WHY OUTLINING SAVES YOU FROM THE REWRITE PILE
When you sit down to outline your story before you write a single scene, something shifts. You stop thinking like a writer and start thinking like a builder. That's the whole point.
Most new writers want to jump straight into scenes and dialogue. They've got a great opening line in their head, and they just want to get on with it. But here's the problem: when you write first and figure out the story second, you end up rewriting. A lot. You'll discover halfway through chapter five that your killer couldn't have been at the scene, or that your protagonist's motivation doesn't hold up, and now you're tearing apart pages you already fell in love with.
Outlining lets you put on a few different hats before you ever put on your writer hat. Each one has a job to do, and if you do those jobs first, the writer hat gets to show up later and just write — no backtracking, no throwing chapters in the trash.
Here are the professional hats you'll need to wear:
The Brainstorming Hat — This is the first hat, and it's the loose one. You wear it when you're sketching out a few possible storylines, just to see which one has legs. This is quick work — short, messy ideas, not finished plots. The goal isn't to pick "the" story yet. The goal is to make sure whatever story you commit to actually has enough potential for twists, turns, and a full novel's worth of trouble. Don't skip this hat. Committing too early is how writers end up 40,000 words into a story that runs out of gas.
The Story Engineer Hat — Once you've picked your storyline, this hat goes on. This is where you lay out the bones of the story — what happens, in what order, and why. You can do this with short paragraphs, a bulleted list, index cards, whatever gets the structure out of your head and onto something you can look at. It won't be pretty. It's not supposed to be. This is the layer where you make sure the story actually holds together before you build anything on top of it.
The Location Scout Hat — This one comes after your story has taken shape in the engineering stage. Now you go looking for the places where all of this is going to happen. Where does the crime scene sit? What's down the street? What does the neighborhood look like? Putting in a little effort here pays off twice — it makes your story feel grounded and real, and if you've ever thought about your book being adapted for film or streaming, having real, scoutable locations gives you a head start.
Wear these three hats well, and by the time you put on the Writer hat, the heavy lifting is already done. We'll talk about the other hats you wear before the Author's Hat in our next article.
Writing a Novel in Layers
Have a peek behind a real novel.
John Walsh is a successful funeral director with a loving family but he has a weakness for other women. The modern world thinks cheating is a victimless crime, but is it?
Movie Reviews
This is the second step in writing a new fiction novel. In the first step, I start out with writing four potential storylines in FreeMind, which is a mind mapping software. 
Most new writers want to start writing scenes and dialogue. They want to just get on with it. But the dark side of working this way is that when you find out your clues won't work when you need to add a new suspect, you will have written two chapters already. My process will save you from writing for the trashcan.