Outline your fiction or no?

Maybe it's the difference between creating genre fiction—mystery, thriller, romance, fantasy—and literary fiction.

Jesse Q. Sutanto

Jesse Q Sutanto who has a degree in creative writing from Oxford University, writes YA rom-coms, YA thrillers, and adult contemporary fiction. She told a Writer’s Digest interviewer “I outline my books before I start writing. But I never know what the character is going to be like until I actually start writing. Then their voice kind of comes out onto the page. When I first started writing, my first ever book was totally pantsed. I didn’t know how to outline and so I think the first three books I wrote, I pantsed them"—i.e., she wrote them by the seat of her pants (if you can visualize that).

But it was not working "because I was getting stuck all the time. Even after I finished the draft, it would be a hot mess. I would have to rewrite a lot of it. So, when I first started outlining, I only outlined about half of the book, and things would surprise me. There was a lot more flexibility.” She says that by her eighteenth book her outlines had become meticulous. “My outlines listen to me because my characters are scared of me. They know not to surprise me. My outlines, they have no chill, you know? They’re chapter by chapter. They tend to be 12 pages long, and they’re quite detailed.” (https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/the-wd-interview-jesse-q-sutanto)

Roger Rosenblatt

Roger Rosenblatt has written 22 books, six off-Broadway plays, and has taught creative writing. In his book Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing he says he tells writing students because they ask that they should never outline. "The trouble with using an outline is that you'll follow it . . .You'll cover everything you've put down in one portion of your outline, all the while aiming for what you've put in the following portion. All you'll ve doing is reading a road map. You'll never surprise yourself with a sudden turn."

A student asks if an outline will keep the story orderly so that it's clear to the reader. "Don't worry about the reader," says Rosenblatt. "Worry about the story. Your story will determine its own orderliness without your planning it out step by step." (p. 34)

Maybe this writing game is more complicated than putting words on paper.