"No one could say that [Stephen King's] work is short of storytelling, but he plots very little."

"There are broadly two ways to approach any piece of writing, in my opinion. One is where you have an idea of where the whole thing is heading ... The other is where you have a phrase, an image, maybe a single line that fascinates you and provokes you into elaborating it."

"Literature—language, fiction—does not as a medium force you to leave your ideas behind. And if you think it into being, if you will a story into being, by God, it's going to show."

"Outlines help some writers organize their thoughts.  But outlines imprison others and keep them from thinking clearly."

"Most writers will create an outline and start pounding out a draft.  But Klinkenborg does neither.  Outlines, he says, are not only a waste of time, but they also harm our writing.  How, he wonders, can we presume to know what we're going to write before we write it?"

"Listen to the story being told.  Come up with the idea, but let it play out naturally.  Try not to shape it word for word or be so married to an outline that you deny what could become something amazing."

"I was a real outliner... the real price was, the writing was always boring, because I had already mapped out what I was going to say.  There was no energy left, and no excitement left in the prose itself."

"I don't plot anything out.  I don't have an outline, for better or for worse.  I've tried, but I feel that kind of hems me in."

"How could I outline the guy?  I had no idea who he was.  I had to get on the page and kind of feel around and talk to him and see what he could do." (on outlining vs. not and writing his main character)

"If something happens in those spontaneous moments of writing that's different than my outline, I go with the spontaneity, and change the outline to suit it.  Because the spontaneity, that's the art.  My intentions are the craft, right?  That's what I'm trying to do.  But what is being done is where the magic is."

"The first comment I got from my editor was that it was the most linear plot she'd ever read, and she could predict exactly what was going to happen, and I needed to rip the whole thing apart and redo it.  So that's where I got with outlining."

"You're much closer to the dreaming side of your mind when you write.  Dream, dream, dream it through.  Write more with your body and less with your head.  Don't think a story through, don't think it out.  The danger of thinking it through is that most of us are not smart enough to do it that way.  We have to go one moment at a time."