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To outline or not to outline? (versus freeform)

katfeete

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Do you have any practical examples of when one has worked better than the other or thoughts on this in general? Specifically, on turning outlines into chapters without just throwing a bunch of extra words around the outline? Or -- gasp -- tackling a chapter without an outline.

My first novel was completely freeform, no outline, and it was terrible. The characters were great and people loved them, but the setting was paper-thin, the plot had more holes than swiss cheese, and the story flowed like a Jeep with square wheels going down the stairs.

My second novel I outlined and it was a completely new and different kind of terrible. It was a much more coherent book, but I hated nearly every minute of writing it. It was a good outline! Solid! Sensible! I spent ages on it! And trying to get my writer-brain to write anything like the plan -- and I'm not talking minor deviations, I'm talking anything in the same continent -- was reminiscent of wrestling a wet anaconda, and I was so focused on winning that fight I, well, I lost everything else. The end result held together in a way my first novel hadn't, but my first novel was alive and people enjoyed it for all its flaws. The second... was dead. Even I got bored reading it.

My third and fourth novels I also outlined, but my writer-brain had had enough by then and both ground to a halt around 50-60k and refused to move further. I got burned out and switched to writing a webcomic. At first, it was completely, gloriously freeform, but gradually I started to figure out planning methods that actually worked for me, and I applied those to my current WIP.

Currently I do a very, very loose outline, nothing like a chapter-by-chapter, bullet point plan, more a series of hooks to hang my hat on. Dan Wells's Seven Point Story Structure is what I started with and still use to an extent; I also found John P. Murphy's Two Body Plot structure a really useful guide for the kind of mystery I wanted to write. I note out the stuff I know has to happen -- this is when they find the body, this is when they reveal the murderer -- match those up with the appropriate bits of Wells's method, flesh out the other points, and call it good. That's it, that's my outline. Time to write!

(And even then about half the seven points get ditched by the time I've done the first draft, which itself will be so terribly messy that it barely resembles the next one. But then I also write first drafts in longhand and write out of order so I am basically the POSTER CHILD for inefficient writing methods.)

The lesson to take away from this -- and a lot of other folks have made this point, but I'll just say it again -- is the proper method of outlining or planning your book is the one that works for you. People have differently shaped writer-brains, and the only real way to find out what shape you've got is to try lots of things and see what sticks.

Good luck!