Last Saturday my wife and I drove down to Natchez, a place I've visited many times, especially during my years with IBM, and this trip was more fun than work. I'd signed an agreement with the Mississippi Writers Guild not long ago to conduct several workshops this year on writing and selling short fiction, and this one was the first. The next session's in Jackson, in April. We had a good time.
One of the things I usually find interesting, in writer gatherings like this, are the students'/attendees' responses to the question, "Are you an outliner?" In my experience, the group is always almost equally divided on that issue, and that was the case Saturday as well. About half say they know beforehand where the story's going and how they're going to get there; the other half say they start writing with no idea of where or how the story'll end. The first half happily identifies as "outliners" or "plotters" and the other half as "seat-of-the-pantsers," which is the way they fly their story planes. (The only pantser I know who doesn't like that term is my longtime friend and writing buddy Elizabeth Zelvin. Sorry, Liz. We'll call you a non-outliner.)
As I've said before, I would never attempt to change anyone's approach, on this. I'm not even sure it's changeable. I think it boils down to which way our brains are wired, just as some of us are always late and others always early, some like the toilet paper to unroll from the top and others from the bottom, some like to squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle and others from the end, etc. Vive la difference, right?
I confess that I'm a plotter/planner/outliner. Rarely on paper, but certainly in my mind. I'm one of those structure-driven people who have to be be able to picture most of the scenes in the story beforehand, all the way to the ending. That might change a bit as I go along--it often does--but I have to know that tentative story layout before the writing starts. Does that make my stories less fun to write? Does it make the process more boring? Does it stifle my creativity (who in the hell came up with that phrase)? The answer's no. It doesn't. Instead, an outline gives me the comforting mental safety-net that I need, in order to shoulder my backpack and set out on my storytrip. If I didn't have that road map in my head, I might eventually make it to my destination, but I might not, and if I did get there, I think I'd waste a lot of time and effort on the way. That, to me, would not be fun.
NOTE: I'm not saying I don't respect the (roughly) half of my writing students and half of my writer friends who don't follow a mental or physical outline. In fact, I envy them. These carefree adventurers strap on their goggles and climb into their literary ATVs without knowing much of anything about the road ahead, and motor merrily into the unknown with big grins and flapping scarves, usually (and somehow) with good results (!!). In fact, some of the writers I most admire do it that way (!!!!). How? Don't ask me. I would still be wandering around out there someplace, running into dead ends and cursing and backtracking and rewriting. But--again--their way seems to work, and I would never try to change them. I don't even want to change them. I like their stories.
One more thing. We're not always talking about only two groups, here. There are probably half a dozen different variations and subgroups between the two extremes. Yes, some writers do indeed have their entire story planned in great detail before starting, and they stick to it. Others have an ending firmly in mind but everything else is undecided. Others know their characters but don't yet know the storyline. Others know only the title and maybe a few opening words. Others have a fairly clear picture of how things will progress, but they don't dwell on it because they realize most of it'll change after the construction begins. And still others start with a completely blank slate, not knowing anything at all about their story except that there's probably one out there someplace, waiting to be discovered. On a scale of 10 to 1, with 10 being "I've got the whole story in my head" and 1 being "I have no idea what'll happen until I start writing," I'm probably an 8 or a 9.
By the way, I'm always early, I like the TP mounted to unroll from the top, and I squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle.
How about you? Outliner or free-wheeler? Or somewhere in between?