One more question....is it wise to outline your novel or just jump right in?

Only one way to find out -- jump in!

Seriously, though, everyone works differently. I like having a loose outline. Other people write by the seat of their pants. Still others write very detailed outlines. Try several approaches to see what you're more comfortable with. And don't forget to have fun!

i wrote a synopsis/outline and filled a 5 subject notebook. i also drew maps, made character sketches and profiles, jotted notes in the margin,etc. It helped to ripen the story for me, so i thought about it constantly. When i began writing, it exploded from me, and not once did i have to stop because i was stuck. i did improvise on a lot of things, but overall i feel its beneficial to know what you want before you go in.

I agree with arodriguez. One time I leapt in and after 25000 words found I was way over my head, had to go back and reoutline (almost filled a notebook) and rewrite. Lots of pain!
Outline! You'll be done with rough draft in one month instead of five.

(Though I completely understand your eagerness to start! I'm always so impatient! But it's worth it to wait...)

What works best for one person, won't necessarily work well for someone else. I mull over a storyline for quite awhile before I begin and have a general idea of how I'm going to tell my story but I can't outline or I lose interest and don't feel like writing it. Others do very detailed outlines before they start to write. You might try a small outline just to get you into your story and then see where your characters take you. Often they develop a mind of their own and take you to places you never planned to go, which to me, is half the fun.
Linnea

It really depends on what works for you. You might have to try it both way until you know what you like.

I can't imagine writing from a complete outline. I have two or three possibilities ahead in mind as I write. I start with a premise (a what-if or a how-would-they-deal) and go. I like to listen and hear where to go next. Yes, I have rewriting, but all writers do to some degree and I don't mind rewriting. It works for me.

The only way to know is to try. We debate this continuously and there really isn't a magic answer. There are many different styles of outlining and planning and the only way to know which works for you is to try.

If you get in and get stuck, well, back up and take another run at it.

ETA: and I think you can tell which sort I am from my siggie line. I write enormous detailed outlines.

Don't listen to anyone who tells you what to do. There's no right answer to this question except to do what works for you. How do you know what works for you? Do what feels right. If that doesn't work, try the other thing. If you can't decide, maybe jot down a loose outline that you don't think will suffocate you, but so you'll at least have some idea of where you want to go. Then next time go more or less in-depth as appropriate for you.

As for myself, the first few novels I tried to write, I outlined pretty extensively. I had chapter summaries, notes, etc., but I never got down to the actual writing. The desire was gone for me. I can't do outlines. The only novel I've actually finished so far and been satisfied with is the one I jumped right into with no specific plan. I write best by the seat of my pants.

But there are others who need an outline. I can't have one. To me, it'd be the death of my story to try to outline it.

Just do what feels most right to you. If you want to jump right in, go for it. If you get stuck, then you just learned more for next time, and next time you can try a more planned approach.

I'd join in on this thread, but I left my flame-retardant twenty-foot pole on the other forum.

I would humbly submit to you, though, that if it feels natural, do it. And if not, don't.

The 'outline vs. spontaneity' debate looks like it has been with us - and on this forum - since the dinosaurs.
Search around on this site and you'll find lots of answers - and most of them saying that some people work better with outlines, and others just swim along with the tide.
You'll have to try it out yourself to see which side of the debate you fit in with.
Good luck!

start writing and see what happens. If at any point you feel you would benefit from an outline, stop and outline.
We can't tell you what is going to work best for you, only you know that.

I'm a by-the-seat person, so outlining doesn't work for me. I've tried it. If I outline, what i think I want a character to do is not at all what they should be doing. I don't find out until I write it. I like it that way. It feels more natural to me.

You have to find a way that works best for you. I've been experimenting with outlines because I've had a lot of problems with setting up the story. I just started writing with the last one and ended up doing many, many time consuming revisions to fix all the problems that caused.

But I've also always had trouble with outlines. Some of them are far too rigidly structured for me, like the index card outline, and others are too chaotic, like the snowflake outline. I even tried the Marshall Plan (a step-by-step book by Evan Marshall), but I discovered that really didn't work for me either. He does his subplots quite differently than I do, and every time I hit a subplot section, I ran into so much trouble I ended up stalling out.

So I've been experimenting with James Rollins' method. He took his favorite author, which was Michael Critchton, and used one of his books as an outline. If a character died in MC's Chapter 3, a character died in JR's Chapter 3. If a major turning point occurred, JR did a major turning point.

jasperd said:

Is it wise to outline your novel or just jump right in?

Click to expand...

Answer: YES.

Whichever works for you. For me, JUMP RIGHT IN is the only way I can do it. It's an individual preference. You have to find whichever one works for you. Or maybe you can find a balance between the two. There is no YES/NO answer. No absolutes.

Couldn't one be accused of plagiarism if one copied the format or outline of someone else's story? I've been tempted to copy the general outline of several novels that I really liked, but felt it was 'cheating' and too obvious. Given than there is a limit to story lines and plots, etc., writers often re-hash things written before, but how much can/should one follow others' ideas, even with completely new characters, settings, etc?

I don't think the example suggested to copy the story outline completely. Just the flow and timing. ???

Ok. I didn't mean copying the plot in its entirety; rather the general idea. Being more specific, after reading Banville's "The sea", I'd really like to write my OWN version, my own memoirs of my childhood summers set in a seaside village (NOT in Ireland). The characters would be completely different, but I would like to have a dual theme of haunting childhood memories and some other loss/tragedy/mystery. Maybe I'm being overly ambitious to think I could ever write anything remotely on a par with J.B.!

