Diana Gabaldon Quotes

I don't plan the books ahead of time. It's not like Harry Potter. I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline.

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.

I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.

I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.

When I sat down and wrote the first paragraph, I was like, 'Oh, I can go with this.' I didn't do an outline. I didn't do anything. I just wrote sentence by sentence, not knowing where the story was going.

I just write what comes along. I don't have a detailed master plan.

I really don't keep an outline; I don't organize in any way. I just write.

I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline. I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together.

I basically just write stream of consciousness to a certain extent. I let the song kind of go where it wants to go.

My writing process is chaos. I usually start with an overarching theme. Then I establish several story threads, but I don't outline. I just start writing and keep notes for what may come. It's an organic process that's usually pretty flexible.

I start writing with only the vaguest idea about who my characters are and what is going to happen, and the characters and plot come into existence as I go. I've tried doing it the other way, but for me, outlining is a waste of time because I never follow the outline.

I'm often just writing just to write. I'm not writing with...If I write, like, sitting down with a goal in mind, it's always, like, the worst. It turns into a ska song even if I'm trying to write like a horror movie sound track or something.

I realized I had a novel on my hands, but didn't know where it was going to go. So I thought, 'I'm going to do everything that you're not supposed to do when you plan a novel; I'm going to step back and let this thing take itself wherever it wants to go, and I'm not going to worry about how things connect until later on.'

I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.

I never work from an outline, and often I don't know how the story will end.

My style of writing is to allow the story to unfold on its own. I try not to structure my work too rigidly.

I don't like outlining, because books are organic things. Sometimes a book doesn't want to be written in a certain way.

I've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.'

The way that I write novels in particular is I don't usually outline; I just write. Part of the fun is discovering what's happening in the story as I'm going along.

When I sit down to write, I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.

I didn't have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

I'm not the sort of writer who can plan out things. Mostly I have no idea where I'm going.

I cannot outline. I do not know what the next thing is going to happen in the book until it comes out of my fingers.

I don't write with a scheme or a plan. I write word to word, so whatever that first sentence is, having said that, one more or less had to say what comes next and next and next. Guilty of no cogitation or forethought.

I am not a consecutive writer.