How Long Does It Take You To Outline?

Probably only about a day, once I've mulled it over for several months. My outline is actually just brief 'suggestions' for scene development. Mostly I note what I'm trying to accomplish in a scene and then let the characters do their thing to get there. I feel somewhat strangled if I write a detailed outline so have to keep it very loose.

I don't know how long it takes. When I first start out, I start with one or two chapters to get me started. As the story develops, I add to it until I have everything worked out and then I plot through a close to the end as I can. And sometimes I add new chapters along the way so I try to separate chapters with squiggly lines instead of numbers.

When I get ready to plot through the end, I'm sure it takes a few hours, I'll usually work on it off and on throughout the day.

Each chapter's summary varies...bouncing back and forth between vague and detailed. Sometimes I don't know yet what I need to write so I'll just say, "So and so acknowledges the events of the last chapter and does a happy dance." Though when I get there I may change happy dance to pity party. Or leave out details that I previous set out to include, but the scene changed and I didn't need them anymore.

Still, I love having an outline, it keeps me focused and on track and helps me write faster.

However, I usually spend about a week making notes in general, sometimes two. Plot notes, scene ideas, character bios, sketches, and interviews, and this last time I drew a map and some other stuff and wrote up a quick dictionary of the Greek words that were going to show up in the story. All this gets thrown randomly into a composition book so I can take to work and sneak in bits of writing here and there. It's all quite unorganized. I have several pages of random notes in the middle of my outline. Nothing is numbered of lettered except for the chapter headings right now, which is messy because I'm adding to it as I go.

I used to rewrite my outlines as they changed, but that takes too much time. I rather just squeeze the changes in the margins and mark stuff out.

Outlines...hate them and love them at the same time. I used to be a big outliner a couple years back, but when I finished my novels, the plot, the characters were rigid and way too predictable. There is a method I had come up with (not really sure anyone can apply use it in their own work, but I have grown to like it).

The novel starts in my head with an idea. This grows into a scene, which of course begets more scenes. After months and months of playing these scenes over and over, watching them change as new ideas stomp out the old ones, I'm ready to write. This is when I start the outline, but I never write it down. I have vague ideas of what will happen each chapter (it keeps the worrying side of me from freaking out and thinking there won't be enough to write), and that is my outline. It's a weird way to outline, but so far, it has been working.