Discovering the Building

Is there really a difference between discovery writing and outlining? What might some of the benefits of either method be, and can we pull from each side of the spectrum?

I got to thinking about it this morning, and I realized, wait a minute, even when you’re writing an outline, you’re technically discovering the story as you go because you’re doing a lot of the work up front that a discovery writer would do at the end or through the novel.

In either case, the story is coming from your imagination.

So maybe there’s not really a difference at all.

I wouldn’t call this an epiphany because I’ve had similar thoughts before, but think about it. Structuring a story from the outset is not any less valid than keeping the mystery alive as you go, and vice versa.

In fact, the two share more commonalities than would appear on the surface. Commonalities are a catalyst for ingenuity and progress, in my view.

Process the Difference

Think of a discovery writer as someone who wants to read the book as they’re going. They’re reading along with you. They’re just as shocked as someone who finds out why the villain became obtuse in their logic during their read-through.

An outliner plans things ahead of time.

They know what’s going to happen in chapter 34, and they might even know with such accuracy what the fifth paragraph in that chapter will say exactly.

Whichever method you use is up to you, obviously, and I would never force someone to use a method that does not work for them. I do a mix of both as I write in a mixture of dictation and typing. I often dictate the rough form and then clean it up by typing, as I am doing now. This article is around 1800 words as I’m going, and it took ten minutes of speaking. That’s a shocking pace of 10,800 words in an hour, but not truly the case since the edit takes me a bit of time. In the end, it is still far faster than typing it out from the outset.

It’s my process for nonfiction, and just as a person who organically discovers the story or builds it from the outset knows, process works for us.

I lean toward planning things out, but that doesn’t mean discovery writing doesn’t have a place because my outline is discovered, anyway.

So again, is there really a difference between us, or do we have more in common than we think?

Some of us have made the observation that if you figure out the story in advance, there’s no fun in writing it anymore, and I totally understand that, but I suppose it’s a difference of flavor.

While opinions diverge, that doesn’t mean that your choice is restricted.

I’ve figured out that if I do a journey’s beats in advance, there can still be a causal function to the organic discovery of the book’s beats as I go along in the journey.

My characters, for example, need to lead the plot.

In discovery-written books, I feel like character is king, whereas in outlined books, you might get a sense of—wait a minute. These guys are choosing to do this because the plot demands it. Are they even really characters? Then there is the notion of putting on the helmet and shield of plot armor. We wrote that they’d survive into chapter 55. How it occurs is a delicate balance of protagonists overcoming and still making it without too much help.

In the final product, with some polish and revision, obviously, you shouldn’t be able to detect whether it was an outlined book or a discovery-written book, but there’s a sense of wonder about not knowing exactly where you’re going. I believe Sanderson once said this in his lectures at BYU.

I totally understand that feeling of surprise and not knowing where you’re headed. Spontaneous creation is useful, especially for making characters make logical and natural decisions.

I’ve done both. I prefer to plan things out, but I understand the joy of discovering the story as you go.

Think about it. If a better idea comes along, you might have to go back a few chapters and plant that idea, but it’s worth it in the end because it’s your method.

It’s your process.

Your process gets you to the end, and that’s what counts.

Whether Themes Surface Depends on You, Not on Method

Meaning and theme might be something developed subconsciously, and you may not have intended the theme to come out the way it did at first.

For example, in my upcoming light novel, The Voided Promises of Noble Songs, I had the theme mapped out already. I had an outline mapped out already.

The book is written with a thematic element of promise, as you might tell from the title. That is what the book’s theme is. I often find these themes come to me in my subconscious as I’m thinking throughout the day.

For example, the first novel in The Orchestrylus Odyssey, The Symphonist, has the theme of dreams and possibilities.

The main character dreams of becoming an elite symphonist and happens upon the alucinized violin Stellatina during an event where what she thinks is a Negasong attacks her and Timbre. Through no choice of her own, it’s almost forced on her.

So in a sense, even though she’s not a real symphonist yet, she gets to live part of that dream, but her growth will come in later chapters of her story. What it means to have fate force its hand, or if you were just there at the time outside of the whims of fate (haha) becomes quite important later on through multiple characters’ arcs.

The thematic structure of Auminous, for example, came a bit later, and I didn’t intend to write it that way from the outset.

But the themes of Auminous are: Who has the true light? Where does true enlightenment come from? Is any side truly … correct? Are they heinous for the sake of being heinous? Is there humanity in monsters?

