What's better in fiction writing, a plot outline or free flow writing?

To outline or not to outline... is that the question? Whether 'tis easier on the writer or better for the story to suffer the drudgery and pain of a formal outline or to take arms against a sea of free-flowing ideas and just wing it?

Like most things, I believe the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Writing fiction without any outline at all is a good way to come up with a bunch of situations and character sketches that don't really go anywhere. I have dozens of little blurbs that never became anything, because I didn't know where the story was going and it didn't tell me.

This is not entirely a bad thing. If an idea is going to die, it's better that it die quickly so you can move onto other things. Why waste time and energy on an idea that isn't going anywhere?

However, once you do get that spark, that little inkling that there's a story in there somehwere, I think it's helpful to at least make a thumbnail sketch of who's who, what's what, and where you think it's all headed. On the story that I'm working on right now, I have three documents that together serve as a sort of outline. One is a list of characters with a few relevant facts about each person. Another is a list of "rules" for the story (since it has some fantasy content, I wanted to establish before I got too far in what exactly is and is not possible). And the third is a very rough plot outline.

And I do mean very rough; a formal outline is great for essays and speeches, but it's an awfully quick way to cut out the soul of a piece of fiction. There are times when a story will go off in a direction you didn't intend; when this happens, you must immediately do two things: one, pat yourself on the back, because you're on to something, and two, revise your outline. If the story goes off the outline, don't change the story. You'll kill it. Change the outline.

So my advice is to start with no outline, just an idea, and play with it a little. But if something starts to come of it, try to impose a little order on it, see if the idea can become a story. But if that story shrugs off your sense of order and follows its own, go where it leads you. Don't force it.