My husband is a science teacher. More specifically, he’s a Physics-Is-Phun Engineering Geek (a PIPEG?). One of the classes he teaches is called Engineering Physics, where the current project is assembling and programming a small, robotic vehicle. My husband shared his thoughts with me about how his instruction to his students was similar to what he’s seen me doing as I put together whatever book I’m working on.
First, he said to his students, you must have a basic, overall plan in mind before you start putting together what will become your vehicle. If you just willy-nilly assemble something that resembles a vehicle, you might have to disassemble much of it to adjust for details that will be important later. For example, the robot must include light sensors, since ultimately it’ll have to follow a pattern or perform a task. 
It must be able to pick up a weight and maintain a center of gravity above the drive wheels. Taking apart what you’ve spent so much time assembling so that it will actually be a working robot will feel like a waste of time.
While he advised them to plan ahead and fill in the stylistic details later—those building pieces that might actually be fun to work with once the challenge of the programming is allowed for and addressed—it occurred to him that I do the same thing when I design a story.
I can see the wisdom in that even as I readily admit I am, for the most part, a seat-of-the-pants writer. I don’t heavily outline. I do, however, have a plot in mind. I start with an opening dilemma, I’m familiar with at least the major obstacles along the way, and I have a pretty good idea of a black moment—when everything seems lost for my hero and/or heroine. Following that I have a logical, satisfying resolution in mind. Details will be filled in along the way. But I’m not such a detailed outliner that, before I get to know my characters and what they’re doing, I might have to start over on the characterization just to fit a strict plot or vice versa. Because let’s face it, kids aren’t the only ones who don’t want to have to start over.
Someone once told me that if they don’t do a thorough plot outline, do character “interviews” for at least all of their important characters, have an extensive understanding of the justification for nearly every scene, they’re afraid they’ll waste a lot of time going off on rabbit trails. Well, as a fellow seat-of-the-pants writer also told me, she might spend more writing time outlining, plotting or character interviewing than just exploring unnecessary rabbit trails, and at least she’d have fun. The result will likely be the same. It’s just a different approach to the same goal: getting to know our characters and the story they’ll populate.
I hold nothing against extensive plotters, but I’m not so far on the other end of the spectrum that I don’t understand the value of putting together a shell and having a plan—but allowing room to fill in those details along the way.
And this is the miracle of marriage. Science and the arts, who’d have thought they have so much in common?
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