Or Just Pretend You Did
There is no definitive answer to this question. Writers are different. Some outline, some don’t. Some have a loose structure. Some work inside self-made constraints fit for Hannibal Lecter. To me an outline is a kind of life jacket. I’m not sure it’ll save me, but I feel better having one nearby.
When I was learning to write a book, grinding my way through my first novel, Half Made Up, I outlined diligently. I had index cards, scene summaries, arrows connecting motives and murders. A friend who read it joked that he imagined me with a map of London covered with pins and red string. I was determined not to write myself into a corner. Naturally, I did exactly that. Several corners, in fact. The book turned into a Cretan labyrinth of dead ends. I think I wrote five or six drafts before I reached the part where editing could even begin. So yes, outlining helps. At least it helps me. But like a poorly folded map, it doesn’t always tell you where you actually are.
I’ve since learned that this is a common affliction among budding novelists. We plan to avoid confusion only to have inadvertently plotted our confusion in advance.
The Abyss and the Map
For many who want to write a book, the hardest part of writing fiction isn’t finishing. It’s starting. There’s a particular vertigo to that first blank page. It’s like an abyss that seems to stretch on forever, whispering, “Maybe try cleaning the kitchen instead.”
One way to tame that abyss is by building a bridge across it. To me, that’s an outline. Some writers swear by them. A novel, after all, is a structural beast. It’s got plot arcs, subplots, emotional turns. A good outline promises to keep all that chaos in check. It’s a way to make the blank page feel less like freefall and more like a climb, the handholds encouragingly visible from below.
But should you outline? The answer depends on which kind of writer you are. And which kind of book you’re writing. I’ve now written two novels, both plot-driven, but each outlined slightly different ways.
The first was, as I’ve implied, outlined within an inch of its life. Or I thought so. I just kept changing the outline, opening it up and surgically grafting in bits. Some of which stayed and some of which were summarily excised. At the time, it made sense to plan it like a campaign map: who moves where, when, and why. Because I re-drafted it so many times, I ended up writing some scenes out of order, big moments first, emotional climaxes next, connective tissue later. It was like assembling a puzzle without the box lid.
The second novel was outlined as well but slightly more free form. Having reworked the first book so many times, I was a little gun shy of not outlining effectively. So, I created an outline and revised and revised it. So, then, how was it a little free form? I let my main character kind of work within the plot structure a little more freely. I let the dialogue unfold a bit haphazardly. I didn’t obsess over ensuring each scene revealed his character. I just let that work itself out organically. No overly lacquered character portrait. Just his life unfolding. Here, an outline would have been like drawing a map of fog. Within the structure of the plot I’d nailed down, I started at the beginning and wrote forward, discovering the details of each scene as my characters did. It was thrilling, until I got stuck. Then I stared at the screen like I was waiting for divine dictation.
From this I learned something. Outlining is neither salvation nor sin. It’s simply a tool for whatever terrifies you most. If you fear chaos, outline. If you fear boredom, improvise.
The Science of Mess (and Why It’s Encouraging)
It turns out that my haphazard approach isn’t entirely unscientific. Psychologist Sarah Ransdell, who studies the creative writing process, has found that good writers don’t follow tidy, step-by-step processes. In her research, published in Studies in Writing (2002), she discovered that the best prose often emerges from what she calls the “all-at-once” method: writers planning, composing, and revising simultaneously, like literary jugglers.
In one study, students who wrote this way, leaping between drafting and revising, produced essays that scored five points higher than those written in neat, pre-planned steps. Apparently, chaos sharpens thought. As Ransdell put it, “You write to transform your abstract thoughts into concrete ones.” Translation: the messier your brain, the cleaner your sentences. A comforting idea for anyone whose desktop looks like a filing cabinet exploded.
