Quotes About Outlining

I outline fairly extensively because I'm usually dealing with real events. I don't need to give myself as much information as I used to, but I still like to have two pages of outline for every projected 100 pages of manuscript.

When I have a chapter finished, I jot down who the viewpoint characters are, what they are wearing, what happened in the chapter. So as I go along, I outline each book as I write it. I never outline ahead of the writing, but after the writing is done. That keeps the creative side of my brain in control of the writing.

I tend to edit some as I go - partly because one of the reasons I don't outline much is that I don't know what the next scene will be until I've actually written the previous scene.

I've often wished when I started a book I knew what was going to happen. I talked to writers who write 80-page outlines, and I'm just in awe of that.

I'm a big fan of outlining. Here's the theory: If I outline, then I can see the mistakes I'm liable to make. They come out more clearly in the outline than they do in the pages.

I tend to write some, then outline some, then delete some, then go back and rewrite some. I love revising and hate first drafts. I have to wear bedroom slippers. My current favorites come from the Zetter Hotel in London. They have little tobacco pipes on the toes.

I am a big proponent of writing a great outline. That way you can avoid hitting a roadblock. There is no worse feeling than writing yourself into a corner but if you've figured it all out in the outline then you won't have that problem.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

For the novels I wrote before selling anything, I didn't outline much. I had a vague idea of the story.

The patron saint of outlining - the bespectacled siren who sings to me from his spotless rock - is P. G. Wodehouse.

In the pre-production process, I am emailing with the actors or jumping on the phone, and we're sort of figuring out who the characters are and trying to build the relationship dynamic and things like that. Then, also, I am outlining.

The first series I wrote, 'L.A. Candy ' was always meant to be a three-book series, so when I started out it was all outlined that way and by the time I was done with the third book, I had become so involved and the process and the stories, I was a little bit sad to be done.

I wrote my first novel in the same conditions as most first novelists - I had a full-time job, I shared an apartment, I had no time - and so I became a compulsive outliner of everything. Ever since then, my process has consisted of trying to forcibly rid myself of that compulsion.

Picasso's superhuman gift for draftsmanship might have made him lazy about pursuing the full potential of color. It was not unusual for him to build a composition by first outlining figures and objects in black and then filling the interstices in a perfunctory manner that can put one in mind of a museum-shop coloring book.

Writing is a process of discovering. I could never outline a narrative; that just sounds boring. There's no joy of discovery in what you're doing if that's your strategy.

I never do a full outline, and if I did, I would not feel bound to it, because the view from inside a scene can be different from the view outside it. But neither do I just start writing and see what happens; I am far more disciplined than that.

If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

I am a big outliner. For my adult book, 'The Visibles,' I did not outline, and it took me two years to write because I just didn't outline, and I had no path.

If I spend a year and a half writing a script, the first year will be outlining in notebooks. It's just the way I work, definitely not necessarily the best way.

The benefit of this kind of outlining is that you discover a story's flaws before you invest a lot of time writing the first draft, and it's almost impossible to get stuck at a difficult chapter, because you've already done the work to push through those kinds of blocks.

I force myself to outline, but not too closely, so I guess I plot by the seat of my pants? My natural instinct is to dive right in, but I know I'll get stuck. I like to stick with the architect vs. gardener metaphor. I guess I'm a gardener who plants tomatoes. I have the sticks in the ground and let the vines grow along those parameters.

are generally split into two camps: those who carefully outline their stories and know the ending before they begin, and those who refuse to do so upon the theory that once a character is created he or she will do something interesting

Tempe is like a condensed drop of color that has landed in my world of water, spreading and outlining things, creating contrast and vividness. More than one drop might be too much.