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My old writing teacher said never outline first and I wasted 6 months
Back in 2019, my professor at Portland Community College told me to just start writing and let the story find itself. I tried that for a novel idea I had about a diner worker in Nebraska and ended up with 200 pages of scenes that went nowhere. I finally sat down and did a proper chapter outline with 14 plot points and finished the whole thing in 8 weeks. Has anyone else had a writing rule they followed for too long that killed their progress?
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noah91717d ago
My outline looked like a conspiracy theorist's wall by the end, but hey, at least I finally finished a chapter without crying.
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lee.lucas17d ago
Conspiracy wall outlines are underrated honestly. Nothing wrong with a little string and thumbtacks if it gets the words out.
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matthewp5217d ago
Oh man, I gotta respectfully disagree here. Some people really do need that outline structure especially when they're just starting out and the story feels like a big mess. I've seen way too many promising projects crash because somebody thought "just write" meant they didn't need any kind of roadmap at all.
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