Over the years, I have discovered a particular set of tools (which we’ll discuss later in this chapter) that work best for my outlining process. For example, I write my outline almost entirely longhand in college-ruled notebooks. You, on the other hand, may decide to construct your outline in a Word document or on note cards or in a spreadsheet.
The only “right” way of constructing an outline is the one that offers you the most freedom for creativity. In this book, I will be presenting the methods and tools that have allowed me that freedom, but I encourage you to use what you learn about my process as a launch pad for your own experiments in creative outlining.
Choosing the Best Outlining Method for You
How do you decide which outlining method is best for you? Trial and error is your best bet. You’ll never know for certain if you’ll click with a particular method until you give it a try. However, you can make some educated guesses based on what you know about your personality, what has and hasn’t worked for you in the past, and your own gut feelings about any particular method. For example:
• If you’re short on time for whatever reason (although I caution against rushing a story unless a deadline gives you no choice), you’re obviously going to need to employ a more abbreviated outlining method.
• If you’re worried over-outlining may impair your creativity later on, you might want to try something as simple as jotting down scene ideas and keeping them in a file for quick reference whenever you’re stuck in your first draft.
• If you’re a visual learner, you might profit from a more visual representation of your outline. Instead of storing your outline notes in your computer, you might want to employ colored note cards pinned to a bulletin board—or one of the alternate options listed in the following section.
• Or, if you’re ready to tackle the full-blown challenges and embrace the full-blown benefits of the total-package outlining experience, you just might want to dive headfirst into the extensive sketching and planning method explained through-out the rest of this book.
Keep in mind that your writing process will continually evolve, sometimes without your even realizing it. Different stories will require slightly (or sometimes radically) different tactics. So don’t box yourself into a rigid system. Never be afraid to experiment. Ultimately, finding the right outlining method isn’t so much about choosing as it is about creating. As you read this book, grab hold of anything that strikes your fancy, give it a try, combine it with the methods you’ve already put into practice, and keep searching for tips you can pick up from other authors. If you’re continually striving to learn about the outlining environment that allows you to work most efficiently, you’ll be able to refine your writing in ways that reach far beyond the craft itself.
Different Types of Outlines
Outlines come in many shapes and sizes. Some stories may demand deviations from the standard “list” outline, in which authors compile a linear list of scenes. Linearity is often the best way to make sense of convoluted problems (and the novel is often a very convoluted problem), but sometimes it’s worthwhile to use less common forms of outlining as a way of looking at a problem from a new perspective. Following are several unique types of outlines to keep in mind in addition to the more standard process explained in later chapters.
Mind Map
Mind maps are particularly valuable in looking at problems spatially instead of linearly. By writing the central theme or event at the center of your paper and surrounding it with clusters of related subjects—and those subjects with related subjects of their own—you can create an exhaustive list of possibilities for your story. Don’t censor yourself. Write down any related topic that presents itself, and who knows what you may come up with. This method is particularly useful in breaking through blocks, since it taps both your subconscious and your visual mind.
Pictorial Outline
If you’re a visual learner, you may find it useful to create folders of pictures related to your story. “Cast” your characters, scout likely settings, and collect pertinent props. By associating pictures with particular scenes, you not only give yourself extra details with which to flesh out the scene, you can also help yourself spot plot holes or inconsistencies. I began keeping a folder of story-related pictures while writing Dreamlander, and this practice has rapidly become one of the most useful (not to mention most fun) tools in my repertoire. When stuck on scenes, I will often surf the Internet for related pictures. More often than not, when I find a picture, I find my missing puzzle piece.
Map
Fantasy authors have long been known for their penchant for drawing elaborate maps of their story worlds. Often, these maps are strictly utilitarian, in that they allow writers to keep track of the various geographical features of our worlds. However, a little amateur cartography can be an integral part of world-building, even for stories grounded firmly in reality. Because a good setting is necessarily inherent to the structure of the story itself, a map can become a valuable asset in fleshing out your story. Bestselling speculative author and multiple Hugo- and Nebula-Award winner Orson Scott Card explained that drawing maps helped him refine his fantasy Hart’s Hope in its embryonic stages. In a sketch of a walled city, he accidentally drew a gate with no entrance. Instead of erasing it, he seized upon it as an interesting idea and started asking himself questions about why anyone would build such a gate. He explained, “All you have to do is think of a reason why the mistake isn’t a mistake at all, and you might have something fresh and wonderful.”4
Fortunately, artistic talent isn’t a requirement for an author’s maps. Straight lines to indicate borders, wavy lines for oceans, and spiky triangles for mountains work just fine. When it’s necessary, for whatever reason, to share my maps with my beta readers, I often recreate my intelligible-only-to-me chicken scratchings in Photoshop for a slightly more comprehensible presentation.
