Outlining

[scarlettina]

So I'm wondering how people feel about outlining. I started this book by pantsing it (in other words, writing by the seat of my pants), trying to just write it as it came, and what ensued were structural issues, idiot plotting, and uneven characterization. I'm outlining now in a very abbreviated way, a way that Mark Teppo calls the Hardy Boys method: Select a number of chapters (he recommends 26, at 3-5K or so words, a modest, achievable length, at least initially), and then to name each chapter as the chapters in a Hardy Boys book were named, following the three-act structure as you go:
Tom goes fishing with Spotty.
Tom discovers a monster in the lake.
Lake monster eats Spotty.
Tom battles the lake monster.
And so on....

There's more to the technique than that; I'm truncating it here for simplicity's sake, but you get my point. (Teppo's a smart guy; this description doesn't do the technique real justice.) I'm finding this act of simple outlining kind of fascinating because I find myself wanting to do more, add sub-bullets and more detail, but needing to stay succinct so I can see the structure as I go and stay focused on the mission immediately at hand. Structure, somehow, has become very important to me. I suspect that once I have the 30,000-foot view of the story and structure, getting into sublevels will make more sense. Some of this, I suspect, has to do with what jaylake calls span of control, how much I can keep in my head and manage at a time. I wonder if I'm overthinking it. (It wouldn't be the first time. Or maybe this is the first time I'm thinking about this particular thing in this particular way and it feels big.)

So...thoughts? Who's a pantser and why? Who's an outliner and why? Thoughts on outlining generally?

Comments

[skidspoppe.livejournal.com]

I have a friend out here who hasn't written anything in fifteen years or so. We've been talking about writing and in the last two weeks, he's started outlining, something new for him, and it's working like gang busters. He's using a software called Storybook and it's making him excited about writing again. I tend to approach it more like suricattus but I'm not one to look to for advice :)

[skidspoppe.livejournal.com]

Ps: can you point me to where I might read more about the "hardy boys" method (an if you linked to it in the OP, my apologies, on the smartphone and the link doesn't go through)