Are You A Plotter Or A Pantser?

I'm sure that many of us have different ways of writing. Some write to music. Others to silence. Some do well with a deadline. Others love the "whooshing" sound that deadlines make as they fly past. Some of us write by hand. Some by typewriter. Most by computer. Some of us write chronologically. Others write important scenes out of order and then tie them together.

But the greatest distinction of all is between plotters and pantsers and, at some point, each of us has done both.

For those of you who are not writers, plotters are writers who meticulously outline their drafts, do all of their research beforehand, have copious notes organized in a manner that is intuitive to them, and then proceed to write exactly what they've planned. Pantsers are those of us who do a bit of quick organization and then jump right in. Notes are jotted down as we reach the point where we needed them five pages back. We may keep tabs on things -- especially when we're doing fantasy world-building -- but our wikis, notebooks, or whatever are filled out on the go. We look at our outlines more as opening bids than ironclad commitments and have been known to completely change the ending of the story three or four times before we actually write it out.

Plotters abhor our chaotic method. And, in a lot of ways, they are right to. Several times I've developed a series in my head and sworn I was going to get all of the world-building done in advance only to open up Word and be twenty pages in before I realized I hadn't done an outline yet.

So, which are you? Which would you prefer to be if you could choose?

-- G.K.