Review of Outlining Your Novel by K.M. Weiland

I love this book.

The reason I absolutely love this book is because I’m a panster. Or maybe that’s the only way I knew how to write before I read Outlining Your Novel, because I’m the kind of person who usually wants to be as organized as possible. But before I read this, I couldn’t outline no matter how hard I’d try. And I’d try, certainly.  But then I’d give up and go at it NaNoWriMo style and end up with a pile of mush with very little salvageable material.

But following the advice you can find in Outlining Your Novel, I find the end result isn’t so terrible that nothing is salvageable. It makes the editing seem more manageable, the plot more coherent the first time around. I don’t have to try nearly as hard to contort an unwieldy manuscript into something that makes a lick of sense.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who either already outlines and wants to try a different way, or anyone like me who struggled to find an outlining style that was appropriate and helpful.