I’ve mentioned before that I’m a discovery writer. Actually, I consider myself a modified discovery writer. Modified because I did once manage to write 100,000 words that didn’t come out to be a story. (I’m embarrassed to admit how many tries it took me to figure out why it wasn’t a story and fix it.) So, now I like to have at least a few stops along the way to my destination.
I’ve heard the idea floated that even those of us who claim to write by the seat of our pants are actually outlining; we’re just doing it in our heads instead of on paper. I think there’s something to that. Of course, if we’re holding the outline in our heads, it’s not as detailed or extensive as some of those written out. And it’s also more subject to change. That’s just the nature of the two methods.
I tried outlining a couple of times early on. Once, I spent way too much time revising the outline–time I could have been spending on writing the story. The other time, I wrote the outline and then never looked at it again. I think the story diverged from the outline in the first five chapters and never came back again. I haven’t made a serious attempt at outlining since.
However, every story is different. And even I–confirmed discovery writer that I am–am starting to think about outlining. I’m still only on chapter 7 of my “Weird Oz Story” and that’s partly because the story is just developing that slowly in my head.
So, maybe it’s time to drop back and punt. Open that copy of David Farland’s MILLION DOLLAR OUTLINES on my kindle, and try a different method. Maybe this is a story I need to outline. Learning a different way is always good, even if I never use it again.
Meredith Mansfield, Author 
I’m not a pantser but I’ve never wrote an outline in my life (no, actually I did once for NaNoWriMo and it was the only year I didn’t finish – it wasn’t the outline’s fault, though). The way my process works is this: when I get an idea, I let it sit in my head for a while. If it’s a usable idea, it will start to grow into a story, and the scenes and scenarios would start to form in my head. Then the scenes would start to replay in my mind over and over, each time a little more tweaked and edited. When it comes a point that every replay is the same, without any changes, that’s when I know it’s time to sit down and write it down. As soon as I write it, the replay stops. That’s why it’s very counterproductive for me to write down anything before it’s ready, because once I write it I lose interest for it and it’s really hard to fix things afterwards. That’s why most of my edits are usually cosmetic – grammar, sentences and so on – rarely I’ll change the plot itself, because once it’s written down, for me that’s it. Of course, I don’t have every single scene worked out in my head, some minor ones I do have to “make up” as I write, but all the major ones are known, so I always know where I’m going, even though sometimes I don’t know how to get there.
The problem for me with keeping an outline in my head is not that it changes more often – when I have something worked out in a satisfactory manor I stick with it – from what I hear from people working with oulines is that they’re not set in stone, they change and evolve with the story. My problem is that, if I don’t write the story while the scenes are still on the loop in my mind, I’d forget it. That would be the only way the outline could be useful for my process – that I don’t forget what I had planned out, cause sometimes I work on a story for years, and lots of peaces just get lost along the way because I don’t write them down on time and then I forget about them.
I have a weird process, I know, but it’s one that works well for me. I just need to write more so I don’t forget things 🙂
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Interesting. I actually have whole scenes appear, too, but not all of them or even all of the important ones. Also, generally, those scenes will only come to me IF I’m actually writing. That’s always when I get my best ideas–about the current story and others. 🙂
Fortunately, I don’t mind the revision process at all and often write in new scenes during the second and third drafts.
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