To outline or not to outline? (versus freeform)

I love outlining and planning. Typically, I write a blurb about the plot and then I briefly outline each intended chapter with a few bullet points. I often will be struck by a new plot point while I write so I go back and adjust the outline as needed. That worked quite well for the first novel I wrote.

I'm writing a sequel now and I attempted the above. About three chapters in, I went completely off script where the outline I had created became useless, so I re-outlined, went off script again and that new outline didn't work anymore either. So, I guess I'm opting for a more "freeform" writing this time. It hasn't hindered my writing at all yet but I'm considering re-outlining again so I have some direction. I'm a little worried about not having any idea of where I'm going.

You have to find the process that works best for you.

Some writers are staunch outliners, others are discovery writers, for whom any sort of outline kills their creativity stone dead. Others adopt a hybrid approach.

I need a more organised process, but I have learnt putting too much effort into an outline does not pay off. In short order something in what I have written takes me off at a tangent, though I do subsequently lightly outline for the new offshoot, so I have a sense of where I am going and how it should tie in with my ending.

IMHO whether you are an outliner or a pantser, I think it would be well to have an ending in mind, before you commit to putting the first scene on the page, though dyed in the wool discovery writers likely would not agree. I also prefer to have a sense of the middle ground as well.

I think I would repeat that it depends on what works best for you. You will only discover that with practice. For the moment, if you are overwhelmed with outlines, just keep the stuff for the opening scenes to hand and try not to think about the rest, which will otherwise make the prospect of starting your project daunting.

It might also serve to arm yourself with a metaphorical two by four, so that when your internal editor tells you what you have just written is crap, you can tell it to make itself scarce. Bad writing can be fixed in later drafts.

Maryn said:

What I see happen to those who have master plans is that they always are able to write (although sometimes the writing isn't good and they know it) because they know what happens next. They reach the end. Along the way, they get new ideas that are better than what's in the plan (which feels pantser-like, to me); they can stop, make a copy of the plan, change the copy to reflect the new idea, start to finish, and continue following the new plan, making earlier changes the new idea requires on the part already written during the second draft.

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Maryn, you just described my writing process pretty accurately. As a chronic outliner who re-outlines at least ten times per novel, I've found two main benefits to working from a fairly detailed plan:
1. I almost always know what I intend to write next, which helps reduce blockages so I can keep making progress every day, and
2. I know from the start what the big payoff at the end will be.

That said... It's so important to keep evaluating "what happens next" to avoid predictability. Just because the outline has Plot Point A, followed by B and C, doesn't mean that I have to write C when I reach that point. I often find myself sitting down to write C and then deciding, at that moment, that D or M or Q works better and isn't what the reader would be expecting. At that point my original outline becomes outdated, I pants it for a chapter, then mess with the outline to see where this new development takes me. Usually I do this without moving the final goalpost. However, in my current WIP (second round of edits just finished), I completely reimagined the ending halfway through as the story started to pull in a new direction. On this project I have probably followed the outline about 60% of the time.

So: Plan the trip, but always be willing to go offroad.

I think that you need to have some amount of both, you can't be 100% freeform (because then you can't set up anything for payoffs later if you don't know what's going to happen) or 100% outlined (how you think of a story as an outline isn't the same way a reader is going to think of it as they read, and that difference can be jarring). But the ratios of the two (and your process of doing it) is going to be unique to you and your style, your strengths and weaknesses, and even what fits best for the project in question.

For me, I usually start with a scene/setting/theme/trope etc. For this one fanfic, I wanted to write a relationship about these two characters, with a specific relationship trope/theme, in a slightly different setting than canon. With those things in mind I was able to sorta "run" the story in my head visually; some scenes were highly specific and I knew exactly what emotions or information I wanted to convey and others were to just move things from point A to point B. Then I wrote down a synopsis which was a couple hundred words. I think I have a good handle of knowing when chapters should end intuitively, so I was able to have a "goal" in mind per chapter, but there was a lot of wiggle room to move things around if something felt more natural or would work better as I was writing it. That project was 37k (+4k of extra stuff that I ended up writing that didn't fit anywhere else, but I posted it as a sort of deleted scenes since I was the only person writing for that ship at the time lol. Wanted to give more content to the fans).

