Outlining/Plotting/Planning

Outlining/Plotting/Planning

Writing guides often talk about being a "plotter" or a "pantser" - the former being a writer who creates an outline for their story and writes to that outline, whereas the latter is someone who sits down at the keyboard (or legal pad, or whatever tool they use to write) and lets the words fly as they will, discovering the story's direction as they go. There are benefits and drawbacks to both, and mostly it depends on what works best for you - maybe a combination of the two approaches. Even if you've always been totally a pantser, you might find some real advantages to having at least a basic structure to build on.