KTC said:

Answer: YES.

Whichever works for you. For me, JUMP RIGHT IN is the only way I can do it. It's an individual preference. You have to find whichever one works for you. Or maybe you can find a balance between the two. There is no YES/NO answer. No absolutes.

Click to expand...

This.

Everyone's different. KTC may jump right in. Others may research and outline.

Personally, I'm an outliner. But I start with a general frame (a synopsis, more or less), and only fill in the details at the beginning of each new chapter.

When I first started out, I tried jumping in. The result was a mess, but it taught me a good deal about myself and my approach to writing. As long as you're willing to stick it out, I don't think you can lose either way.

I've done it both ways[/double entendre] and like every one else says, you have to do what feels right for you.

Personally, I've found that outlining has given me the confidence that I actually have a plot that works (i.e. A leads to B leads to C), so that as I write it, I know where I'm going. I also know that some mystery/thriller writers find big benefits from outlining from the outset because it helps them work out where they're going to place their clues (although note that there are also others who write without outlining first and then re-work as needs be during the editing process).

As someone else has said, the problem with outlining is that it can take away some of the spontaneity that comes from the actual writing process. The way I've tried to resolve that is to leave deliberate holes in the text, which I can flesh out when I get to that point (e.g. I might have a bit in my outline that says: "Bob finds out that Alice has been lying" which tells me that I need to deal with the revelation that Alice is a liar but gives me scope as to how Bob finds out and what he does when he discovers that fact).

My own take is that much of it depends on what kind of writer you are - e.g. do you start with a character or a situation or do you start with an idea? As a sweeping generalisation (that has no scientific evidence to support it at all), I wonder if people who start with a character find it more useful to just plunge straight into the writing so they can see how that character develops on the page and where s/he takes them whereas people who start with a situation or idea find it easier to sketch out in advance where they want to go with it. I'm throwing that up for discussion purposes rather than trying to claim it's a hard and fast rule.

MM

If you have the slightest notion that outlining stifles creativity, you may want to avoid it since it may well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As many have mentioned, you have to find what works best for you. Even though I don't outline now, I think your premise about it (stifling creativity) is total crap. It may lasso some people, but it never did that for me. And I'll still jot down ideas if I get in a sticky spot in a story.

Also, outlining and research are two very different animals. Doing the latter doesn't automatically include the former.

There are as many answers to how to write a story as there are stories. It varies not only from writer to writer, but from story to story. The novels I've written so far I haven't outlined. I prefer to go by the seat of my pants, but that's not to say my next story won't need an outline. It just might. And if it does, then that's what I'll do.

I didn't read every response here, but I hope you found that you received as many different answers as there were people who responded.

Trial and error. One of the greatest things about writing is that there is no one right way to do it.

I found the method that works best for me this way. I jumped right in and just wrote and wrote and wrote. It wasn't working. I found writing forums and read what others did. I tried a few of their methods and found aspects in several of them that worked for me and combined them into a style and routine of my own.

It helps me tremendously to outline. I love the research I do while planning a story. Outlining helps me keep the big things in line. That said, I'm not obsessive about following my outline perfectly. That's where spontaneity and inspiration come in. Inspiration, I've found, comes after you start writing.

Then, I write my first drafts by hand. I was completely against this in the beginning because my hands would hurt. But, a respected writer on another website convinced me of the benefits of doing this. I can type quickly. Almost as quickly as I think. When you're typing that quickly, your brain doesn't have time to mull over the original thought, which is usually not the best way to go. By the time a thought has had time to go from your brain to your hand to the paper, your brain has time to mull it over a bit and, most often, your third or fourth version of that thought ends up being the better version. It's made me a better a writer and caused me to edit a lot less. I use my computer to edit and rewrite.

But, again, this is all personal opinion and what works best for me.

I almost always develop some sort of outline because the idea that forms the germ for the story is usually not complete. I have to work through all the ins and outs that become the plot, if only to make sure there IS a story to be told.

Once the outline appears to be complete I begin writing. And every time I've found holes or opportunities that I missed the first time around. I've started with 5 or 6K outlines, complete with chapters, scenes, even some bits of conversation. Makes the writing process easier for me.

Hope that makes sense.

I'm an outliner myself, but a book I like a lot is James Scott Bell's Plot and Structure. In one chapter, he takes up the issue of outlining and, like most folks here, he acknowledges that different people need different ways of working. Still he urges those who hate outlines to at least do two things ahead of time.

First, be sure you have a lead character with an objective. Name those two things and then name the conflict that's keeps the character from reaching that objective. Then know what fabuously exciting ending scene you want to reach.

Second, write what sounds like the back cover copy for your book, a few paragraphs that excite your own interest and maybe that of some friends you try them out on. Say there are three paragraphs. The first one says something like "So and so is a San Francisco bookseller who specializes in historical novels." You give the character's background and normal world. The second paragraph starts with something like "suddenly" or "but when" and you shove your character into action and give a couple more sentences. The last paragraph maybe starts with "now" and gives action the character must undertake. Or perhaps it starts with "will" and asks some questions.

If you do those two things, you may have enough to start with.

Is it a new month already? These outline/wing it debates always creep up on me so fast!

But yeah, whatever works for you. I have a very general outline for my current WIP, but the story has already morphed into something completely unrecognizable.