Sarah J. Maas has published more than a dozen novels across three interlocking fantasy series, and by most accounts she does it without a traditional outline. She's talked in interviews about how she actually gets a book from a blank page to a finished draft, and the picture that comes through is less architect, more explorer. Here's what's actually documented about her process.
A Teenager on FictionPress
Maas started writing the story that became Throne of Glass when she was sixteen, under the working title Queen of Glass. She posted it as a serial on FictionPress.com, the original-fiction sister site to FanFiction.net, chapter by chapter, for an online audience that followed along as it went. That detail matters. Writing episodically for readers reacting in real time is close to the opposite of plotting a novel in a binder before writing a single scene.
She kept revising that manuscript for years before it found an agent and sold to Bloomsbury, publishing in 2012 as Throne of Glass. The version readers bought in stores had been reworked many times over from what first went up on FictionPress, but the discovery-first instinct she built writing it in public as a teenager appears to have stuck.
Following the Characters Instead of a Map
In interviews, Maas has described herself as someone who trusts her gut over a plan. She's said she isn't an outlining type of writer and that she'd rather listen to her characters, even when they pull the story somewhere she didn't expect. She's described scenes that surprised her while she was writing them, moments she didn't know were coming until she was already inside the chapter.
That's the classic shape of discovery writing, sometimes called pantsing. Instead of plotting every beat before drafting, she goes in with a strong sense of the major turns and lets the connective tissue get written scene by scene. It's a method that rewards a writer who already knows her characters intimately, which tracks for someone who spent years living inside the same story world before it was ever a published book.
Where an Outline Does Show Up
Discovery writing and traditional publishing don't always mix cleanly, and Maas has acknowledged the friction. Once a book is under contract, publishers generally want a sense of where a series is headed, and she's mentioned having to submit outlines for the Throne of Glass books before writing them, something she's called useful at times and frustrating at others. So the honest picture isn't zero outline ever. When one exists, it tends to be a rough map for the publisher rather than the tool she actually uses to write scenes.
She's also talked about building a music playlist for each book before she starts drafting, and it functions almost like an alternative outline. Instead of plot points on a page, she has a sequence of songs mapping the story's emotional arc. That's still not a beat sheet. It's a mood guide, and it fits a writer who works by feel more than by structure.
For the fuller picture of how a binge-drafting, playlist-driven process fits together across a career this size, the full Sarah J. Maas writing routine covers her drafting sprints and her revision process in more detail.
What You Can Steal
- Write the messy first version before you worry about structure. You find the shape of a story by drafting toward it, not by planning it first.
- If outlining kills your momentum, try writing toward a handful of major turning points instead of a full beat sheet.
- Build a playlist or another sensory anchor for your project before you start. It can do some of the work an outline does without boxing in the story.
- Don't assume your first version of a manuscript is close to final. Maas revised her teenage FictionPress draft for years before it became a published novel.