Went from rewriting every draft 3 times to just one pass after I stopped outlining

For 2 years I plotted every chapter to death and still hated the result. Cut the outlines cold turkey on my last novel and the first pass actually matched what I wanted. Has anyone else broken a habit that made their writing worse?

2 comments

2 Comments

victor_butler5018d ago

And the thing is, I think that overthinking the outline actually kills the natural flow of a story. When you plot everything to death you end up forcing scenes that don't belong just to hit those checkpoints. I did the same thing for a year. I had these elaborate spreadsheets and character arcs mapped out perfectly. But my writing felt stiff and lifeless. Once I tossed all that out and just wrote from a vague idea or a single sentence, the story actually surprised me. It had a pulse. Outlining made me a worse writer because I was trying to control everything before I even knew what the story was about.

the_river18d ago

Wait, you had spreadsheets? For a story? That's wild to me. I've never even thought about mapping a character arc with a spreadsheet before. That sounds like planning a wedding, not writing fiction.