Prompt engineering in fiction writing: does strict planning kill creativity or make better stories?

I've been on both sides of this. A year ago I wrote a 50k word novel with zero outline, total pantsing, and the first draft was a mess that took 4 months to fix. Then last month I tried a detailed 3-page outline for a short story, and I finished the draft in 6 days but it felt stiff. Which approach do you lean toward and why?

3 comments

3 Comments

fionafoster12d ago

Didn't someone famous say that plot is just a pair of pants you can take off if they don't fit?

keith27412d ago

Two outlines and a stiff story is still better than one messy novel and four months of fixing.

eva_moore12d agoMost Upvoted

The "stiff story" part is where I think people miss the real trade off. A stiff plot means you sometimes have to force characters into doing things that don't feel natural just to hit your outline beats. That messiness in a first draft actually teaches you stuff about your story that no outline can predict, even if it means more fix work later.