Outlines?

[Bane]

I have seen that many people here like to go by outlines when they write. I have never done good on the outline type writing, so am I doing something wrong?

I guess what I want to know is, how do you go about writing a outline?

Do you start with:

I. ...
...A. ...
......a. ...
......b. ...
......c. ...
...B. ...
......a. ...
.........1. ...

...and so on? How do you outline a story?

[TamTam]

I don't know, Bane. I don't do outlines. Most of the time, I don't know where something is going to go until I'm well into it. By that time, I'll have the outline in my head. It might need some tweaking here and there, and if I write it down it feels a little too inflexible. I've never really felt compelled to actually write down an outline, except for a school essay. :)

[Ghyle]

When I've used outlines, it has been in a very disorganised way. I get ideas of where to go, and make drafts of notes summarising them on a page, in fragments as I allow them to come forth from the subconscious.

So the planning, really, is not consciously created, but allowed to develop. When I write, I use the outline as a rough summary, and work around the general theme, but I don't adhere tightly to what I've written for the most part.

[Brenda]

I had several ideas for stories, and I wasn't ready to start writing them but I didn't want to forget them, so I just kind of wrote out the basic idea:

Girl on Pern sees child in tunnels, fire lizards see, no one believes anyone was there, dragon says the fire lizards say there were two people in the room.

That turned into "Ghost in the Tunnels" which I am now writing. The trouble came when I got past the original idea; I had to figure out where to go from there, and how to get there.

[Bane]

Ahh...I was just wondering how people did it. If I get an idea I write as much n it as possible. Like this:

What if a blins woman Impresses? How did she become blind? What happens?

This became "The Love of the Blind". Which I am now stuck on :irked:. I can generally write fairly wel like that. The problem isn;t fleshing, it's finishing.

[McClance]

When I make outlines for my stories, I do them like this:

Introduction:
Story Point 1:
SP 2:
SP 3:
(and so on)
Climax:
Conclusion:


:)

[Vyon]

I don't generally do outlines either. For my One Dark Night fanfiction I knew where the story was going. Trouble was, it didn't get there. For stories in my own world-system I generally do the worldmaking bit first and character sheets, to know what the boundaries are that my characters are working within. This led to a series of little books called "Vinesh's Guides" - Vinesh being the real person who started the first one by drawing spacey plants and aliens all over one of my manuscripts when he was beta-reading it.