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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32675
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Your readers will only read the "final" draft. They will neither know nor care whether the finished version that they have in their hands is the first draft, or the fiftieth. That being the case, there is no requirement for any given number of drafts - either as a minimum or a maximum.

The purpose of multiple drafts (for those who choose to write multiple drafts) is to refine and improve the story until the author - and perhaps their editor and publisher - consider it "done". There is no rule that says a story must have more than one draft to be "done". There is certainly no rule that a first draft should be a "disorganised mess". It might be. It might not be. It is perfectly possible to write the first draft of a story and consider that enough; the story is "done". It is also perfectly possible to write a first draft and find that it is a disorganised mess, which needs refining and improving in second and subsequent drafts. The story is the thing - not the number of drafts.

In your case, it sounds as though your process of planning and structuring before writing the story is working for you (according to you, and your readers?). If that is the case, it sounds very much to me like there is no problem here. There is no _requirement_ for a first draft that gets thrown away in favour of a second draft, so your outlining doesn't need to "take the place" of anything. But, it sounds like your outlining is useful to you to get the story into a good state, where others may need (or choose to have) multiple drafts to reach a similar point. This sounds like a success to me!

Original score: 2