I started out as a seat of the pants writer. My first books started out with me writing on page one, and just chugging along until I was done. It worked for me as far as it went, though I notice now in retrospect how much revision was involved. The second draft of Raven, for instance, cut about twenty thousand words and added about thirty thousand. The current ending of Teek bears precious little resemblance to the first draft version. I didn’t start really outlining my novels until about ten years ago. The driving force was a combination of contractual requirements, and losing the ability to juggle all those plot threads in my head.
Since then, the process of outlining my work, while a pain in the ass, has helped out. Revision has been much less of an issue since I started. Dragon•Princess, for instance, changed very little between subsequent drafts. However, the past two days has reminded me of the first rule of outlining: It’s only a suggestion.
I had reached chapter six in The Methuselah Club, the second book of my Jack Paris series I’m working on, and I realized Jack needed to run into a pair of bad guys much earlier than I had in the outline. The pacing sort of demanded it. So I backed up a couple of chapters and replaced a scene of exposition with a chase across the Case Western University Campus. It improved the book, but it’s done serious damage to the outline. Especially because he knows who these guys are about twelve chapters ahead of where I originally IDd them in the outline.
But the outline is only a suggestion. You have to veer from it if the book demands it. I may have to re-order some chapters, but in the end it’s not a big deal. I spent the first part of my writing career pantsing it. And the funny thing is, even with these kind of changes to the outline on the fly, I still end up with fewer revisions.