I've tried being that loosey-goosey with longer works and it doesn't work out for me. For my novel I used the 40 index cards system that scriptwriters used and those are my chapters at this point (will probably tweak in editing), so every chapter has the "goal" of that beat (learn this info, get that thing, meet this character), and then each chapter has scenes or sub-goals written out (chapter I just finished was the character being in/out of consciousness, her finally waking up, and then these other characters talking to her) and then each of those sub-things have additional info that I need or want to have (someone has to find her woken up, this is their interaction, this is how she feels about this situation) and they have checkboxes next to them, and I check them off as I go. But sometimes I end up doing none of those things, or a sub-goal is so vague I end up doing something totally different than I had thought of at outlining since it felt more natural. This is a big project (probably going to be 200k) and there's a lot of characters, world building, info to tell the reader, info character A has but character B doesn't...if I pantsed the whole thing it would be a total mess. I have ADHD so I need structure to know what direction I'm going and to have concrete things to work towards, but I can't be trapped in rigid structure because things are no longer fun and I don't want to do them anymore. My system works best for my brain, and it took many years (and several abandoned projects) to figure it out.

So, this is a really individual thing, and I guess I'd encourage you to try everything and see what works.

I tend to spin a story out from a single scene, but by the time I'm actually drafting I have an ending in mind, and two or three "big" scenes. I've tried outlining, but for me too much comes up while I'm writing for it to be effective. I had one of the major antagonists of my series show up as a placeholder in a list one of my characters was making. And my characters don't always tell me what they need to do until I'm with them, trying to make them do it.

I'm slow. A book takes me anywhere from 18 months to 3 years from idea to solid, submittable draft. But I can't outline. I've tried. You really do need to fiddle and figure out a process of your own - but rest assured that there are no norms, and no rules. Write in whatever way allows you to finish.

lizmonster said:

So, this is a really individual thing, and I guess I'd encourage you to try everything and see what works.

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For me, not even that!
Literally my 3 most likely WIPs: One totally pantsing, one beginning and end with plot points in between, and one totally outlined because I thought that might be easier. The outlined one is hardest for me to work on, but the others aren't getting done either. Obviously the outline/no outline thing isn't my problem.

lizmonster said:

So, this is a really individual thing, and I guess I'd encourage you to try everything and see what works.

[...]

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I'd go a bit further to suggest that whenever you finish a project (novel, short story, or whatever), that you take some time to look at the process you used to get it done. Seek out weak points and ways your plotting or pantsing can be improved.

The age old discussion! To outline or not to outline. I think the academic community hurts us creatives in the concept of an outline, because that's where we first encountered the idea of organization by structured bulleted list. I am a discovery writer (I like the term gardener over pantser, but that's a discussion for another thread and a bit of a personal molehill) and I discovery write while outlining. The process of thinking through what could/might/should happen for a narrative arc helps generate possibilities for me. Then when I sit down to write the scene, I'll quickly find out if the direction I think I want is the direction I"ll actually go in. It's possible that I'll make a decision while writing I'd never thought of while outlining, but the outlining gives me a loose frame to work with.

Like everyone else has said, it is extremely personal to how your creative mind works (or doesn't like to work.) So I'd also encourage you to play with process like you'd play with any other part of the writing craft. I'd also encourage you to think of outlining versus freeform as a spectrum instead of a versus. No one is 100% to either end.

