ikr they can be on an island where all they do is eat sea salt popsicles, lay in the beach together, and experiment with each other like lyra and will in the garden of eden
i usually outline loosely with the understanding that the final story will probably be nothing like my outline lol. it helps to get me started but it's not something i think too seriously about.
when i outline, instead of doing like a formal cornell notes ordeal or something i just draw the story arc. like i draw a line in the shape of an arc on a piece of paper, and make marks on the line to indicate where i want certain events to happen and where the climax of the story is.
i also sometimes make multiple outlines, if i'm not sure which direction i want to go with a certain prompt or idea. it helps me go "whelp, that isn't going to work" or "oops this idea makes more sense."
oh, i do the drawing thing sometimes! i make a little graph that charts the rising tensions in the story, with labels as to where certain scenes fall on the line. it helps!!
yes!! i feel like if i'd started using outlines before and forced them to work (i.e. followed them and finished writing the story) my pacing would have improved much faster? like one of my weakest points as a writer is pacing, and while i think i've come a long way from my issues with it in the past, it might've been rectified much more easily if i'd gotten into the habit of writing good outlines and knowing what NEEDED to happen next to move the plot forward
yeah i think writing character outlines can be helpful esp. if you're writing an au or something, just to keep track of characteristics you've kept and how they might change over the course of the story
right?? if nothing else, it makes me realize what the point of the story i'm trying to tell is, which is something that tends to get lost if i just jump in writing blindly.
Page 142 of 201