Pantser verses plotter and what’s in the middle

Blogging from my oh so glorious day job again today. Today is all about the basics- how do you craft your stories? I’m at a spot where I am editing/doing triage on my steampunk while getting ready/starting my newest book.

And I’m wondering just what in the heck I’m doing.

I’ve done five books so far (two in one series, the rest are separate series). And each book has come together slightly differently. My first two were done in fits and starts over a long time as I slowly admitted I really was a writer (denial wasn’t pretty, but it took a while to admit it). The next one was done with a heavy start via NaNoWriMo. That was interesting and actually worked well for the pace of that book. It’s my SF book and the fast pace that resulted from a speed "bones version" from NaNo worked. But I did end up with a few dumped sections. The other two were done slightly different, but still pure pantser with clean-up on aisle 6 afterwards.

As I’m working through cleaning up the steampunk book for submission I’m asking myself if my purely pantser MO is really working. I like it because if I know too much about a story ahead of time, I lose the “need” to keep writing to find out what happened. I also like the wild directions that can pop up with a pantser style.

But clean up is a biatch.

So my new book is sitting there in “notes” form while ideas come to me, but I’m focusing on the editing of the steampunk book. But I think I’m going to do something radical and partially ONLY partially mind you outline this new book. I want to keep the freedom of pantser, but have a bit more planning so I’m not doing such heavy lifting after the book is done.

My question to all of you is- how do you do it? Pantser? Plotter? Combo? Have a good way for a pantser to ease into a more guided story? Any hints, tips, ideas are most welcome!