Regarding: feeling overwhelmed by your chapter outline, maybe this will help. Try to think of your outline as a guide instead of a rigid structure. You don't necessarily have to tackle the chapters in order, for example. You can re-arrange them. You can add chapters in the middle. Give your outline a little more flexibility, maybe that will help you approach writing the thing itself. As for me, I think in scenes/moments not chapters (though functionally my scenes are chapters) so I might write the center of a scene that's stuck in my head. It could be a duel between two characters, a conversation, etc. I have an idea of where this moment fits in the narrative, but I'm not concerned with writing the full chapter if it's not something I feel ready to do. I'll bounce around to other scenes until I eventually come back around.

So don't force yourself to write the full chapter. Chunk it by events, or if you're trying to get into a writing routine, maybe even by words. Pick a word goal, and when you hit it, finish the sentence and stop.

Do whatever you want to do, so long as it gets the books finished. If you can't finish anything, then whatever you are doing isn't working and needs to change. Results matter. The path does not.

This is very individual, as others have said. I'm a plotter. I have character notes, a blurb, and a chapter-by-chapter outline before I start writing. Like, a line or two for what's going to happen in each scene. If I didn't know where I was going, I would probably clam up and not write anything/never finish. I've written lots of books with this sort of outline.

I don't really worry about this making things formulaic? If anything, I believe it might do the opposite for me, because I consider various options as I plot, rather than picking the first thing that comes to mind...which might be the most cliched.

I think about an idea until I have a beginning (which can change), few key scenes or incidents, which I use as 'stepping stones,' and a solid ending. I don't write anything down before I actually start the novel -it's all in my head - but that's enough to get going and the characters and detail present themselves along the way.

I'm comfortable with that method, which has worked for my four completed novels, but things can change so I like to keep an open mind.

Maryn said:

In my experience writing and trying to help writers who are just getting started, those who outline (or have another kind of master plan that's detailed enough) are a bazillion times more likely to finish a novel.

Not that there aren't pantsers (those who write by the seat of their pants, not following a plan) who succeed, but if you're a planner by nature, I bet you're not a pantser when it comes to writing.

What I see happen to those who have master plans is that they always are able to write (although sometimes the writing isn't good and they know it) because they know what happens next. They reach the end. Along the way, they get new ideas that are better than what's in the plan (which feels pantser-like, to me); they can stop, make a copy of the plan, change the copy to reflect the new idea, start to finish, and continue following the new plan, making earlier changes the new idea requires on the part already written during the second draft.

My own method is planned on a spreadsheet. Rows start with major plot points and specific scenes are added. Columns are time, place, characters, important facts or lines, and anything else I need to keep track of, like who knows where the money is or a character's increasing illness they've kept hidden.

So I'd recommend you employ a master plan, whatever kind you think will work for you. One approach I've heard of is to write a detailed synopsis and follow that--and when you submit and someone wants a synopsis, guess what you'll have already complete?

Maryn, who should take her own damned advice

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this resonates

Though I'm not as experienced as some on AW (I have two-ish manuscripts under my belt, and a handful of stories) I think the road always feels at least a little daunting, even to pros. The processes we figure out for ourselves along the way help alleviate some of that, but every new project is a different journey and that is daunting.

*Briefly* yeah, I like gardener vs. pantser because like, I know what I'm attempting to plant with a given story. I've decided where in the backyard to start the garden and I've picked out seeds. But as I care for my garden sometimes different things flourish and others never sprout. There is some method to the madness.

I'm glad we could help! Good luck with your book!

I was a "pantser" for quite a while and resisted outlining at all feeling that it would somehow keep me bound into a rigorous and unchanging plan that I might hate in the end. Being so loosy-goosy really affected my writing. I had lots of plot holes. Part one did not lead to part two in the same way that bad logical inference does not follow. If A then B. After studying literature a bit more, I realized that 1) no one actually writes from the beginning. 2) You need a good idea of the ending before you can even begin to build characters. 3) the plot points on the so-called arc are more or less connected to everything in the story because logically it should not be in the story unless it is connected to everything.

