When Does Brandon Sanderson Make All His Storming Outlines

[Pruning the Blackthorn he/him]

Brandon Sanderson always seems to have a storm ton of outlines (if memory serves, he's even got some for the Star Wars prequels that he did just to get it out of his system), and I'm curious when he does this? If he uses his four writing days for outline "clean up," drafting, and editing, then where do all these outlines come from? Does anyone know? I'm losing sleep; it seems insane to me.

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

I believe, when he comes up with a book, part of the writing time that would go to that book would be working on the outline.

[Firesong she/her]

I remember he talked about it a bit. 

He said that he basically makes a very basic outline for every book in a series. Which is just a few events that he knows would definitely need to happen. Like, "Wit kills Dalinar in late Book 7 in a debate over chouta seasoning" (not an actually thing, of course, just made it up), and then when he writes the book, he creates a much more in-depth outline, which goes down to including more detail, and more specific events, and such. 

Basically, it is like:

Quote

Rough Outline --> Detailed Outline ---> Writing Book

So, he would be able to pretty quickly make an outline for a later book as it is the most significant events, and general ideas. Instead of being massive and extensively detailed right off the bat.