Do you consider outlining writing?

NealM said:

This is (I think) what I was getting at by posing the original question. I'm a work/craft everyday guy, but not a WRITE everyday guy. And I wonder if that's a disservice to myself. I've been in the outlining stage for weeks now, and in that time I haven't had anything like a serious WRITING session. When I finally do get into "CHAPTER 1 - It was a dark and stormy night..." will my prose be stilted for a little while because I haven't been exercising the ole writing muscle? Should I be trying to bang out prose on something - anything - just to stay sharp while I'm outlining?

As others have pointed out, the answer will be different for everybody depending on your personality, skills, and what works for you. But that's why we ask questions and have conversations, right? To learn from others and maybe pick up a piece of wisdom we can insert into our own process.

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If you have finished projects before then spending more time on the set-up may not be a bad thing. If you (this all general you, btw) are someone who starts projects but doesn't finish or who start projects and feels like the prose is inadequate, then I would encourage you to spend some of the pre-writing time on actual writing. If you are someone who has never written a book before but is spending weeks or months on the outline/character sketches/etc, I would say write for a bit instead of all the prep work because chances are you're procrastinating.

But, some folks find they can't write something until they know how it will go. So, YMMV. But all the preparation in the world will not help you if you don't actually start working on the story itself - word by word, page by page. Again, the prep work and the writing are related, but they aren't the same thing. And no amount of preparation will actually take the place of writing the book (or story, if you're writing shorter stuff).

I find that outlining the plot helps me see the entire story - which is something I prefer before going elbows deep in the writing. When I take a ride on my motorcycle (especially a lengthy one) I like to know where I'm going before I leave - sometimes that need is more or less specific, it depends on the circumstances.

I have the plot outline for my next novel pretty much done; there's a little more combing to do, but I'm close. Plotting in this case has (hopefully) saved me from doing tons of editing on the back end. Over the course of the outline characters have been added and deleted, and relationships between them have been strengthened or weakened. During this phase I've also eliminated a lot of the story; a lot of the sidebars were unnecessary and turned out to be distracting.

Outlining serves a purpose, sure. But there's really at no point that the outline just turns into a book. Just like, well, having a map of where you're going is not the same as actually riding a motorcycle there. You may (or may not) be able to do the second without doing the first, but they are not interchangable acts. Plotting and mapping and preparing for a journey is not the same as making the journey. And, for many folks, the plotting and preparing *is* a form of procrastination - whether they recognize it or not.

One of my longest books had no outline for the vast majority of it. (I did have a project outline and still have a rough outline for book two.) I've also written detailed outlines for short stories. It just depends on what the project needs. But outlining or not never replaces writing the story. Ever. Because they just aren't the same skill. And if outlining is what helps you get to writing the story, then by all means, that's what you should do. But if all you (again, general you) is outline you won't just wake up one morning and have a novel.

I know a number of writers of fiction and non fiction who start with an outline, but increasingly add details to that outline, to the point that the outline becomes the first draft.

This is fairly common in non-fiction, to the point that it's an official requirement for some technical publications, and it's not rare for fiction.

yes, as AWA says above... my chapters start in bullet point and gradually flesh out.

I don't do overarching outlines and I don't write chapters sequentially, but I still almost always begin with a list of events and notes, which then morph into paragraph headers, which then accrue more details, and so on.

Does it cease to be an outline past a certain point of detail?_? It seems an unhelpful distinction to me. In my head I regard my outlines as a kind of draft, and everything after is just editing or revising.

But then I'm not published or close to it, so weigh that input accordingly.

Aggy B. said:

Outlining serves a purpose, sure. But there's really at no point that the outline just turns into a book. Just like, well, having a map of where you're going is not the same as actually riding a motorcycle there. You may (or may not) be able to do the second without doing the first, but they are not interchangable acts. Plotting and mapping and preparing for a journey is not the same as making the journey. And, for many folks, the plotting and preparing *is* a form of procrastination - whether they recognize it or not.

One of my longest books had no outline for the vast majority of it. (I did have a project outline and still have a rough outline for book two.) I've also written detailed outlines for short stories. It just depends on what the project needs. But outlining or not never replaces writing the story. Ever. Because they just aren't the same skill. And if outlining is what helps you get to writing the story, then by all means, that's what you should do. But if all you (again, general you) is outline you won't just wake up one morning and have a novel.

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I completely agree that outlining, like planning travel, is not the same as taking the ride or writing a book. The point of all this discussion I believe is that we should each do our own thing. As Bruce Lee famously said: Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.

With my background in engineering I tend to be a compulsive planner. Outlining gives me the 10,000 ft. view, allowing me to get the long view of the story and avoid falling down a (dead end) rabbit hole along the way. It also helps me figure out where to start, which is something that's difficult for me. I need to find that loose thread to pull that will allow the entire story to unravel. Again though, this is my way - your mileage may vary.

Harlequin said:

I don't do overarching outlines and I don't write chapters sequentially, but I still almost always begin with a list of events and notes, which then morph into paragraph headers, which then accrue more details, and so on.

Does it cease to be an outline past a certain point of detail?_? It seems an unhelpful distinction to me. In my head I regard my outlines as a kind of draft, and everything after is just editing or revising.

