Plotter or Pantser, You Really Should Outline the Second Draft

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This past weekend I was teaching at the SCBWI-FL summer conference, and in both all-day workshop intensives, me and my fellow presenters (Michael Stearns, Lisa Yee, and Kait Feldmann) talked about outlining.

Love it or hate it, outlining is a useful, and dare I say vital, aspect of writing.

Outlining is where the big-picture stuff happens. It allows you to see how your story unfolds on a conceptual level without getting bogged down in the details. It lets you know that you’re hitting all the right beats and constructing a novel that will read well and keep readers interested.

But you don’t have to do it on a first draft if you don’t like outlines. Plenty of writers (though surprisingly, only a few in my sessions this weekend—it’s usually a fairly even split between plotters and pantsers), find outlining constraining, and feel it saps their creativity and stifles their ability to let their stories grow organically.
Read more »Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com