Whats better in fiction writing, a plot outline or free flow writing?
To outline or not to outline… is that the question? Whether ’tis easier on the writer or better for the story to suffer the drudgery and pain of a formal outline or to take arms against a sea of free-flowing ideas and just wing it? Like most things, I believe the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Writing fiction without any outline at all is a good way to come up with a bunch of situations and character sketches that don’t really go anywhere. I have dozens of little blurbs that never became anything, because I didn’t know where the story was going and it didn’t tell me. This is not entirely a bad thing. If an idea is going to die, it’s better that it die quickly so you can move onto other things. Why waste time and energy on an idea that isn’t going anywhere? However, once you do get that spark, that little inkling that there’s a story in there somehwere, I think it’s helpful to at least make a thumbnail sketch of who’s who, what’s what, and where you think it’s all headed. On the
