Hello writers, I hope this is the right place to put this in. Well I am currently writing on my first real novel. I wrote plenty stories before, which I made into books afterwards I wrote them. But the book I am writing now is the first time I intend to make a novel. Here's the problem. I collected ideas for over a year and there were too much ideas. I took a long time to make an outline and now I have that outline. Everytime I read my outline I really like the idea but after some time I start highly doubting my outline. (Edit: I am perfectionistic and anxious...) I have the fear that the book doesn't come out the way I intended to... I heard of many writers they have the same doubts. I don't know if I should start writing now. On one hand I am doubting so much and on the other hand I don't want to scrub the progress I made... Maybe I make myself too much pressure because I intended it to be novel, not just a story. How are you dealing with doubt when outlining? Have a good week!
Yes, you should. The outline is a start-point not the finished product. It will almost certainly evolve, your ideas will almost certainly change, but unless you pick up your metaphorical pen, it will never happen. Will be the greatest book ever? I don't know; it might be. It might not. Does it matter? It's your book and will only get written if you write it. A round-the-world cruise begins with a bus to the docks.
i literally just scrapped my outline last week. The last manuscript I completed, I did so without an outline. the one before that, i used a rough outline. The one that I am working on now, I'd made a 3 page outline for how i wanted ti to go from beginning to end, but once i started writing and attempting to follow the outline... it just became harder and harder to write. it was harder to form ideas that fit the outline. So i decided to forget the outline and just write. and that has been so much more helpful to me... im at 19,070 words right now. With my first finished manuscript, my outline came AFTER i started writing. like MUCH later. the outline was more so to organize my thoughts and the scenes that i'd already more or less wrote. and i tweaked it here and there as i wrote.
If I had a dollar for every outline I wrote and discarded, I could take a year off to write and discard more outlines.
I don't write outlines for this reason. Also, they tend to make your plot really obvious. Better for a more natural flow that you can iron out later.
There is a saying attributed to some famous general (German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke): "No plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy." The outline is a starting point, a bare-bones road map through the narrative. Routes are filled with intersections and cross streets; if one looks interesting, the trip isn't ruined because you took a side trip to view the sunset over the bay. I usually start with an outline. The outline I have at the end never looks like the outline I had at the beginning.
