Authors tend to fall into two camps:
Outliners do exactly that. They outline their story until they know every detail.
“Pansters” are those authors who just sit down and write. They “feel” the story out. They write by the seat of their pants.
I always thought I was an outliner, but lately I’ve realized that my outline is just there to remind me of ideas I want to add somewhere down the line, to show me where I’ve been, not where I’m going (because I change my outline outcome depending on what turns the current chapter have taken). I have a very hard time writing only what’s in the outline, I want to adlib and if I go a different direction, one that makes my future outlined chapters moot, that’s okay. I can make a new outline of where I think I might want to go. That makes me a Panster.
Take a look at this article. The Case for Writing a Story Before Knowing How It Ends – The Atlantic.
#writing #outline #panster
Wendy L. Koenig 