I used to plan every scene before writing a word. Now I just start with a single image and let it roll.

Switched after a 3 month dry spell where I kept mapping out plots that went nowhere. Has anyone else ditched their outlines and gotten better results?

3 comments

3 Comments

verawhite14d ago

Did you find yourself rewriting the same opening scene over and over before it finally clicked?

emmawood14d ago

Read something the other day where a writer compared plotting to building a fence before you know what kind of animals you're keeping. Kinda stuck with me. Makes sense though, you get so caught up in the map you forget the terrain actually changes as you go. Dropping the outline sounds terrifying but also kinda freeing, like you're letting the story breathe instead of choking it with a blueprint. Might give it a shot on my next project, just see where one good scene takes me.

lopez.jana11d ago

That fence and animals thing hit me weird too. I spent three months outlining a mystery novel once, had every clue mapped out on a corkboard with string and photos like a detective's wall. Then the first draft just died on page fifty because the characters wouldn't follow the dang map. I trashed the whole outline, wrote a single scene with my main character finding a dead body in a library, and the whole story just ran from there. Took me eight weeks to finish the rough draft. Never outlining again.