Perfect Review
As authors, we’re never going to be completely objective about our stories. We’re too emotionally involved, too attached to our characters, too excited about our plot twists, too tickled by our snarky dialogue—so much so that we can lose sight of the big picture. Often, when we begin writing a story, our ideas are hazy, and the final shape of the story is only a dim outline in the mist. The story we put on the page will never be a perfect representation of the story in our imagination, so it’s little wonder we aren’t always aware of where our stories fall short. But here’s a little trick to narrow the gap between your idealization of your story and its printed reality: Write yourself the “perfect” review before your story ever hits paper.
If you could have a professional reviewer read your idealized concept of your finished book and totally get it—completely understand everything you’re trying to say with your characters, plot, dialogue, and themes—what would he write about your story? Close your eyes for a moment, emotionally distance yourself from your story, and pretend you’re that reviewer.
Keep the following suggestions in mind, in order to plumb the review for as much depth as possible:
• Be specific. Don’t just let the reviewer say he loved the story. Make him tell you why he loved it. What parts are the best? What makes this piece really shine?
• Be thorough. Cover every aspect of story you can think of: plot (including arc, pacing, and originality), characters (including personalities, arc, and development), dialogue, themes, and climax.
• Be extravagant. Praise your story to the skies. Layer on the adjectives of adulation. After all, you’re writing from the perspective of a reader who understands and loves your story just as much as you do. So have fun!
When you’re finished, you’ll have an explicit goal toward which you can strive in molding your story.
Tools of Outlining
Because of the intense creative nature of outlining, I employ an entirely different set of physical tools for this part of the process than I do when actually writing the first draft.
Pen and Not
ebook
In the early stages of outlining, I find creative freedom by distancing myself from the temptation offered by the computer to edit and tweak before a thought is even half-formed. Returning to the caveman technology of pen and paper can have a surprisingly freeing effect on our muses. Although I write my first drafts on the computer, I’ve learned to free my imagination in the first rush of creation by writing my outlines longhand in a notebook. In the process, I gain a number of benefits.
Writing longhand:
• Discourages the tendency to censor or edit. Removing the temptation to glance up at a previous paragraph and switch out words and phrases with a click of the mouse allows my raw thoughts to flow onto the page. I don’t judge them, I don’t edit them, I don’t censor them. I just pour them out.
• Brings writing down to a primal level. The tactile experience of ink on paper presents a return to writing in a purer, more instinctive form, without the intercession of complicated electronic tools.
• Provides a change of pace. When we’re stumped by a tough story problem or even general burnout, changing our location and our methods can sometimes be just the trick for jump-starting our creativity.
• Frees imagination by allowing sloppiness. Something about the near illegibility of my handwriting seems to break down my need for perfection. Instead of toiling over word choice, I’m able to dash down my thoughts as quickly as they come to me. I find this particularly vital in the early creative stages.
• Frees us from distractions. Pen and paper physically remove us from the computer and all its distractions, including the siren song of the Internet.
• Allows a critical editing during transcription. The necessity of transcribing our notes onto the computer allows us the opportunity to apply a critical eye to what we’ve written, once the first rush of creativity is past.
• Gives us an instant hard copy. Unless your house burns down, your handwritten hard copies aren’t likely to randomly self-destruct as computer files are known to do. Even if you lose your notes after you’ve typed them, you’ll always have a hard copy as backup.
I love my technology. I love typing. I love the clean look of my Times New Roman letters appearing on the virginal white of my screen. Sometimes I even love that taunting blink of the cursor. But writing longhand is an invaluable technique that my outlining would suffer without.
Personally, I prefer college-ruled notebooks, both because their tighter lines allow more information to be crammed into the pages, and also because the confines keep my handwriting from sprawling too decadently. I use a pen, instead of a pencil, to further discourage myself from censoring or erasing my thoughts. With a fine-tipped marker, I write the year, the book’s title, and the volume number of the notebook (since I inevitably fill more than one) on the cover.
yWriter Software
In years past, I used Microsoft Word to transcribe my outline notes and create my Abbreviated Outline. But then I was fortunate enough to discover yWriter. Author and programmer Simon Haynes encountered the same needs I saw in my own writing life and was able to use his programming expertise to put together one humdinger of a program. yWriter is the quintessential organizer for writers. It allows you to see your scenes, chapters, characters, and settings—among other things—all at a glance. You can keep track of such details as the date and time span of scenes, which characters are present in which scenes, which scenes take place in which locations, and which important props show up where. Plus, you can include inspirational pictures and create a nifty storyboard, showing the layout of scenes according to character POV.
