Outlining for pantsers: the minimum viable outline and the reverse outline

Writers are often sorted into two camps: plotters, who outline before drafting, and pantsers, who write "by the seat of their pants" and discover the story as they go. George R.R. Martin prefers gentler terms: architects, who design the house before building it, and gardeners, who plant a seed and see what grows. He counts himself mostly a gardener.

If you're a gardener, most outlining advice probably sounds like a recipe for killing the thing you love about writing. Why would you want to know the ending before you've found it?

Here's the thing, though: discovery writers outline too. They just do it at different times, in smaller doses, and often after the draft rather than before it.

The case against plotting, from people who've earned it

Stephen King is the most famous sceptic. In On Writing he explains that he distrusts plot, partly because real lives are largely plotless and partly because he believes plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible. Instead he starts with a situation, a "what if," and puts characters in it to see what they do. Misery, for instance, began with a premise, a writer held captive by his "number one fan," not a plan.

E.L. Doctorow gave the discovery approach its most quoted image: "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Both writers are telling the truth about how they work. But notice what they're not saying. They're not saying they have no idea what the book is. King knows the situation and the characters intimately. Doctorow has headlights, a limited but real view ahead.

The minimum viable outline

If you draft by discovery, you still benefit from a little light ahead. Think of it as the headlights, not the map. A minimum viable outline might contain only:

• The situation. One or two sentences. Who is in trouble, and what kind.
• The protagonist's want. What are they chasing when the book opens?
• One or two signposts. Moments you're fairly sure will happen somewhere, perhaps a confrontation or a revelation, without knowing when or how you'll get there.
• A direction. Not an ending, but a sense of which way the story is leaning: toward catastrophe, reconciliation, escape.

That's it. It fits on an index card. It won't tell you what to write tomorrow, but it will help you notice when the story has wandered so far from its own premise that it's become a different book, which is the discovery writer's most expensive failure.

Rolling headlights

Some discovery writers extend their headlights as they go: when a chapter is finished, they jot down the two or three things that feel like they might come next. Not commitments, just the view through the windshield. When they sit down the next day, there's somewhere to begin.

This is especially valuable in the middle of the book, where discovery drafts most often stall. A short list of possibilities is enough to avoid staring at a blank page, and it can be thrown away the moment something better arrives.

The reverse outline: the gardener's best tool

The most powerful outlining technique for discovery writers happens after the first draft. It's called the reverse outline, and it's simple:

1. Read through your draft.
2. For each scene, write one line: what happens, whose point of view it's in, and which thread it serves.
3. Lay those lines out in order, as a list, a grid or a set of cards.

You now have an outline of the book you actually wrote, which is almost never the book you think you wrote. Discovery drafts wander. Threads are started and abandoned. Characters are introduced and forgotten. A subplot that grew in the middle had no seed at the beginning. None of that is visible when you reread 100,000 words of prose. All of it is visible in a one-page outline.

What to look for

• Dropped threads. A plotline that's busy in the first half and then disappears.
• Late arrivals. An important character or idea that turns up at 60%. The fix is often to plant it early.
• Duplicate scenes. Two scenes doing the same job; one can go.
• The real story. Very often, a discovery draft finds its true subject partway through. The reverse outline shows you where, so you can revise the opening to set it up.

Discovery and structure aren't enemies

Many discovery writers revise with the kind of structure plotters use up front. They draft freely, reverse outline, then check the result against a beat sheet or a plotting grid. The creative discovery happens in the draft; the structural discipline arrives in revision.

The order is different. The destination is the same: a book whose shape is as deliberate as its sentences.

You don't have to choose between architect and gardener. Even a gardener needs to step back and look at the whole garden now and then.