Review Those Outlines

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
It’s recently struck me how much I’ve had to say about outlines lately. I’ve gone from being a pantser, to being a reluctant outliner, to having a grudging respect for a tool I never wanted to use in the first place.
I now follow my outlines fairly closely, although I permit myself any deviations needed to improve the story. But I realized for one of my last books that I’d left myself a few choices in my outline. I wrote “either do  this,  or do  this.”  I guess I figured I’d have a better feel for the story once I was writing it and could make a more natural decision later on.
The only problem was that I was following the outline and didn’t realize there was a fork in the road until the fork suddenly appeared. I write my outlines about 3-4 months before I work on the book, so I didn’t have any recollection of the divergent story ideas.
Not only that, but taking one story path over the other meant other changes were needed earlier in the story. It was sort of a domino effect.
The point is, any issues would have been headed off if I’d just reread the outline before I hopped right in. I need to either read the whole document (usually mine run about 30-35 pages) before I start, or I need to review and revise the outline directly after I finish writing it.
A quick tip, but one that might help a few folks out. :)
Are you an outliner? Have any writing tips for outlines or anything else?
Review Those Outlines: Click To Tweet
 
Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay
The post Review Those Outlines appeared first on Elizabeth Spann Craig .