#Example of a rough draft outline how to#

Sadly this led to many failure to launch projects that never made it past 20 pages. I, too, once loved to get to know my characters, throw them into an opening situation, and see where they take it without much thought other than a vague notion of how it will all play out.

#Example of a rough draft outline how to#

But to write an almost six-hundred-page novel to work towards one line, he would have to have some rough idea of how to get there. I imagine he enjoyed following the various directions the plot took, and jumped down many a rabbit hole with his characters.

If you’ve read anything by John Irving, you know his stories tend to be long, with multiple tangents woven in. In John Irving’s novel A Widow for One Year, he said he wrote the entire story to work to the last line.

But what happens from there? This is where pantsers (people who write without planning) will argue for letting scenes unfold, enjoying the magic as it flows from the keyboard. Writing projects also start with a spark-a character, a scene, a what-if moment. With most journeys, we start out with an idea of the destination.