Happy weekend, writers!
I've never been an outliner, particularly with fiction. At most--like in the novel I'm writing now--I have a dim idea of some of the major plot points, I have some vague themes I want to attack, and I have little idea how I'll get from Point A to Point B, much less Point Z.
In other words, I try to write my way into a story.
A friend of mine working on his own novel takes the opposite approach. Before he even wrote Chapter 1, he'd created a full outline containing the plot points of every single chapter from beginning to end.
Then he created a full outline for every single chapter individually, with details about each plot point within, as well as descriptions about setting, the characters, and the purpose; i.e., how each chapter fits into the whole.
To me, and maybe to you, that's insanity. Or it may feel like home.
There are pros and cons to each approach, but the only thing that really matters is whether your approach works for you.
So what I want to hear about in this week's post is, do you outline or do you play fast and loose?
If you outline, how flexible are you about straying from that outline?
If you wing it, how do you avoid crash landing?
