One of the big divides among novelists, in terms of procedure, is outlining. Some of us are hardcore outliners (that would be); others prefer just to make it up as they go.
I suddenly find myself curious as to whether there’s any (rough) correlation between preferred style and manuscript length. For instance, do outliners tend to write shorter novels than non-outliners? (I’d guess that we do, on a very general level, but that’s just my gut speaking. I have no real evidence to that effect, other than the fact that two people known for their really long books–George Martin and Stephen King–have both stated that they do not outline. And of course there are going to be major exceptions; I’m wondering about tendencies, not hard-and-fast rules.)
I don’t really have the energy to write up a statistically viable survey about it, and of course it has no actual bearing on anything other than pure curiosity, but I do wonder.
