Norman Mailer, sly dog.
"The moment I think of a good plot, I find that the book becomes impossible to write, because I know I won't believe it. Life may consist of people plotting all the time, but the plots rarely develop. We decide: I'll make this move in my life, and that should result in the following - then life confounds us. So I prefer a story that develops out of the writing. I don't like one that moves ahead of my characters, because then my people won't live."
-Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art - Thoughts on Writing.
Norman Mailer's approach to outlining the plot is vastly different to J.K. Rowling's, who created a spreadsheet for each of her Harry Potter novels.
Here's one from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix where Rowling outlines each chapter in detail, including the title and plot. It's interesting to look at the subplots too, where even if a storyline (such as Cho/Ginny) isn't mentioned in a particular chapter, she has still thought about how they are developing.
Hmmm, two writers whose work I have grown up with and who have also influenced my working and writing style, and they each have well-reasoned ideas about the process of plot development.
Just as well I'm not a fiction writer, eh?
