Writing backwards
I am a writer, I tend to write and then write my outline. I have done this for many years with papers and stories but it doesn't seem to work with my books. Is that a good strategy?
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I tend to write my stories "backward." In a 12-chapter novel, I once wrote the first three chapters, then Chapter 12, Chapter 11, Chapter 10, Chapter 9, then chapters 4-8 in some random order.
I know how the stories begin, and how I want them to end. The "middle" chapters are the hardest for me to write, because I'm not sure how to get from A to B. So I let A (the beginning) and B (the end) expand, until there is little enough left in the middle that I can force it to fit both ends.
My secret is to have solid foundation (beginning). Then when you start at the end, you have something to "back into." Otherwise, you don't.
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What you are describing is being a discovery writer, also called a pantser (as in "by the seat of your pants").
The purpose of an outline is to establish a coherent linear structure for your story, so all the plotlines work all the way through. If you just write your entire story first, and then reverse-engineer it to fit an outline, you can make it work, but as Mike Ford notes, you must be absolutely ruthless about it.
Generally speaking, if you are writing a relatively standard, linear narrative, an outline is a good thing. Whether you write the outline first and base the story off that or write the story first and then hang the bits on the outline until it works is entirely a question of what you are comfortable with as a writer.
What I don't think you can expect is to have a coherently, fully-formed novel leap from your fingertips in the first draft without having some kind of outline, structure, or plan set up beforehand (whether you write it down or not). Part of the point of discovery writing is that you, quite literally, don't know what's going to happen next. This is the opposite of an outline, where you have already decided what's going to happen next.
Your question should not be "Is this a good strategy?" but rather "Is this a good workflow for me as a writer?"
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