To outline, or not to outline

When people ask me my favorite book of all time, I struggle with naming just one. I provide a list, and Slaughterhouse-Five is always on that list.

This past weekend, I organized my book shelf, as I tend to do when I have a stretch of free time and am trying to avoid Swiffering my wood floors. I came across my copy of Slaughterhouse-Five, which is brown and ugly and worn, and started reading, just for nostalgia (and, like I said, to procrastinate on the Swiffering).

Just a few pages in, I discovered something I hadn’t noticed before: a philosophy on outlining.

Here’s what Vonnegut writes:

“As a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterizations and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontations, I had outlined the Dresden story many times. The best outline I ever made, or anyway the prettiest one, was on the back of a roll of wallpaper.

I used my daughter’s crayons, a different color for each main character. One end of the wallpaper was the beginning of the story, and the other end was the end, and then there was all that middle part, which was the middle. And the blue line met the red line and then the yellow line, and the yellow line stopped because the character represented by the yellow line was dead. And so on. The destruction of Dresden was represented by a vertical band of orange cross-hatching, and all the lines that were still alive passed through it, came out the other side.”

This got me thinking about how we go about setting up stories. I find it weird that so many people see writers as these flighty artists types. Writing, especially novel-writing, takes a great deal of organization. I’d say I’m closer in mindset to an architect or an engineer than anything.

All writers have their own way of organizing. Some swear by formal outlines. I don’t. For me, the joy of writing is discovering the story as I go, finding out what the characters have in store for me. Usually, I know how it’s going to end, vaguely, and I have a line in mind for the beginning. But, the whole middle area is purposefully unknown — “and then there was all that middle part, which was the middle.” I like it that way. If I had it all outlined, with bullets and sub-bullets, that would bore the hell out of me. Why would I write out the story if I already knew every detail of it?

But that’s just me.

The way I organize is via a multitude of notes on post-its. This  completely contradicts my non-writer self, the woman with the obsessively detailed day planner. But, maybe that’s purposeful. I’d probably drive myself nuts (or more nuts) if I was as outlined with my writing as I am with my daily life. Somewhere, something has to give.

What’s your take on outlining?