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The projects where I've extensively used outlines, the outline goes into the draft document and then, as chapters are written, parts of the outline are deleted until there's only the draft left. (Obviously, this happens in a document separate from the original outline, just in case.)

In my experience outlines are like a second cousin to a synopsis, but usually include world-building notes that wouldn't show up in the synopsis variation. Once you start adding dialog, internalization, and narrative, it ceases to be an outline.

When I was in film school doing screenplay work we would sometimes have outlines for projects where the outline was 1/3 the size of the screenplay. But it still wasn't the screenplay. And the work of turning that 30+ pages into a screenplay required more than just slowly adding details.

However, everyone's method is different. If you find you can just add more and more and more detail and suddenly have a draft of a book, then that's what you should do. I've met more than a few folks who get stuck in that "adding more details to the outline" stage and never produce a book, and therefore, as a general rule I cannot recommend it. (That's my major concern here. I've met a lot of people who are waiting on the outline or the research or the world-building to be perfect before they write that first page of the book. And they spend years working and still never write the book because all the "source material", if you will, is never perfect enough. So, to me, telling folks that writing the outline is the same as writing the book... it's an exception, rather than a rule.)

I also suspect that even for folks who flesh out the outline until they have a draft, there is a point where most would - if they really thought about it - recognize a shift in the way they are approaching the material that leads them from "really detailed summary" into "narrative prose".

Aggy, seen many a world-building binder in her day

AW Admin said:

I know a number of writers of fiction and non fiction who start with an outline, but increasingly add details to that outline, to the point that the outline becomes the first draft.

This is fairly common in non-fiction, to the point that it's an official requirement for some technical publications, and it's not rare for fiction.

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I kind of do this. After having a lot of luck with first piece I wrote using the Matt Stone/Trey Parker scene progression method, I've been using that for larger work, too. So I start with a high-level outline, basically a synopsis of the whole planned book. I put that into Scrivener and come up with maybe 8-10 chapter synopses. (These chapters may end up being decomposed into several chapters later, but I tend to work out chapter breaks at the end of the process.) Then, I open the first in corkboard mode and create a synopsis of the first scene*, then the next, etc., all the way through the end of the book. Realistically, it takes several weeks (part-time, since I've a day job), but once I'm done, I have a detailed scene-level synopsis of the whole book. It's improved my pacing tremendously, and writing is a lot easier for me when I don't have to stop every half-hour and ask myself WTF happens next.

That said, I still have middle-of-the-book doldrums, when I realize I've forgotten something important and need to unweave a whole chunk of the outline to make it work. (I just finished doing that, as it happens.) But it's still saving me time and improving my writing in the long run. I mean, I may not be good yet, but I'm definitely better than I was.


*For instance, here's the first corkboard scene synopsis from the novel I'm working procrastinating on right now:
Alone in the woods at night, a dying girl watches a star fall...until it turns on the landing jets and turns out to be something else entirely. It lands nearby, piquing her interest. (Describe forest, namecheck {antagonist}, introduce cutlery.)

No. I only consider adding words to a WIP writing. I call that other stuff 'WIP support' and I don't consider it writing. (I work on several projects at a time so that even when I'm doing support work I'm still writing as I define it 'every' day.


(I'm currently writing every day, but I hope to get comfortable writing 5 days a week)

My original draft included rough chapters and outline notes for the parts I wanted but hadn't written. For me, because I lack experience, sometimes getting a chapter written is easy and sometimes it's downright painful. My initial draft had lots of outlined parts where the chapters were harder to write.

Here's an example of dialogue that is actually an outline for what will be in the chapter:

Scene at the forest house before they return to the Preserves:

You sure there are no cams?
Of course there aren’t cams.
What if someone installed them, for blackmail or something?
Couldn’t happen. This place has alarms, anyone gets past the gate and security would be here. They aren’t on site but they are close enough to respond within a couple minutes.

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I wrote that out to come back to it later and decide if I wanted to write the scene or not. That is not how the dialogue will actually go, rather that is my version of outlining. I'm afraid of forgetting my ideas so if I'm working on another part of the story, I scribble the ideas down and come back to the notes later.

I wouldn't say outlining is the same as writing pages of the first draft any more than I'd say editing the first draft is the same as outlining, etc. But I don't really think too much about such categorizations, either. For the most part, I just "work on it" until it's done.

I consider any part of the process writing

It all comes back to opinion, doesn't it? I don't consider outlining writing. IMO writing is adding words to my current novel and editing or revising the wip. I have no argument with those who believe otherwise.

For me personally, if I were to consider outlining and brainstorming to count as writing, I'd just do that all the time, and never write any actual sentences. In fact, between my late teens and early thirties, when I was trying to do too much else besides write and hadn't yet found effective workarounds for my ADD, I outlined literally dozens of novels, but only wrote a couple thousand words a year (on average—some years I might have done 10,000, other years I did zip). I need to set goals of actual words written in the form of sentences and paragraphs that would make sense to another person. Outlining and brainstorming are separate from that; they come far more easily, like a natural function of my brain, so I don’t have to set aside times or goals for them.

You all make very good points. Personally, I consider the outlining process to be writing, but I find that it's even better writing if it actually translates to a finished product. That doesn't mean you're a bad person if you don't actually write the book or screenplay or whatever. I mean, I've got several ideas, but only a few finished outlines and even fewer works that I've begun from said outlines.