To outline or not to outline?

[Brian White]

What do people think of outlining before writing a story? I know some people find it very helpful and others don't need to. I'm in the former camp.
I tried and failed to just sit down and write when I started out last year, mostly because all the Authors (Stephen King and his "On Writing" at the top of the list) said that was what they did. Then I read Terry Brooks' book on writing, "Sometimes the Magic Works," which could also be called "In Praise of Outlining." So I tried that, and it worked.
I mostly just write out my general idea, then a page or two on each character, then one the setting(s) and a few paragraphs on each scene (of a short story). Then I write. It takes a few extra days, but since I've finished some things now, it seems well worth the time.
Maybe it's because I'm trained as a newspaper reporter, but it helps a lot to have those notes when I write.

[izanobu]

Short stories- I don't outline. Usually I write them up in a single sitting and pretty much anything I need I either make up on the fly or take quick written notes as I go. Consistency is a lot easier to keep track of in short pieces so outlining is hardly necessary for me. Short stories pretty much write themselves for me though, so maybe I'm weird here. I don't know.

Novels- whole different ballgame. I loves my outlines for novels. I do setting notes, character notes and relationship trees, and then chapter by chapter outline. When you move from 5k words to 100k words there is a ton more to keep track of. Consistency, especially in sci/fi or fantasy, is very very important. If you are building a whole new experience for a reader, especially one that breaks rules they may take for granted in 'real life', you have to be super careful to make sure it makes sense inside itself. However, I make sure that my outline can adapt to what the novel is doing as well. It is, to use the over quoted phrase, "more like guidelines really". My outlines aren't the end of things, just the framework so I can insert ideas and make sure the world and characters match up. I think they also save me editing time since I can spend more time working on the writing and less wondering what's going on.

I say do whatever works for you. Some people outline, some don't. Some write everyday, some don't. For every one 'tip' that you get, there will always be another one who does things the opposite way. (Like number of drafts. Grr... Scalzi...)

[ethyachk]

I find outlining to be perhaps the most useful thing I do before writing a novel. The better the outline, the better the book in my experience. This is not to say that I don't deviate from my outline. I do, constantly. But having the structure, the big picture sitting there to guide me when I feel lost is absolutely imperative for me these days.

[zizban]

I don't write an outline per se, but I do the general arc of the story and what I want to happen in each chapter.

[Arachne Jericho]

If I want to write very quickly, a moving outline is necessary---plan ahead for about 2000 to 4000 words (one or two index cards) and blast away for about an hour before moving onto the next chunk. This got me to something like 140,000 words for NaNoWriMo 2007.

I found that if I had a big picture plan, very often it was detrimental because I didn't update the big picture once the moving outline started to veer away from it---and when you're covering ground that quickly, just a couple days makes a huge difference. *Whack.*

So far, I've continued the moving outline, just taking a week or so between times to think about what happens next. I've recently ended up doing some mind-mapping to figure out character motives and plot directions---that was incredibly helpful. Here are some education tutorials and stuff about mind-mapping, and here are a gazillion examples.

But it's all just a big It Depends. Sometimes you just have to experiment.

[Randy Johnson]

I've never liked outlining myself. I usually have an idea of some scenes I want in a story. Not even a particular order, Just things I want in the narrative. I proceed from there.
The oddest combination I ever heard of was a book written by Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey(Preferred Risk). Pohl had to plot the whole story before he could write a word. He did, wrote the first chapter, and mailed it off to del Rey. Who promptly tossed the plot, read the chapter, wrote what came to mind , and mailed it back.
Before he could write another word, he had to replot the novel from what del Rey had written. He did and returned it to his partner.
Same thing as before. They went back and forth like that until the book was finished. It actually turned out surprisingly well.

[ytimynona]

Randy, my friend Kari and I write poetry in a very similar fashion, each of us having no idea where our poem is going until we reach the end... and even that is sometimes questionable.

I am one of those writers who cannot outline. It's not that I don't like to (I actually find it fun to lay out where my story is going beforehand, and find that it makes it much easier to start my college essays), I simply can't! Even when I try to outline, my story only sticks to that plot for maybe the first page; then the characters kind of take over my story and go wherever they want! If an assignment calls for an outline, I usually write the paper first, then outline the main points afterwards. But I guess that just makes me a different sort of writer. I believe the term my college English prof used to describe me was "erratic."