Should I outline before I write?

Jeffrey's answer

I have a confession to make about outlining.

I do not do it.

My problem with structure has always been the same — I begin every novel not entirely sure where I am going. Off I set, praying each night that the good Lord will return tomorrow morning and give me permission to go on for another ten pages. After fifty years, that has not changed. I am not, in this respect, a model for any first-time novelist. I am the cautionary tale.

Some of the writers I most admire are the opposite. They spend three months building a chapter map, a character bible, a timeline, a multi-coloured wall of cards — and then they sit down on a Monday morning and write the first sentence already knowing the last. If that is your method, my advice is: pursue it. The detailed-outline novelist usually writes a tighter book than the one who flies blind, and the rewrites are kinder.

But for me, the book reveals itself in the writing. I know the broad shape. I know where it begins. I have a strong sense of the ending — though even the endings have, more than once, surprised me. What I do not know are the chapters. They arrive, one at a time, in the morning at six o’clock when I sit down with my pen and pad and turn the hourglass.

The compromise — and I have come to believe this is the right answer for most first-time novelists — is this. Do enough planning to know where the book is going. Not the full chapter-map. Not the wall of cards. Just enough. Three sentences that describe the beginning, three that describe the middle, three that describe the end. The opening crisis. The midpoint reversal. The closing payoff. Nine sentences. If you cannot write those nine sentences, you do not yet have a novel — you have an idea for one.

Then sit down. Begin. Discover the rest as you write it.

If you find the book pulling you in a direction you had not planned for — and Miss Tredgold did exactly that to me in The Prodigal Daughter, walking onto the page in the second draft and politely refusing to leave by the fifth — let the book pull. Often the book knows what it wants better than the writer does. The best chapters in any novel I have written are the ones the outline did not contain.

Pray for the next ten pages. Sometimes, the Lord obliges.

A few practical notes

• Two camps: outliners (plotters) and discovery writers (pantsers). Both produce great books. Stephen King is a pantser. John Grisham is a plotter. There is no right answer.
• What outlines help with. Knowing the ending before you start, avoiding plot dead-ends, maintaining pace, hitting deadlines.
• What outlines can hurt. Killing the joy of discovery. Locking you in when the book wants to grow.
• A useful middle ground for first-time novelists: the nine-sentence test. Three sentences for the beginning, three for the middle, three for the end. If you can write them, you have a novel. If not, you have an idea for one.
• Lean toward more planning for genre fiction, less for literary. Mysteries, thrillers, and romance reward outlining (the genre demands specific beats). Literary fiction often grows organically.
• Outline tools that work. Index cards on a wall. Spreadsheet (one row per chapter). The Save the Cat beat sheet (especially for screenwriting-influenced fiction). The Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson (start with one sentence, expand outward). Pick one and ignore the others.
• The outline is a working document, not a contract. If the book pulls you somewhere unexpected, follow it. Miss Tredgold took over The Prodigal Daughter in the second draft and ran it from the fifth.