Every writer hits the same wall at some point. You sit down, open a blank document, and ask yourself: Do I plan this thing out from start to finish, or do I just write and see where it goes?
It sounds like a simple question. It isn't.
The debate between outlining and pantsing (writing by the seat of your pants) has been going on for as long as writers have gathered to argue about craft. Both camps have produced bestsellers. Both have also produced abandoned manuscripts collecting digital dust in forgotten folders.
So which method actually works? More importantly, which one works for you?
Let's dig into the real problems writers face with each approach, and how to solve them.
What Does "Outlining" Actually Mean?
Outlining gets misunderstood. A lot of writers hear the word and immediately picture a rigid, school-report structure with Roman numerals and sub-bullets going six levels deep. That's one version of it but it's not the only one.
At its core, outlining means knowing where your story is going before you write it. That could mean a one-page summary, a three-act breakdown, a full scene-by-scene document, or even just a list of key plot points on a sticky note.
The real benefit of outlining is that it saves you from structural problems deep into a draft. You don't discover on page 200 that your protagonist has no real reason to do the thing the plot requires her to do. You catch that gap before you type a single sentence of actual prose.
For writers who are trying to self publish a children's book on Amazon, outlining is particularly valuable. Children's books live and die by their story arc. A 32-page picture book or early chapter book has almost no room for meandering. Every scene needs to pull weight, every page turn needs to earn its place. Planning ahead lets you structure the book so the emotional payoff lands exactly where it should.
What Is Pantsing And Why Do People Love It?
"Pantsing" is writing by discovery. You start with a character, a situation, or a single image and you follow it. You don't know what happens next until you write it.
Stephen King is probably the most famous pantser. He's written about this at length: he gives his characters a situation and watches what they do. The story reveals itself. He doesn't plot. He discovers.
The appeal is real. Pantsing feels alive. When you don't know what's coming, neither does the reader and that energy sometimes bleeds onto the page in ways that feel impossible to manufacture. There's a spontaneity to pantsed fiction that outlines occasionally flatten.
But pantsing has a serious problem most writing guides gloss over.
The first draft of a pantsed novel is often a disaster.
Not because the writer isn't talented. But because discovery writing means following every wrong turn, every subplot that goes nowhere, every character who showed up and then had nothing to do. You write your way into corners and have to write your way back out. You get 60,000 words in and realize the real story didn't start until chapter seven.
The Real Problem: It's Not About the Method
Here's where most of the debate goes wrong. Writers get so caught up in defending their preferred approach that they miss the actual issue: the method isn't the problem. Execution is.
Outliners can over-plan and never start. Or they can follow their outline so rigidly that the book feels mechanical, with no room for the story to breathe.
Pantsers can write themselves into structural messes that no amount of revision can untangle. Or they can spend months writing scenes that will never make it into the final book.
The question isn't "which method is better?" The question is: what specific problems are you running into, and which approach helps you solve them?
Solving the Outliner's Core Problem: The Story Feels Stiff
If you're an outliner and your drafts feel lifeless like you're filling in a template rather than telling a story the outline is too tight.
The fix isn't to abandon planning. It's to plan differently.
Try outlining your plot beats but leaving your scenes open. Know that your character needs to confront her mentor in chapter eight. Don't write out the dialogue or the blocking in advance. Leave room for the scene to surprise you when you get there.
You can also try what some writers call a "flexible outline" a document that you treat as a living guide rather than a contract. You're allowed to change it. You're allowed to throw out a plot point that isn't working and replace it with something better. The outline serves the story, not the other way around.
This approach works especially well if you're working with a professional ebook marketing company in the USA to position your book before it publishes. Knowing your story's structure lets you articulate the premise, themes, and target audience clearly all things marketers need upfront to build a campaign that actually sells.
Solving the Pantser's Core Problem: The Messy Draft
Discovery writers often end up with a draft that doesn't quite hold together. The bones are there, but they're scattered. Some are missing. Some are in the wrong body entirely.
