Can You Be A Non-Fiction Pantser?

tyunglebower ♦ July 2, 2025 ♦ Leave a comment

In the world of fiction writing, you’ll often encounter the terms “pantser” and “plotter.” have used them myself on this website before. To remind those who may not know, the former refers to someone who prefers to write without a plan or outline, just flying by “the seat of their pants,” hence the term.

As you can imagine the other term refers to those who make outlines or otherwise chart out the nature of their work before they start, so they can follow this as a guide.

You can imagine many writers fall somewhere in-between.

I tend to be on the plotter side of things, though I do not always have an official outline to follow. (My next novel does happen to have an outline to work from however.)

There are not “plots”per se in non-fiction, though certain history books and memoirs can be written according to a quasi-plot. (Think Capote’s In Cold Blood.)

In that sense, one can be a plotter of sorts as a non-fiction author.

But can one be a pantser for non-fiction?

In technical terms, yes. In practical terms, no.

Anything that can be written can of course be written by the seat of one’s pants. Just dive in and type what comes to you about the subject you plan to address. If you have a subject, in which case you are in stream-of-consciousness territory, which one could argue is the only bona fide way to be a non-fiction pantser.

As a rule however, one should have a destination in mind when writing non-fiction of any length. A theme, or a fact, something you know you are working towards, and in the very least a rough idea of the means to get there. This can and does change in the course of writing, but you are not winging it here; you are following map and deciding on a detour.

Sure, one can pants a non-fiction piece and revise it to perfection later on, just as one would the draft of a novel. But unlike a novel, where truths can be scattered in the confusion and brought back into the fold in whatever way a writer chooses, a haphazard approach to the facts of non-fiction written without a plan just dumps mud in the water.

The temptation is to conflate impromptu pants-writing with genius, or passion. The words just pouring out of your brain.

“How astute you are!”

But unless you state in some fashion, “I had no outline at all for the book your are about to read,” nobody is going to know how much you planned ahead for the idea, and how much just came to you. And to mention this would strangle most readers with the utter pretentious of the thought.

And since you are going to be editing and revising your piece multiple times, (you will be, right?) there will be little evidence of your pantsing anyway. We tend to accept that about fiction..the author’s meticulous calculations of craft and prose to conjure an excellent story. But with non-fiction, particularly of the persuasive kind, we treat planning like a numbing agent, when in reality it is the fertilizer that nourishes our work.