The Day I Became a Plotter (and Didn’t Lose My Soul)

There’s a debate that never dies in the writing world: Pantsers or Plotters.

We debate it, we argue about the pros and cons of each, we cling firmly to whichever way we identify as WHO WE ARE as writers.

It becomes a hill some of us are fully prepared to die on.

In case there’s anyone who isn’t sure what I’m talking about, here’s the simplest way to think about it:

A pantser flies by the seat of their pants—trusting the story to find its own way.
A plotter, as the name suggests, builds a roadmap before setting out.

For most of my life, I lived deep in pantser country. I loved the thrill of discovery, the way a story could surprise me. It worked fine when deadlines were imaginary. When I got stuck, I could take my time figuring out what was supposed to happen next.

But once real deadlines entered the picture—contracts, editors, pub dates—the whole “we’ll see where it goes” approach got a little… iffy. I usually found my way, but it often involved a last-minute writing sprint and some pure panic. I told myself plotting just wasn’t in my nature, that this was how I worked and that was that.

That’s how it went for my first five books.

Then came Pawsitively Organic Mystery #6, Purring Around the Christmas Tree.

This was s super fun book for me to write. It involved dead uncles, gangsters and stolen artifacts from Ireland. But what started out as a fun idea spiraled into something that had gotten away from me.

I had about 40K words written, I was mid-move and mid-huge-life-upheaval and out of the country on vacation when I got an email from my editor: “Are you on track for the March 1 deadline?”

March? I was sure my book wasn’t due until April. Spoiler: I was wrong. I was also very, very stuck. My characters were literally stranded on a dock in Boston Harbor waiting for a ship full of gangsters and stolen property—a long way from the cozy Connecticut town of Frog Ledge where, let’s face it, they belonged.

But I was clueless how to get them off that dock.

At that point, I had a 10-page synopsis (required for the series) but I’d veered so far off course that it was basically fiction within fiction. When I sent a whiny, desperate email to my then-blogmates, one of my star-plotter friends offered to hop on FaceTime and help me untangle the mess.

That two-hour session changed my writing life. It helped me find my way back to a coherent plot—and showed me that structure isn’t the enemy of creativity. It’s the thing that frees it.

Untangling the mess also meant deleting A LOT of what I’d written, since it basically belonged in another book. Like, a thriller. It also meant I had T-21 days to get this book written with my editor breathing down my neck the whole time. I have vivid memories of sitting in my apartment, surrounded by boxes with only my bed and my internet up and running, racing against time to get this book done.

Did I mention I had a full-time job, too?

I do NOT recommend this level of chaos. It’s not fun, it’s way too stressful–and more importantly, it’s completely unnecessary.

I’ve never started another book without a plotting session since. I have a real framework before I start writing, and I know enough of the major points to keep me moving even when I do get a little off-track, as we often do regardless of how much we plot.

The most important thing I discovered during this exercise was how stubbornly I was clinging to the identity of a pantser. I have an affliction of all-or-nothing thinking, and that was rearing its ugly head here. I learned that Pantsing to Plotting is a spectrum, not an either or. We don’t have to plant a flag on one side or the other and staunchly defend it. We can be some of each. We can lean one way and still do some of the other thing. We can be smack in the middle.

Discovering this blew my mind. It felt like so much freedom.

Over the years, I’ve taken it further. In my Mindful Mystery Writer’s Masterclass, I teach my students how to create a simple, flexible outline that actually supports creativity instead of stifling it.

And–you won’t believe this but I swear it’s true—I recently used Save the Cat Writes a Novel to fully map my next mystery using story beats. It’s the most confident I’ve ever felt stepping into a new project.

I still leave myself a little wiggle room for discovery. But whatever else I have when I open a new Scrivener doc for a new story, I always chart my four main arcs—the victim, the suspects, the secrets and the killer—but I don’t over-engineer. It’s just enough scaffolding to hold the story up while I build.

And yes, I’m still a recovering procrastinator. But I hit my deadlines with far less drama these days. I feel more confident about the books I turn in. And the panic attacks are (usually) a thing of the past.

So—what about you? Are you a pantser, a plotter, or a hybrid somewhere in between? Has it changed over the years? Tell me in the comments—I’m fascinated by this conversation!