When I started to pin down this novel, I just sat down and started writing. The words came flowing. The prose felt good, the characters were alive and real, the drama gripping.

It all ended up in the garbage can.

I should have known better from my day-jobs: plan your work and work your plan. That has been true in everything I have ever done, but I decided to free-write my novel. Reread, delete, rewrite, wash, rinse, repeat. Over and over again until I had something that almost worked. As the story grew in the telling what almost worked stopped almost working, and back again I went.

A waste of time!

Any writer will tell you that there is a certain magic that happens when you simply write: themes appear out of nowhere, characters become real, prose comes quickly. However, there is also a much more intoxicating magic that happens when the damn thing is done.

A novel needs a framework! It needs a skeletal system! The outline is that skeletal system. It allows the reader to put their full weight on your narrative and not yield; an outline is literary concrete. For bot artistic and financial reasons, I have become an apostle of the outline.

There are some great blogs out there devoted to story structure, here is my favorite so far. The author also sells his services and offers books on the subject of story structure. I have not used him, nor read his books but plan too as I agree with his ideology.