Thanks for all the great responses. It's very interesting to see how everyone does it, and how methods vary depending on the writer.
Writing a synopsis as you go is a fantastic approach imo.
I'm an extreme pantser and still do them regularly. Emma Darwin calls these "developmental synopses" thta you write for yourself.
http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2016/07/please-dont-hate-me-for-loving-synopses.html
That was right on point. Interesting to me how different writers who do this do it at different times. I guess I was thinking that I'd do it at the onset, before I wrote one word of text, but I can also see how it would be helpful to do it after you'd already begun--or at the 30K mark?
quoted from your link:
then started writing, and at 30,000 words I paused to take stock and refuel by writing a long synopsis ... and discovered that the events I'd planned so thoroughly for the second half didn't actually lead one to the next at all. I'd used a grid and all sorts of mind-maps and notes to plan, but none of them had revealed this rather disastrous state of affairs. Only when I had to write whole sentences of narrative which did, by their nature, lead one to the next, did it become starkly obvious:
I don't have a clear distinction in my mind between an outline and an informal synopsis (not something polished that you'd send to a publisher, but just a rough description of the events as they occur in the novel). What I've been calling my "outline" is really just a synopsis. I've numbered the paragraphs to correspond roughly to chapters (though where the chapter divisions actually fall isn't that important at this stage). So to see someone say "I can't bear writing an outline but I think I'll write a synopsis" puzzles me, because I don't really see the operative difference. Can you (or anyone) clarify some of the differences as you see them?
ETA: I just went to take a look at my outline, and saw that I had actually called the latest version of the file "new synopsis". So I really have not made a distinction between the two at all!
Maybe the bit I copied and pasted might begin to address your question. As she suggests, I do see how the very nature of sentence structure might aid in coherent, dramatically structured, sequential ideas.
My aversion to what we would call a formal outline, like the ones we had to do in school, is that it seems like it might be, to me, confining. Then again, if we take each bullet point as something on which we must expound, almost as just a prompt, it may offer the same freedom.
A question I had is,
for those who outline or do a synopsis at the start of the process, does it take you a long time (whatever's relatively long) to figure out the plot turns, any of the plot turns? 'Cause I know, for myself, as a pantser, when I've come to a place in the story where I just sensed that something had to happen, either a twist or a bend, or an escalation, just when something has to happen, I can get stuck in those times and have to step away for anywhere from minutes to weeks before the answer comes to me. Have you found this to be true when writing your outline or synopsis?
ETA: Just realized this ? (bolded) could apply to those who do it some time during the writing process. You still have to figure out your story.