This is normal. This is not failure.
The fix is to embrace a two-stage process. Write the messy draft as a pantser. Revise it as an outliner.
After your first draft is done, don't open the document and start editing line by line. Instead, pull back. Create an outline of what you actually wrote. Scene by scene, beat by beat, note what's there. Then look at that outline and ask the structural questions:
-
Where does the real story start?
-
Which subplots pay off, and which ones just fizzle?
-
What's missing from the middle act?
-
Does the ending feel earned given everything that came before?
Now you have a map not of where you planned to go, but of where you actually went. You can see the shape of the thing and figure out what to keep, what to cut, and what needs to be added.
What About Children's Books? Does the Method Change?
Yes and this matters a lot for writers working in this genre.
Children's books operate on extremely compressed timelines. A picture book might be 500 words. An early reader might be 2,000. A middle-grade novel runs 20,000–50,000 words. Every word is doing heavy lifting.
Pantsing a picture book is genuinely difficult. There's so little room that structural missteps aren't just problems they break the whole thing. Most successful picture book writers work with at least a rough outline of the emotional arc before they draft.
That said, pantsing can absolutely work for middle-grade fiction and young adult novels, where there's more room to discover and then revise.
If your goal is to self publish a children's book on Amazon, you'll also want to think beyond the manuscript. Amazon's algorithm rewards books with clear genre positioning, strong metadata, and consistent release schedules. Knowing your story's structure before you write helps you move faster from draft to publication which matters when you're trying to build a catalog and grow a readership.
The Hybrid Approach: The Best of Both Methods
Most working writers, if they're honest, land somewhere in the middle.
They might outline the macro structure, the major turning points, the character arc, the ending and then discover the details as they write each scene. Or they might write a messy first act by the seat of their pants to find out who the characters really are, then outline the rest once they know what they're working with.
The hybrid approach works because it solves the core problem of each extreme:
-
It gives pantsers enough structure to avoid getting completely lost.
-
It gives outliners enough freedom to stay emotionally engaged with the story.
There's no shame in borrowing from both. The goal is to finish a book that works. Nobody who reads it will care whether you outlined chapter three.
Practical Steps to Find Your Method
Stop reading and writing advice designed for someone else. Instead, run a simple experiment:
Project A: Outline a short story 2,000 words. Write a half-page breakdown before you start. Then draft it.
Project B: Write a different short story of the same length with zero planning. Start with a character in a situation and follow them.
When both are done, ask yourself: Which draft felt more natural to write? Which one needs less structural work in revision? Which one did you actually finish?
Your answers will tell you more about your creative process than any article ever could.
Working With Professionals: When Your Method Needs to Adapt
If you're planning to publish professionally especially if you're working with an ebook marketing company in the USA or building a self-publishing business on Amazon you'll eventually need to think about deadlines, series planning, and deliverables.
Pantsing is wonderful for creative discovery. It becomes a problem when you have a release date, a co-author, an editor, or a marketing team waiting on your manuscript. In those contexts, some degree of outlining isn't optional it's professional courtesy.
Even a rough outline shared with a collaborator or editor helps everyone do their job better. It also protects you: if the book needs structural changes, it's far easier (and cheaper) to address them at the outline stage than after you've written 80,000 words.
Writers who self publish a children's book on Amazon and plan a series have an even stronger reason to outline. Knowing where your series is going lets you plant seeds early, build reader loyalty, and avoid writing yourself into corners that will frustrate fans of later books.
So Which Method Produces Better Books?
Neither. And both.
The method that produces a better book is the one that gets the book finished structurally sound, emotionally resonant, and ready for readers.
Some of the finest novels ever written were outlined to the page. Some were discovered one sentence at a time. The common thread isn't the method. It's a writer who understood their own creative process and used it deliberately.
Figure out where you make your best decisions before the draft, during it, or after and build your process around that. That's the only writing advice that will actually help you finish the book.