So by randomly choosing things to put in the story you are deforming the story by inserting stuff that does not need to be in there, and instead of depth with a small number of events, you have broad random "mcguffens" and red herrings and things that might be good to use occasionally still have the effect of sending your readers off on wild goose hunts.

I'm fond enough of my own writing that I don't want to throw away 20,000 words because I've been writing myself into a dead end.

I mostly do short stories, but if I have a larger project than I can keep in my head at once, I'll take the time to sketch out the purpose of each chapter. What are the major scenes, what's the plot development, what's the foreshadowing, what complications arise, what gets resolved, major points brought up in dialogue, and so on. At the end, I'll have x number of pages that give me an overview of what I intend to write, and I can see at a glance if I've got my main character wrong, and perhaps it might be better told from so-and-so's perspective instead, or if my resolution is too straightforward and tidy and I need to throw in a few complications, or if success is to instantaneous and easy and I need to add in a few setbacks and frustrations.

I still remember one fantasy novel I'd read c. 2003-2005. I'd checked it out from the library; it had a great cover and was from a prominent press. The premise was that there was a powerful female magician who had been hired as a magical bodyguard to protect a prince's life from demons who would be sent to assassinate him on a certain day. The book was essentially a snoozefest of nothing happening for two weeks. The most magic she displayed was repelling someone trying to read her mind, but otherwise, it was all thumb-twiddling. 200 pages later, you finally get to the demon attack... and now she's shapeshifting and hopping dimensions and displaying all this crazy magical talent. The author had spent 200 pages in a low-magic environment, and it was very hard to shift into an appreciation of this unexpected display of strong magic--- because I was too busy feeling hostile towards the author for pulling this development out of nowhere, after wasting so many chapters of absolutely nothing happening. It would have been a fantastic short story, but it was a terrible novel.

That's the sort of thing that I hope my outlines help me avoid--- saggy middles, randomness out of nowhere, wasting the reader's time. It's easier to tidy things up and work on a flow while it's just in the idea stage, before I've put in the work of developing those thoughts... and if it's a large enough project that I can't take it from start-to-finish in a reasonable period, I can rely on my notes to remind me where I was going with a certain idea, or what I shouldn't forget to work in, or how I expected to resolve the insurmountable problem that I was constructing. And if I'm stuck on how to connect the dots from E to F to G, I can jump ahead and write scenes L, M, N, O, since I know it's coming up, and that will give me a better idea on getting from G to L, and then from E to G.

I write by looking back at what has happened so far, and letting that dictate what happens 'under the pen'. I have found that the more I think ahead, the harder it can be for me to write.

fwiw I call myself a 'lookback writer'.

LJD said:

This is very individual, as others have said. I'm a plotter. I have character notes, a blurb, and a chapter-by-chapter outline before I start writing. Like, a line or two for what's going to happen in each scene. If I didn't know where I was going, I would probably clam up and not write anything/never finish. I've written lots of books with this sort of outline.

I don't really worry about this making things formulaic? If anything, I believe it might do the opposite for me, because I consider various options as I plot, rather than picking the first thing that comes to mind...which might be the most cliched.

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But that's the thing, writing *IS* formulaic. That's why books and screenplays have defined characteristics. It's why thee-act, four-act, hero's journey and other formats exist. Writing is formulaic by its very nature and the second a writer abandons the tried and true formulas, that's when most readers just check out. These are things that the overwhelming majority of readers expect to see. That's not being cliched, it's being effective.

Maryn said:

What I see happen to those who have master plans is that they always are able to write (although sometimes the writing isn't good and they know it) because they know what happens next. They reach the end. Along the way, they get new ideas that are better than what's in the plan (which feels pantser-like, to me); they can stop, make a copy of the plan, change the copy to reflect the new idea, start to finish, and continue following the new plan, making earlier changes the new idea requires on the part already written during the second draft.

