Outlining: Advantages and Disadvantages
I talked last week about discovery writing. This week, I’m going to delve into some of the pros and cons of outlining that I’ve found. I won’t go into outlining techniques yet, but leave that for another post.
Outlining has the advantage of giving a broader sense of the story. You can map out the plot, figure out what has to happen when, and write it out without as much concern about the overhead. This also means if you don’t like the part you’re on, you can skip it and come back to it later. After all, you already know what happened in the parts before it. With a broader view, you can also see any problems earlier than you would with discovery writing.
As I’ve found time and again with outlining, it has a major downside: what happens when the plot changes? Well, you update the outline. Again, and again, and again. Sometimes, you completely forget about it, and the outline falls behind the actual story. Some people are dedicated outliners. They keep the outline next to them while writing and follow it exactly. But for those of us that deviate from it from time to time, we tend to forget to update it. This isn’t a big disadvantage, just something extra to handle.
Like discovery writing, outlining has pros and cons. It all depends on what works for you. Like there was no one that could tell me what would work for me, I can’t tell you what will work for you. Try both approaches, or, like I tend to do, try a hybrid approach. Like most writers will tell you, the best way to improve is to practice.
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