Although designed as a word processor, yWriter works best for organizing my mountains of eventually undecipherable scrawl into a neat, easily accessible outline. And the great part about yWriter? It’s free for the downloading from http://www.spacejock.com. yWriter is user friendly and self-explanatory for the most part, but you can find a detailed video tutorial at helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/resources/ywriter.
Calendar
I collect old calendars and use them to map my story’s timeline. Surprisingly enough, the timeline is an oft-overlooked facet of outlining. I overlooked it myself for years, until I read about suspense author Simon Wood’s misadventure:
Nothing is worse than discovering you’ve written about a nine-day week (I’m talking from personal experience).5
When caught up in the grand whirl of plotting tragedies and travesties galore, we can easily get carried away and lose track of the time (in more ways than one). I remember, when writing my historical western A Man Called Outlaw, which features a dual timeline, leaning back in my chair on numerous occasions and counting on my fingers, trying to remember on which day of the week a certain event was supposed to have taken place. It could get frustrating to say the least.
Using a twelve-month calendar (banks and other businesses often provide free calendars upon request, or you can use free online services such as Google Calendar, found at http://www.google.com/calendar), I choose an appropriate month for my novel’s events and start blocking out days. In most fiction, the actual dates won’t matter; however, if you’re writing historical fiction, which requires adherence to certain dates—and therefore agreement between dates and days of the week—it’s wise to choose a calendar page that accommodates this. For example, when outlining a historical novel that began on New Year’s Day, 1926 (a Friday), I took care to pick a calendar page in which the first day of the month fell upon a Saturday.
In each appropriate calendar block, I scribble a brief phrase pertaining to the main event of that day. Most of my notes comprise only a word: Party; Funeral; Traveling, etc. The notes need not be extensive, since you can refer to your main outline for more details whenever necessary.
Chapter Two Checklist
Choose the best outlining method(s) for you.
Write the “perfect review.”
Select the outlining tools that will promote creativity and inspiration.
Download yWriter (if you’re so inclined).
Locate a couple used calendars to track your timeline.
Asking the Authors: Larry Brooks
Bio: The critically acclaimed and bestselling author of six psychological thrillers and the lauded writing book Story Engineering (Writer’s Digest), Larry Brooks manages Storyfix, one of the leading online instructional writing sites. Visit him at http://www.storyfix.com.
Can you describe your outlining process?
I would describe my approach as the antithesis of a “make it up as you go” strategy, or “pantsing.” I seek to encounter and evaluate major story points during the story development process. When I am developing a story, I work on those milestones first, in context to a Big Idea of the story itself. Sometimes I do all this story planning with flowcharts scribbled on paper, even yellow sticky notes, and finally a sequence of story moment bullets (a “beat sheet”) that tell the story front to back. When viewed in a sequential context, you can tell if you’ve got it right, if the pacing and arc (both dramatic and character) is there, and you can fix what isn’t working without having to write another draft.
What is the greatest benefit of outlining?
Creatively, it is the opportunity to explore all possible and reasonable beats or moments in a story without having to actually write it. When that happens, the writing becomes embellishment and life-giving, rather than exploration. If you know what happens—the “mission” of a scene—then writing it is one of two things: execution, or seeking a better idea. With outlining, you do that seeking pre-draft, and thus you avoid the temptation to “settle” simply because, hey, it works, I need to move on. With outlining, what simply “works” (in a drafting process) is trumped by what works best.
What is the biggest pitfall of outlining?
Whether outlining or drafting, if the writer doesn’t create the story in context to a thorough understanding of dramatic structure and the principles of narrative effectiveness, it’ll tank. Writers who draft without this unde
rstanding are stuck between a search for these basics and a defiance of them, thinking they can make up their own structural paradigm as they go, or worse, not recognizing it exists. That said, there are no pitfalls to outlining, other than convincing yourself you can’t do it or that it compromises your creative process.
Do you ever recommend “pantsing”?
I do “pants” certain scenes, but I always know the intention and mission of a scene before I write it. If you can pour a story out of your head and have the hook in the right place, put in the fore-shadowing where you need it, set up your first plot point with great anticipation and reader empathy, establish the stakes, then blow it all out of the water at the first plot point (this assumes you know precisely where that plot point goes and what it needs to do)—if you can do all that organically (because you are a prodigy or a genius or you’ve been doing this for decades and finally have the hang of it), then go ahead and pants. Otherwise, you’re in for multiple drafts, and you’re open to settling because, in not knowing this stuff, you won’t recognize it when you stumble upon it.
Outlining Your Novel_Map Your Way to Success Page 3