Comment

Comment by Karma on July 30, 2012 at 11:18am

I outline, and then I deviate from the outline. When I start to feel overwhelmed, I outline again. I don't outline the whole plot every time, though. Sometimes it's just a particular character's path or a storyboard of two different plots.

Comment by Karen Freeman-Smith on July 26, 2012 at 11:12am

I tend to write first, then outline (as the first editing pass).  It's worked really well on non-fiction, college papers, and reports for work.  I'm going to try it on my fiction in the future.

Comment by Patricia A. McGoldrick on July 25, 2012 at 8:50am

Agree about starting with a few points and usually I use a mind map graphic for planning. The graphic works for me.
Congrats on recent pub!

Comment by Helen Tatterton on July 25, 2012 at 12:33am

I use a very detailed outline or plan on my non-fiction writing because it frees my mind to write good copy when I'm writing to order and to a deadline. Otherwise I'm much like you. For fiction it is sometimes good to let it flow.

Comment by Daphne Q on July 24, 2012 at 7:40pm

Hi, Maria... thanks for the informative and interesting column. I'm writing my first novel. I started out without an outline, but I was all over the place, so I put together an outline. It's worked much better, although after writing your column I've decided I perhaps am following it too rigidly.

Comment by Stacy Mantle on July 24, 2012 at 3:44pm

I tend to wing it. But, I'm trying to get better at using an outline. It's far too difficult to go back and "fix" everything to mesh in. On the other hand, even if I use an outline, I tend to get off track. I think the real question is "how much control do you have over your characters?" In my case, the answer is "not enough..."

Comment by Jenny Darlington on July 24, 2012 at 2:28pm

As a new writer, this is all so fascinating to me! I've been soaking up articles/blogs like this because they constantly help to keep my creative juices flowing. I have never before tried writing an outline, but now that I'm working on a project that I'm really passionate about, I find it more and more useful to have something to reference, primarily with character sketches (something I'd also never done before!) but also with outlining my novel.

Last night I was reading an article on She Writes about how to craft the opening of your novel, and out of nowhere this spark hit me to change around the original loose outline that I had created, a change I feel will greatly improve the flow of the novel and I feel so motivated to write again (or keep writing)! Before making a concerted effort to immerse myself in the craft of writing (mostly through this site!), I could just not understand a comment like yours, Olga, that a character could "create" himself, but now I fully understand, as characters have begun to slowly take on a life of their own. As I write, little things about them will pop into my mind - background about their early lives or details about their relationship with their parents, etc. - and I know that's just who they are and I coudln't change it if I tried. It would be untrue to my characters to do so.

Thanks for the continued insight! This writer is so appreciative :)  

Comment by Olga Godim on July 24, 2012 at 1:20pm

My case is similar. I need an outline to start writing, but then the story might develop a life of its own. Hopefully. The novel I'm writing now, for example, produced a new character who wasn't in the original outline. Now she becomes more and more important, as the story progresses. She adds richness and dimensions to the protagonist, and I didn't even know she existed until chapter 3. It's like an unexpected encounter turning into fast friendship. It happens, if you're lucky.

Comment by Kelli M. Donley on July 24, 2012 at 12:39pm

This is very helpful. Thank you! It serves as a good reminder that writing novels is an art; there is no recipe for success. You have to create your own routine, way of looking at a project, to make something beautiful. A lot of practice helps too.