So yesterday this guy— who I am quite certain, was merely seeking a way of stirring things up and driving traffic to his account— said, “If you don’t have an outline before you start writing, you are not a writer. You are just an opportunist pretending to be a writer.” If this is true, among the great opportunistic pretenders are, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Isaac Asimov, James Joyce, Dean Koontz, Rex Stout, Margaret Atwood, and Ernest Hemingway. As breathtakingly ignorant and condescending as I find his statement to be, I thought I would throw it out there and see what you think.
@RGRyan777 An outline is not required but it’s no bad thing to know where you want to wind up. I think many writers have no written outline before them yet have a sense of whose story it is and what it’s mainly about. That’s an outline! 🤣
@RGRyan777 To me writing is like life, it isn't perfect and the 'order' of things isn't always guided by a strict set of rules. There's a beginning and an ending, but everything in between can be messy, joyful, chaotic, intriguing - whatever you want it to be.
@RGRyan777 I suggested to him that perhaps he ought to have had an outline before writing that post.
@RGRyan777 I just start writing when I get an idea. It’s a baby beetling across the floor on all fours to a toy. When the idea stands up and gets a sense of itself and starts to walk, however unsteadily, I start to pencil an outline.
@RGRyan777 @JonathanGunson Dunno. I’m just an opportunist with 22 published novels behind me.