Another writing researcher, David Galbraith, found that outlining helps some writers and hinders others. His work at Staffordshire University suggests that personality plays a huge role. Writers who are low self-monitors, those of us who happily ramble without self-editing, benefit from outlining because it reins us in. Meanwhile, high self-monitors, the ones who compulsively evaluate every word, write worse when they outline, because it makes them overthink before they’ve written anything worth overthinking.
(So much for academia.) I’m a serial overthinker. And yet, I need an outline. That’s where I do my best overthinking. Often, though, mine’s less a plan than a list of future disappointments.
Lessons From the Field (or, My Laptop)
Of course, research is all well and good, but sometimes the real experiment is your own hard drive.
With my first novel, outlining gave me courage. I’d never attempted 100,000 words before. So, it made a terrifying task feel manageable. I knew my destination, even if the road kept collapsing. “Stick to the outline,” I told myself, as if the outline were my Virgil through the Inferno. By the third draft, I realized I had followed my map straight into mediocrity. So, rather than learning from the chaos, I went back and reworked the outline to try to save things.
My second novel was different. It would be easy to say it was more discovery. But I didn’t start until I was happy with the outline. I looked at it backward and forward before I let myself start writing the first draft. (Confession: I still had to go back and rework the outline to figure out little twists and turns I thought would improve things.) It was a blueprint that offered a safety net. But letting my characters off the leash let them come alive. They’d always do what I’d planned, but I’d given them enough room to let them find their own way. Some scenes unfolded like found footage. Though there were days that were like trying to row through pudding. Other days, though, serendipity led me to places that I might not have discovered if it had all been preordained.
The Roadmap (and Why It’s Okay to Take Exits)
A good outline isn’t a contract. It’s a travel brochure. You might still decide to take the scenic route. So if you outline, do it lightly. Let it evolve as you write. Add new roads, erase old ones, draw dragons in the margins. Here’s one of those underrated creative writing tips: an outline should give you direction, not detention. That’s one of the quieter truths in how to write a book. Structure gives you courage, but chaos gives you life.
The Great Either/Or That Isn’t
Zadie Smith, in her essay on craft, divides novelists into two categories: “macro planners” (those who plot meticulously) and “micro managers” (those who discover the story sentence by sentence). I admire her clarity, but personally I hover in the messy middle, the “macro micro” perhaps, or just the “mildly confused.”
Some novels demand architecture; others demand excavation. Even within one book, you might switch teams midstream. The trick is knowing when your outline is helping and when it’s just a socially acceptable form of procrastination.
Because that’s the danger – mistaking planning for progress. Spending three months naming your chapters doesn’t count as writing your novel, though it may feel wonderfully productive. At a certain point, you have to stop plotting and start typing.
So, Should You Outline?
If you want to write a book, here’s my hard-earned, mildly contradictory advice: do whatever gets you to the keyboard.
If you’re the type who needs a map, make one. If you prefer wandering, pack snacks. Both methods work, as long as you eventually write the thing.
Just don’t worship your outline. The act of writing will change what you thought you knew about your story. As Ransdell notes, writing isn’t about dumping what you already know onto the page. It’s about discovering what you didn’t.
An outline can help you feel less lost, but getting lost is part of the process. Sometimes the wrong turn is the story. Sometimes the deleted scene is the doorway to the real one.
The Only Rule That Matters
In the end, the only thing necessary for writing a novel is, inconveniently, writing it. Every other choice – outlining, discovery, note cards, colour-coded spreadsheets – is just a coping mechanism for that fact.
When I feel paralyzed by planning, I remind myself that no one ever outlined a masterpiece into existence. They wrote their way there, one uncertain paragraph at a time.
Whether you outline or not, you’ll end up lost somewhere around Chapter Seven. That’s one of the secrets they don’t tell you when you Google “how to start writing a book.” It’s normal. It’s writing. The trick isn’t avoiding the detour. It’s remembering why you set out in the first place.
This essay is one of a collection of pieces documenting the bedlam involved in writing and self-publishing my ongoing genre fiction series: The Misjudgements of Andy MacKay, available on Amazon.