On Friday, March 12, I held a workshop focused on Freewriting vs. Outlining. I find it fascinating how attached writers are to their approach to writing—even when it doesn’t serve them. I’ve read contentious posts about writing freeform and outlining. I am a lifelong pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their pants and does not plot in advance). Historically, I have absolutely refused to even try outlining. I was sure that it was dry and boring and would suck all the life out of the writing process. Spending years trying to draft my way through a novel, however, showed me I needed a bit more structure than I was allowing myself. Today, I use any and all strategies available to me. I think we are stronger writers when we aren’t binary about our processes.

After the workshop, participants told me that they:

• Got unstuck on stories that had stumped them
• Outlined plays after not writing for a period of time
• Got the motivation to return to a novel
• Found holes in the plot of a story
• Had a process or idea click for them

As we’re developing our writing, our tender imaginations and struggling spirits often need a little support along the way. I’m thrilled to have been able to lead folks in reconnecting with their work and setting up new process. Here are some of the questions that arose during the workshop.

I don’t like freewriting. I usually work over my writing before I carry on and I don’t like anything I write when I freewrite.

Freewriting is a tool for idea generation and exploration, it does not replace drafting. It sounds like you’re judging your output and assessing it as you would writing you’ve developed to publish. Try to think about it as a space to work out questions, characters and concepts. I enjoy doing focused freewrites. You can set your timer and give yourself something specific to explore: a blockage in the plot, a character that’s not behaving, a world you’re building, or just general exploration. What you do with the freewrite is up to you. It’s just an opportunity to open up to your intuition and build some elements of story organically. Raw creativity has an essential place in every artmaking practice. It’s writing you do for yourself and for your flow—it’s not for public consumption and doesn’t have to be perfect.

When you say we should freewrite a scene where our character has a transformation, what does transformation mean in this context?

In terms of the plot, your characters don’t stay static. As the plot evolves, they transform in understanding or attitude or physical ability. Over the arc of your story, your character should change in a meaningful way—or there should be meaningful heft to your character deciding not to change. Transformation is basically your character’s evolution in response to an event or a series of events in the plots. Your character’s transformation is at the heart of your story and it’s worth some reflection and creativity in how you will make it resonate. If you have a story in which your character stays static, that is a rich place to investigate for editing. Layering in a transformation—and then going back to seed that character’s journey to that transformation—can make your work more meaningful and impactful.

When you build your outline, you said that you do a Q&A with yourself. Is the Q&A mainly asking yourself about what’s needed in the story, or are you talking to characters too?

The Q&A is about the plot points and what’s needed in the story. I might have the intuition to put a character in a specific scene. After I write that into my outline, I ask myself: Why is the character is there? What impact will this scene have on the arc of the story? How does this scene connect to the character’s emotional core and meta story? I’m interrogating myself in an attempt to trigger instinct and problem solving around what is needed in the story. But when I want to dig into character, I usually freewrite. You can use a Q&A structure when you freewrite as well, directly asking your characters what they want and what secrets they hold. Or you can throw them into different scenes with various characters and have them talk. As you freewrite their dialogue and/or interactions, you may stumble on some interesting and unique dimensions of them that your conscious mind didn’t think of.

When using a standard outline to guide your outlining, how do you know what outline will work for the story?

Outlines are tools, so your outline should never limit your story. I don’t look at outlining like a linear process. That means, when I write an outline, I don’t follow it blindly. In fact, after I write the first draft, I don’t go back to the outline. I use something called a plot chart to track my way through the story as the manuscript evolves in the next few drafts. For the first draft, the outline is a framework—a set of guardrails that guides the path of your plot. It brings efficiency and focus to the process of developing your first draft. It allows you to turn your attention to the storytelling rather than having your mind split between the task of the plotting and writing simultaneously. But your story should never serve the outline or be diminished to fit an outline. If the outline you’re using as a template doesn’t fit your story, you can deviate from the outline or choose another outline for more guidance. Once an outline has helped you build out the plot and identify holes in your story, great, it’s done its job. If you find yourself wanting to build more into your story and you don’t know what to build in or where to build it in—poke around online and explore a few more outlines to find one that inspires you. You can be fluid when you develop your outlines whether you are following a preset outline, mashing together two or more outlines, or using your own outline format. The point is not finding the perfect outline; the point is writing down the plot points that will support you in building out the story—once you have that, you can discard the outline template and diverge from it as needed.

When I outline, I struggle to find the connection between the important moments in my outline.

I believe deeply in the evolutionary process of writing. There are answers that become available to you only after you write the story. Outlines don’t have to be perfect, but they do need to carry you through the arc of the story and give you something to work with. When struggling to find connections between plot points, one strategy is to turn to your B story. Your A story is the main plot—the storyline that describes what your book is about, but your characters do more than just fulfill the main plot. There are other elements to their lives. When you feel that you’ve touched on all the plot points you need to for your A story, but you feel there are gaps where you need more scenes and story between moments, you can turn to your B story and give your character scenes that reveal more of who they are through showing them in their daily lives, interacting with their surroundings or engaging with other characters.

When I outlined, I thought about five or six different endings and I don’t know which one to use. How do you do choose your endings?

I believe the outline stage is too early to be finalizing endings. I find that as I get to know my characters and dig deeper into plot the ending usually emerges organically. I allow my endings to be faulty and imperfect during the outline stage and the first draft stage. Usually why the time I get to the third draft—which is a deeper focus on craft—the ending clicks. I find endings are stronger after you’ve done some story development. This is a good example of the interplay between freewriting and outlining. The outline is like scaffolding, it gives you a framework to work with as you’re developing the chapters. Then, after the world becomes real and gets under your skin, you can create an ending with full knowledge of your plot, subplots, plot twists and story arc. We can drive ourselves crazy trying to know everything at once. I believe endings are a good place to lean back into the flow of freewriting. Have your structure, but leave that mystery so it can evolve organically once your story has a stronger identity.

THE TAKEAWAY

The takeaway I hope I left workshop participants with is the fact that both freewriting and outlining are tools. I believe we should not limit the tools we use to produce work. Find and utilize the tools that carry you forward. When the tools start to stymie your or don’t support your progress, it’s time to try a new tool. The tools exist to help you, not to constrain you. I’ve been amazed how much time outlining saves in developing my writing—and I’ll never stop freewriting. For me, knowing how to use both has been immensely enriching in my creative process.

Onward!