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Just wanted to add that I often revise my outline at one or two points in the writing process, as stuff changes a little as I write the first draft. You don't have to rigidly stick to what you outlined before you began writing.

Cephus said:

But that's the thing, writing *IS* formulaic. That's why books and screenplays have defined characteristics. It's why thee-act, four-act, hero's journey and other formats exist. Writing is formulaic by its very nature and the second a writer abandons the tried and true formulas, that's when most readers just check out. These are things that the overwhelming majority of readers expect to see. That's not being cliched, it's being effective.

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As I write in a genre (romance) that is constantly derided for being "formulaic" I tend not to use that word, because I'm used to people only using it in a negative way. Do I follow more or less standard story structure in my genre? Yup. Absolutely. But I still want to surprise people in various ways in my stories. I don't think we are disagreeing, really.

LJD said:

As I write in a genre (romance) that is constantly derided for being "formulaic" I tend not to use that word, because I'm used to people only using it in a negative way. Do I follow more or less standard story structure in my genre? Yup. Absolutely. But I still want to surprise people in various ways in my stories. I don't think we are disagreeing, really.

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It doesn't matter what words you use, formulaic is formulaic regardless. And there's nothing really wrong with that. That's what sells in that genre. If you go outside of the formula, you won't be successful. But it isn't just romance or cozy mystery or some of the other exceedingly formulaic genres out there, *ALL* fiction writing is formulaic. Almost all of them follow a reasonably consistent story structure. People who lose sight of how stories go together don't tend to sell a lot of books.

Cephus said:

It doesn't matter what words you use, formulaic is formulaic regardless. And there's nothing really wrong with that. That's what sells in that genre. If you go outside of the formula, you won't be successful. But it isn't just romance or cozy mystery or some of the other exceedingly formulaic genres out there, *ALL* fiction writing is formulaic. Almost all of them follow a reasonably consistent story structure. People who lose sight of how stories go together don't tend to sell a lot of books.

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There are two possible meanings of formulaic, and one of them, the one LJD is referring to, is primarily pejorative, and I'm likely to get stompy about it.

As you note, fiction is formulaic. So is non-fiction.

What matters is what you do with a formula, how you the writer express, twist, and alter those formulas, and an awareness that a formula is a crude representation of what a text does. Make your story do it's thing using your words, and characters, and you rise above the formula.

There's a reason you can't copyright ideas; they're awfully common. It's how you express them that matters.

UntoldStoryteller said:

Would love to get a sense of how you guys feel about outlining (whether that's outlining the whole novel or just a chapter ... or even a paragraph), versus "freeform" writing.

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Outlining. The snowflake method works well for me on this part of my writerly journey. Sounds like you do parts of this already, it starts with a logline and works up to a spreadsheet with each scene earning a line on the sheet.

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.

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As a very young writer, it still is very helpful, to me, at the beginning of each scene to ask myself what the various characters are working toward. More than 'plotting' per se, this one thing seems necessary for the words to 'work' in the sense of drawing a reader forward. I resisted this idea on AW when I was first exposed to it, but I was wrong, at least for now, and this seems important to me--make your characters work toward goals.

Ensuring a character is working toward a goal, whether a writer does this instinctively (pantsing) or needs to come at it with a separate itemized sheet (an outline) seems to be key. My view on this is subject to change.

Practical example? I tried pantsing book 2 because so many people do well with it... but my characters ended up nowhere interesting, doing nothing and doing it with lots of inane conversation to boot. The however-many-words (15000? 50000? I forget) were not salvageable, but they count as writing nonetheless and were educational to slog through. I then plotted book 2 with the snowflake method and it worked like a charm, complete draft of 105,000 words in four months and now finishing the third (almost readable) draft. The real magic is coming in revision. The element of 'life.'

(Separately, I think theme is a leg of the stool, and the antagonist is a leg of the stool. But you asked a different question, so there you go.)