Reviewing with River

I've had stronger outlines for short stories than some of my longer works

I'm somewhere in the middle. I very often know an ending before I know a story - if that makes any sense. In that scenario, I usually need a vague outline of how to get from beginning to middle to end, otherwise I have a dumpster fire of nonsense.

The general outline allows me to write scenes out of order, and to write scenes different ways. If one way works better for a particular scene, I still have enough wiggle room to change the outline.

I cannot be a slave to a hard outline. It doesn't work for me.

I've mentioned before that I've been fighting a scene and finally yelled at the character on my screen, "Okay, what do YOU want to do, then?!?!?" Sometimes they write better stories than I do.