Starting out on my current project, I’d laid out what I thought was a fairly helpful outline. It set out the progress of the story in chunks that weren’t even bite-sized, they were more like crumbs.

Not even half-way through I had to restructure the story so it would make better sense. There are two significant events that I had originally planned should occur in one sequence, but I found the story works better if they’re reversed.

The chapter I’ve been working on for the last week sets up for one of these events, but I’m having to rethink the approach again, if not the sequence. On paper – if you could describe my google doc ‘outline’ as being on paper – the flow made good sense, but coming to write it, I found I have to include filler and fluff to separate two scenes in order to give the sense of passage of time, more accurately, to establish the duration of an event that I need to keep unwritten.

This has me wondering about exactly how useful a detailed outline is, and exactly how much work and confidence to place in one. Starting out with a poor one hampered progress, but even having put more thought into it, it seems that the flow doesn’t fit perfectly. On completion of this blog post I’m going to amputate over five hundred words on the grounds that they’re complete tripe.

Could a better outline have prevented this? Or is this just risk of story-telling anyway?

I suspect it’s the latter, that there’s no way from an outline – for a novice writer, at any rate – to spot occasions where the outline would need adjustment to avoid boring the reader by including material whose only reason for existence is, effectively, to separate two paragraphs to show passage of time.

Not only is that wasting the readers’ time, but I’m sure I can do better, even on a crap first draft.

I’d be interested to know how useful you find outlines. How often do you have to deviate from yours?

Time for me to amputate some words… Have a great week!

Categories: Writing