In Praise of Outlines
Raise your hand if you've ever written half a book and then thrown it away
Last week I wrote about the pleasures of drafting a novel without a plan, and of writing so quickly that I discover what’s happening in the story only as I’m writing it. So it might seem hypocritical that today I want to talk about the importance of outlines, but the truth is that every single book I’ve written or cowritten—with the exception of my first novel and one ghostwritten young adult novel—began its life as a detailed outline.
Google “plotters vs. pantsers” and you’ll get 30,000 results about how plotters put on three-piece suits and methodically plan out and subsequently execute their novels from page one straight through to the end, while pantsers show up hungover in pajamas, armed with nothing but vague ideas and a stubborn hope. No one’s judging anyone, of course, because the end justifies the means.
But honestly (and obviously), the whole binary’s ridiculous, because no writer is 100% one thing or the other, but rather some mix of the two—sorry to mention it, but I’ve heard the term “plantsers.” We all stop and decide where the story needs to go at some point; we all write instinctively at other points.
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