Outlines are one of those endless points of controversy you'll find writers debating in forums, books, blogs, writer's groups, all over the place. I find having an outline for any piece longer than five scenes (and I'll get to why in a minute) helps me keep to the point I was originally trying to make and avoid going off into side tangents about sewers, cats, or underwater basket-weaving. An outline gives me a place to hang my research notes, to look at the final structure of my piece and think to myself, hey, I've got a whole pile of bio-warfare going on here, I'd better dig out my bio-informatics for dummies again. Which is much better than being ambushed by it later on down the road and being caught between my own ignorance and a looming deadline. I also find that sometimes going back and forth between my outline and my story exposes weak points I hadn't known were there, and more clearly than if I was just writing cold.

Generally, as I said, I don't outline anything shorter than five scenes. This is because a single scene is a (hopefully) straightforward piece with one point to make or mood to set. A two-scene piece still encompasses one mood, and a three scene piece makes an arc: Beginning, middle, end. Set-up, progression, denouement. A five scene piece provides transition between each third, while a four scene piece gives a little extra punctuation to one of the three main parts, usually a teaser at the start or a trailer at the end. The outline is built into the structure: if you have a solid idea of your beginning, middle, and end, you can write a five scene piece with minimal difficulty.

For longer pieces, I write an outline. I start with whatever I have: if I have a few snippets of scenes in mind I write those down, if I have an idea of the overall structure I write that down. In school you're often taught that outlines have to obey a certain format. Overarching points are marked with one kind of symbol, sub points marked with a second, individual sub-points off that are marked with a third kind of symbol. It's a good way to work if you like that kind of descending format, from the overall five-act arc of your work down to the minute details of each scene. You can start by listing off the five acts and fill it in with greater and greater detail as you go on. Which means your outlines look something like this:

I.
    A.
        i.
        ii.
        iii.

I approach it a different way most of the time these days, partly because I'm writing shorter works (10k to 30k) that I can manage without starting on my five act arc, and partly just out of practice. I mark each scene with a symbol and a one or two sentence summary. After that I put in the expanded details of the scene. If there's extra bits that don't have context yet, a piece of dialogue or an item or person I really want in the scene, I put that in a separate paragraph below the scene note. This means my outlines end up looking something like this.

//
//
//

If it's a world I'm familiar with or a subject I know with a fair amount of confidence, I can leave it at that and start writing. If, however, I find myself needing to describe the inside of a virus lab in detail because the setting is, well, a virus lab (this is why I find outlines handy!), then I can go and dig up some pictures of virus labs in cinema, read some books by research pathologists. The relevant details of the research go beneath the scene note, that way when I'm looking at that point in my outline, it's all right there for me to use. And, again, it keeps me from wikisurfing from pathology to xenobiology to alien systems to, hey, I could create my own alien race on this planet that's made entirely of jellyfish and...

I know me. I know I will do that given half a chance. So I don't give myself that chance.

Then I've got my outline, and I can start writing. And a good thing to remember about an outline is, it really isn't a maneuver at all. More of a gesture. I am currently in the middle of a short story that I outlined several weeks ago. I'm about two thirds of the way through it but only halfway through my outline, and I'm trying to line up all the pieces together. They're not quite fitting, so I go back and I look at my outline. Something's not right here, something's missing. Rather than re-read my whole story till I'm sick of my own words, I can picture the overall structure by looking at my outline and shuffle it around in my head till I realize, wait a second! The villain motivation! This is all looking weak because I don't have a solid idea of what my villain's motivation is! Even if it never sees the light of text. Bam, I fix that, and I'm off to the races again.

On the flip side of that, an outline is also a good place to go back later, after you've written it, and lay out all your guns. You may have heard this before but I'm repeating it here anyway: a famous playwright and author, Anton Chekhov, once wrote that if a gun is placed on the mantel in the first act, it must go off by the third. This is not to say that if something happens in your third or fourth act it has to be foreshadowed, but it does make your plots tighter and creates more of a fair play between text and reader, particularly in mysteries. One anthology outline of mine is littered at the front half with Chekhov's guns, things that found their way into the earlier stories simply because I had half an idea in my front brain what they were for and figured they could go off later. This is cheating, a little. It's a good way to get your material set up for later, if you decide you like a setting or a topic and want to keep on working in it. But, as I said earlier, an outline is a good place to keep all your guns organized so you can fire them off at your leisure rather than realize at the last minute that you forgot one or two of them.

I like outlines. I like them because they keep me honest, and they keep me on track and writing what I originally meant to write, rather than digressing into tangents about guns, squirrels, and sewers. Outlines are useful buggers for many reasons, and while we're always told we should have one, I find I'm a lot more likely to do what I'm told if I also understand why. So now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

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Dialect and Language
Applying Writing Advice
Tenses and Person

Outlines
Research
Pacing
Personal Style
Tell the Story