Those types of things sometimes develop as you’re writing. In that book, I discovered as I went along and planned out some parts of it. It was a mixture of both.

Some of the tightly written sections came from an outline, and some of the freer character work came from figuring it out as I went along.

There’s no right way.

The Methodology of a God

Going back to the idea of us being the same, it’s all coming from your head anyway, right?

You can’t get around it.

It’s coming from your mind.

Whether you put it all up front or all in the back, it’s all the same process in the end. You might have to do some heavier revision if you’re discovering things as you go along because you might start things with false starts. There might be a subplot that fizzles out because it didn’t go anywhere, and you weren’t expecting it to die out like that.

However, the benefit of it on the flip side is that the unassuming subplot might become greater in the plot later or lead to more conflict.

There’s also the sense that maybe your story will not have the right continuity to it if you write by figuring it out as you go.

You might say discovery writing will waste time, lead to more revision, or have a higher chance of having a saggy middle, but I’d say those can always be shaped as you go.

In fact, I think discovery writing benefits when you edit as you go, cleaning it up so you stay solid the whole way through.

Outlining, on the other hand, might bring the criticism of, well, wait a minute—characters are acting too rigid. They don’t have any agency. They’re not actual characters. They’re cutouts.

But at the same time, with a little bit of love and care, you can make the characters’ decisions work with the plot you intended from the beginning.

Sort of like being a god, I suppose, is the best way to describe it.

I think being an author is a bit like being the god of a world you create in each book, right?

You don’t have to stay stuck to the plan if you don’t want to, or you can force characters onto the path you already intended in case they wander a little too far from it.

It’s truly up to you.

Sometimes You Must Outline

What about collaborations, though?

What if you decide to write a book with someone else, and they’re a heavy outliner, and you’re a discovery writer, or vice versa?

In those cases, I suggest you become an outliner no matter what.

It makes things easier for everyone.

But did the discovery writer really not have a plan at all even in their refusal to place it on paper? Or is it they did most of their planning in their heads, and they’re getting it out on paper now in the prose?

I don’t think using one approach is the correct answer, but it is for the sake of sanity when writing with someone else.

That being said, you might think of it as a spectrum of writing because everyone’s going to be different. Maybe you could ask the other author to discover a few things as they go.

Everyone’s going to have their own process, and they’re going to finish their drafts in the way they’re meant to, but working with someone else brings a new set of setbacks and benefits.

It’s easier for me to plan things out, but I do love discovering some things as I go along. I admit it’s fun.

For my long-running series, however, a story bible is almost a necessity.

That’s where it goes. It goes into the story bible, and it is written from a master grand plan for the narrative of 20 books.

I know the ending of the series already, and that might spoil the writing for some, but to me, it’s like a destination on the distant horizon that I’m heading toward.

I know what I see, and because I know what I see, I can plant little clues and hints as to the story’s nature as I start.

Sometimes, an outliner might not understand how to let go of structure. Structure is something inherent to their minds and the way things work for them. So if they’re trying to write something looser, without a clear guideline, maybe they’ll be terrified. But I’ve tried both methods, and I think both have their merit, and both work.

As long as the final edition of the book is as good as it could have been, I believe you win either way.

But yes, outlining is necessary sometimes.

An Order of Observation, If You Like

I don’t get the sense that one way is the only way to do something.

There’s the right way for your workflow to be the best it can.

A discovery writer is going to figure things out as they go, and an outliner is going to write what they already saw happen.

One of them is observing; the other is recollecting, if that makes sense.

I don’t believe either method makes inferior or superior books.

It’s a matter of appreciating a new perspective you might not have considered before.

One person is recollecting things that already happened, and another person is watching things as they unfold.

That’s truly it.

It’s a matter of a time difference.

It’s like being in Colorado versus being in Japan. Someone on that side of the world has already experienced October 16 faster than I did, but that doesn’t mean I’m experiencing October 16 any less, does it?

So Is It Truly Different?

Maybe mixing things together is the best approach, and the hardline perspectives of either side don’t give you a springboard to your own writing.

Perhaps you discover the draft first as you go along, and then you add the plan on the second pass, the third pass, the fourth pass, the tenth pass—whatever pass you may be on.

You might even decide on branching paths from the beginning but discover what those paths entail as you go.

There’s truly no definitive answer to the way you work individually.

Choose the method (or mixture of methods) that works for you and write the way you’re meant to.

But if you’re coming at it from what is inside your mind, there is no actual difference when you think it over logically.

In that sense, you may just discover the building.