Do you all know the word "plot"?
It's an English word, so it has several meanings, but here, please take it to mean "the development of a story" or "the structure of a story."
It's not just me. People who write stories come up with outlines, or plots, of varying lengths before they start writing.
Some outlines are so enormous and detailed that you wonder, "Does this outline have more words than the novel?" Others consist of a single sentence: "The hero defeats the Demon King and rescues the kidnapped princess."
Neither is better or worse. Everyone has their own approach, and different types suit different writers, so I think you should do whatever you like in that regard. And so, I'm going to say this:
"Outlines are meant to be thrown away."
Do you understand what I mean?
An outline is, ultimately, just an initial plan you think up before you start writing.
It's nothing more than wishes like "It'd be nice if things went this way~" or "I want to do this~."
While writing a story, you're bound to run into a situation where you think, "Huh? The characters have started moving on their own!" You could also say you ended up writing it without meaning to. At that point, the writer faces two choices: "revise it to follow the outline" or "ignore the outline and let the characters do their thing."
Revising it to follow the outline won't cause problems, and it's easier, too. But ignoring the outline is definitely the choice that makes the story more interesting.
Because when the characters start moving on their own, it means the story is saying, "Isn't this more interesting?"
So, everyone, throw away your outlines.
Hello, everyone. I'm Kinosuke Naito.
This is Volume 5, where I threw away the outline. I hope you enjoy it.
Uh, although I wrote earlier that you should throw away your outline, I actually haven't thrown mine away yet.
The characters started moving on their own. But everything went as expected. I'd written in the outline, "They should start moving on their own around here." A miracle occurred: I threw away the outline, yet still followed it!
That doesn't mean I'm just making things up as I go, you know? I think things through properly before I write. After all, I still have plenty of details about the setting tucked away that I haven't brought out yet.
It's just that I hadn't considered publication before, so the chapters weren't balanced well enough.
I'm sorry. I'll do my best to improve that in the next volume.
So, see you in the next volume! Goodbye!
Kinosuke Naito