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A common discussion point among writers is if you are a ‘plotter,’ that is someone who outlines your novel before writing it, or a ‘pantser’ (from ‘by the seat of your pants’ a person who writes without an outline. What I have discovered for myself is that no two books are written the same way even for the same author.

I have written heavily plotted novels. The longest outline I have created I think was some 87 pages, that’s nearly 22,000 words or about 20 percent of the total book. My last completed novel, the fascist werewolf one, I write sans outline. Though after about the first 10,000 words I created a 1-page document with the major thematic events for each of the five acts.

The current novel, a folk horror that is sort of The Wicker Man meets The Dunwich Horror is flying between these two extremes. I have crafted detailed character studies for the major character, again I have the 1-page document about the five-act structure but this time I am outlining act by act.

I have written a fairly detailed outline for act 1 and that act has mostly conformed to the battle plan. Now with 16,000 words completed (but not edited) the first act is finished. It is time to write the outline for the second act informed by how the characters appeared to me in the first. Luckily, I started the writing process early on this one and I am currently about 10 days ahead of schedule so there is plenty of time to compose this next outline and still make my goal of a completed draft by year’s end.