Balancing plotting and pantsing as an author with ADHD
This has, BY FAR, been my biggest struggle with writing over the years. I need to have enough of an outline that I don't write myself into a corner, get frustrated, and then never finish the project because I feel like I wasted time and don't want to go back and redo something I've already done. But if I outline too much then I feel like I've already written the story and, again, don't want to go back and redo something it feels like I've already done.
But finding the line between the two? That took YEARS of effort with lots of trial and even more error.
I eventually settled into a system of custom made notecards that I designed myself, and I wanted to take a minute to breakdown how exactly I take those loose notecard outlines and turn them into a book, using the first couple chapters of my book, Camp Daze.
I can't cram the whole chapters of the book into the alt text of the following images, so if you need that (or you just want something a little easier to read) you can get a free PDF of the chapters on my website by scrolling down and clicking the "Read the first two chapters free" button.
Now! Here we go. (If you click the images to enlarge them, then right click and select the option to open the image in a new tab, it'll show you the full-sized versions better!)
On the left you can see the original notecards, and a typed up version of what they say, with color coding that is then used to mark the areas of the outline and how they correspond to the final version of the chapter.
Notice, this outline is VERY short and simple. A handful of bullet points, a few lines of dialogue. Not much else. And the chapter itself has whole huge chunks that aren't in the outline at all! Even the things that did translate over from the outline to the final version did not necessarily translate directly.
I added a whole different opening scene, rather than opening right with the campers getting dropped off like I had originally planned, which was primarily because I wanted to get some important establishing info in that wouldn't have fit elsewhere. Things like Conifer's CB radio, and her dynamic with Marauder when they're not around the kids.
In the original outline, I had Conifer having a much more direct conversation with Cheyenne's mother about the state of the government. But once I started writing I realized it was way too on the nose, way too telling rather than showing. So I reworked things to make Cheyenne's mother military so that Conifer could subtly pick up on things being off instead.
Cheyenne and Conifer's dialogue about Marauder ended up getting broken into two different pieces in the chapter, and changed to accommodate that.
There was also a piece of the outline I didn't end up using at all; them talking more about what the camp session would do. It didn't feel like it fit once I was actually writing, and I had established the basics of it being a survival based session in other ways, so I moved the more specific details into chapter 2 where it felt like they fit better.
For chapter 2, you can see that basically the whole second half isn't in the outline at all.
Chapter 2 was a really tricky chapter because I needed to introduce a lot of characters without it being too overwhelming to the reader, so I wanted to make sure those intros were balanced out with other things. But I wasn't sure how that was going to work out until I started writing said intros, so I just decided to leave the outline vague and see where things went.
The chapter ended up being very important for establishing Cheyenne's character, and her relationships to the other campers. She's a little more experienced, and a little removed from them because of it. That was not something I had planned on, but it worked really well, and that informed how the rest of the chapter turned out! It gave me something to poke at and play with, and to fill out the rest of the chapter with, despite not having been in the original outline. It also let me create some mirrors between her and Conifer, to hint at how their relationship would evolve throughout the story.
I also brought over an unused part of the chapter 1 outline, which involved more specifics of what the campers would be doing their two weeks at Camp Aspen Heart.
Now! If I had been outlining this the way I had been taught in school, it probably would have looked more like this:
Conifer and Marauder are sitting in Conifer's old Ford Bronco while Conifer tries to fix the broken CB radio she installed there. They are waiting for the campers to be dropped off. | Marauder: “Try hitting it again, I’m sure it’ll work this time."
Marauder is teasing and bothering Conifer the whole time, in a friendly way. Conifer isn't sure if she finds Marauder cute or not, but is more focused on her radio anyway.
They discuss why Conifer wants the radio fixed so bad, Marauder calling Conifer paranoid and Conifer not really denying it. | Marauder: “I don’t see why you even need the radio to work. All you pick up on that thing is the rare trucker that detours through the valley. And Jim, that weird dude from town.” | Conifer: “I want it to work because it is supposed to work.”
As they discuss it, Conifer thinks about their isolation at the camp and growing up a survivalist.
Marauder mentions how the papers recently have been talking about escalating tensions around the world.
Etc. Etc. Etc. (Pretend the dialogue here is on a secondary level of bullets, since tumblr doesn't have that sort of formatting.)
There's nothing WRONG with doing an outline that way, but oh BOY does my ADHD not like it. However, without any outline, I might have made it through the first handful of chapters, but I would have eventually stalled out and not finished the book at all.
Outlining the way I do with my custom notecards allows me to have the skeletal structure, but still fill in all the connective tissue and muscle and skin and organs myself. I know the direction I'm going, and the general place I'm trying to end up, but I get to fill in the rest on the fly.
It works REALLY well for my ADHD. And doing it on physical notecards is a big part of it too. If I try to do this on a screen with, say, the digital notecards in Scrivener, it doesn't really work the same because a screen is finite. I can't see my whole plot laid out at once on a screen. And, thanks again to the ADHD, if I can't see it it's not real. But physical notecards on a desk? I can see all of those! And I can move them without fighting with a program that has parameters created by someone else.
The outline for Camp Daze was done on just regular old notecards, but the system has evolved a lot since then. I now have a custom set of notecards that's color coded with seven different card types which I print myself and use for plotting my books. Instead of cramming everything onto one card (the outline of the chapter, random dialogue, random ideas that don't fit in a specific spot of the outline, etc.) I instead have different card types for each thing. This means I can shuffle and move things around even MORE than I could before! The new system looks like this:
Look at that color coding! Glorious color coding. It makes the world go round. The tan cards are the scene/chapter outlines, blue is character info cards, yellow is important items, red is settings, purple is random ideas, green is dialogue, and the orange one is the key card for even MORE color coding that changes per project.
Now when I start a project, I tend to scribble out a bunch of the color cards, and a few tan cards, then lay those out in a vague order. From there I start filling in the gaps. Basically, I outline non-linearly, then write linearly. Means my ADHD brain can jump around to its heart's content while things are getting set up, then I have a loose guide for the actual writing so that I don't get bored with it, and I've still got plenty of room to flesh things out and discover new aspects of the story as I go. Pretty frequently, the outline will get shuffled a bit more as things go on, especially once I start editing, but I'll always have some form of outline there.
So yeah! That's my system for finding a balance between plotting and pantsing that works well with my ADHD. If you want to know more about the custom cards, I'm funding them on Kickstarter until April 4th, 2026 right now! You can get a digital print-at-home version for yourself, or you can get a physical pack of the cards.
If this breakdown is something you found interesting and you'd like to see more, let me know! I can do it for the first 2-3 chapters of some of my other books too, if anyone wants.
