K.M. Weiland - Outlining Your Novel Box Set: How to Write Your Best Book

In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

GENERALLY SPEAKING, WRITERS fall into two different categories: outliners and non-outliners (or, as some writers prefer it, plotters and pantsers). I say categories, but armies might be a better word, since these two camps of the writing world can often be found waging passionate war for their chosen methodology. Perhaps youve encountered or even participated in a conversation like the following exchange:

Ollie Outliner: Im lost without my outline. Gotta have a road map, so I know where Im going. It makes the journey so much easier. How can anyone write a coherent story without some idea of whats supposed to happen? Think how much time you waste writing dead-end scenes and meandering subplots!

Polly Pantser: Where do you get the patienceand the timeto spend weeks, or even months, outlining a story? Id go crazy if I had to wait that long to start writing. Besides, I lose all the sense of adventure if I know how the story is going to turn out before I start writing it.

Without question, both sides present good arguments. But how do you know which is telling the truth? Hold onto your britcheshere comes the shocker.

They both are.

Writinglike all of artoffers few absolutes. If it did, it would quickly stultify into set patterns and tiny boxes of preconceived ideas and methods. This is nowhere more evident than in the writing process itself. Its like a deck of cards, and every writer shuffles it a little differently. Just as our stories are (we hope) distinctive, so are our personalities and lifestylesand, as a result, our working patterns. In pursuit of bettering our craft, we voraciously study the masters by reading every how-to book and author interview we can get our hands on. But what we sometimes dont realize is, even if a particular method or routine works for one author, that singular success doesnt make it a universal principle.

In general, human beings like the protective solidity of rules. We like the assurance that if we write one page every day, five days a week, well finish a book in a year and be published in two. But life doesnt work that way. Writing a page a day may be the perfect routine for you and allow you to finish that book in a year. But the rigidity of such a schedule might also hold you back from your ultimate productivity. You might work much better if you allowed yourself more flexibility and less pressure.

Each author must discover for himself what methods work best for him. Just because Margaret Atwood does X and Stephen King does Y is no reason to blindly follow suit. Read widely, learn all you can about what works for other authors, and experiment to discover which methods will offer you the best results.