Quick question, what does everyone thing of outlines? I mean really sitting

down and outlining your fic before applying pen to paper (Or fingers to
keyboard) I know I generly don't as my fic change drasticly from the mental
outline I keep so I was wondering if anyone does and how well it works?
After all, as someone pointed out, we are here to impove our skills.

    For me a lot of the time I carry my outline out in my head and have the
characters act it out for me (kinda like a movie in my mind). More often
than not, I have a well set outline of all the major plot points and what
will happen to whom and by when and how it will end.
     At worst, I'll jot down the absolutely essensial points of my story if
its particularly convoluted or involved just to check for possible plot
holes or bits I missed (and so I won't forget, I've got a notoriously bad
memory)

    As for sticking to my mental outline. Heh. The way I write, I tend to
just tend to let my thoughts wander and let the characters play out a
particular scene as would seem logical to their characterization.
Unfortunately, this tends to send the plot screaming down avenues I hadn't
originally intended for it, but which happens because the characters
wouldn't have done it the other way and still be themselves. I sometimes get
the feeling the characters demand that a certain scene go a certain way
despite my wishes, so I just tend to ride with it and see where it'll go
from there. Loveletters from the Edge is one example of it. I hadn't
intended the Kodachi/Ranma romance to become such a large part of the fic,
and yet it got in there and ate up a bigger chunk of the fic than the
Tatewaki/Nabiki relationship. So sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't,
but for me it seems to work out okay most of the time.

- Scriv