Guidelines Not Outlines

Some people like to have detailed outlines before they start writing. Others prefer to wing it and enjoy the process of finding out what the story’s
about as they go.



Both styles are perfectly fine and workable, it comes down to a question preference.



If you have a method that works for you, that’s the one you should use.



The problem for some people is that working it all out beforehand is
too constricting AND leaving it all to inspiration is too vague. Neither
approach works.












Slavishly following a blueprint leaves little room for working in things
that only occur to you while writing. And free writing hundreds of pages only
to discover you’ve gone down a dead end can be soul destroying.



What might help is to have enough of an outline so you aren’t going to
waste loads of time, but without pinning down all the details of what happens to whom.



Bear in mind that whatever approach you take, eventually you will have
a complete draft that is roughly the story you want to tell. From then on it’s
a matter of revision and refinement. That means the grind of being creatively
locked into a set storyline with only tedious redrafting is unavoidable. That’s
what writing is. So if you are totally against that, stick to short stories and
poems.



But as long as you are prepared for the hard work, you can help
yourself by having a rough idea of where you are going by not working out what
happens in a scene, but by working out what gets in the way.



If you can spend a little time thinking about the obstacles your
characters will be facing, and invest enough time to make them interesting,
hard to deal with problems, then there’s a good chance you will have enough of
a guide to know which direction to go, but also enough to keep your brain engaged
when you get there.



So, for example, if I was writing a story about a hot air balloonist
who decides to use his skills to rob a bank (don’t ask me, I’m making
this up as I go along), then I might decide to start with him taking customers
up for a sightseeing tour, but they get caught in a tornado (no idea how they’ll
survive—maybe some won’t). Next scene is him deciding give up the glamorous
world of ballooning but his boss blackmails him into staying, no idea how. Then
he meets his new team who he has to train, but they’re high school children...



My  point is that I can spend
time working out each scene in plenty of detail (and I’m suggesting taking your time
to come up with some interesting obstacles—certainly more time than I'm taking coming up with my example). Not just a difficult predicament, but one that you'd be interested in seeing played out. 



But because the focus is on problems
not solutions, you can spend as much time as you want on details and when it comes to writing out the full version there’ll still be plenty
to do.



Now, you may feel that finding out what each scene is about is
something you enjoy discovering with your characters, in which case that’s
perfectly okay. But for those looking for something in between this may offer a
third way.





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