattpad.

Imagine something like this:

Alice and Bob are sitting in a car at night. The motor suddenly goes out and the mobile phone has no reception. Then, Bob looks into the rearview mirror and sees a ghost. How does this story continue?

Pantsers follow a chain of cause and effect. They take an inciting incident and see what follows afterward.

So, which of these two is better?

Well... there is no right answer. I can only list the advantages and disadvantages each has.

The main advantage of planning your story out ahead of time is that it's less likely that you'll hit writer's block without knowing how to continue. You may also see if your plot sucks just from the outline. This reduces the chance that you'll have to delete your book because you're unsatisfied and start again. Instead, you just have to scrap the outline.

The main disadvantage is that, sometimes, it can feel like character behavior is extremely unnatural and that characters only behave a certain way because the outline says they should. A classic example is characters doing something incredibly stupid just so that one of them can get killed only because the author's outline said it should happen. Moreover, while outlining can make it easier to avoid getting stuck, some outlines never actually start writing. They make endless small changes to their outline all the time, but they're so anxious that their outline never becomes a story. Outlining is a good excuse for procrastinating.

The main advantage of pantsing is that it's much easier to actually get to the writing. Once you have a good opening scene, everything follows. There is no procrastination, the story just flows. Also, the character behavior and dialogue will be far more natural if your characters just respond to the events around them. This is much better than them only behaving in certain ways because you, the author, are their puppeteer.

The main disadvantage is that, well, it's easier to write yourself in a corner. Picture this. "Hm, my story is boring right now. How could I make it more exciting? Let's have a ninja appear! But wait, how can my main character beat a ninja. No idea. *Writer's block*" This can still happen in outlining, but it's less likely. An outliner will write into the outline how the ninja can be beaten. Also, pantsing can sometimes result in huge pacing issues. Maybe the fight against the ninja was completely unnecessary to the main plot. You only added it because you thought it was exciting at the moment, but it was just dead weight. If you come up with lots of scenes that you might as well cut without changing anything, you have an issue.

In summary:

Planning:

+Better plot
+Less likely to be stuck
-Illogical character decisions
-Less likely to actually start

Pantsing:

+More likely to get started
+Better characters
-Often pacing issues
-More likely to get stuck

What do I do?

Eh, I have no idea. I usually plan a lot, but no outline survives first contact with the story. I am a planner at first, but, when I have no idea, I can become a pantser.

Regardless of what you are, it can sometimes help to write buffer chapters before you start posting online. If you are a planner, you can see if your plan makes sense. If you are a pantser, you buy yourself time in case you get stuck later.

This post, by the way, was not planned in the slightest. I wrote it yesterday in one go with minimal editing.