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Outline vs Draft
Feb. 19th, 2025 11:38 amAn important lesson I've learned about my own writing process:
No outline survives first contact with the drafting process unscathed.
Like. Mine usually get pretty close, especially in spirit, because that's what I'm drafting to find and preserve. But details inevitably get moved around or changed wholesale, so when I go back to look at an outline and compare it to a finished fic, some parts of the outline just flat-out don't show up in the fic, or show up in a different spot entirely. And I know how that happened during the writing process, because I was there experiencing it, but it's gotta a bit of a brain twister for anyone who's read both but doesn't have direct access to my thoughts.
Not that there are a lot of people in that category, but still.
(This post brought to you by a detail in an outline I'm going to be moving from one chapter to another, and may have to do some gymnastics if I want to fit it in at all.)
No outline survives first contact with the drafting process unscathed.
Like. Mine usually get pretty close, especially in spirit, because that's what I'm drafting to find and preserve. But details inevitably get moved around or changed wholesale, so when I go back to look at an outline and compare it to a finished fic, some parts of the outline just flat-out don't show up in the fic, or show up in a different spot entirely. And I know how that happened during the writing process, because I was there experiencing it, but it's gotta a bit of a brain twister for anyone who's read both but doesn't have direct access to my thoughts.
Not that there are a lot of people in that category, but still.
(This post brought to you by a detail in an outline I'm going to be moving from one chapter to another, and may have to do some gymnastics if I want to fit it in at all.)
