It’s all simply a search for story. You can get there planning (out-lining), and you can get there pantsing. It’s just that the former is quicker and more effective, not to mention orders of magnitude more efficient.
What’s the most important contributing factor to a successful outlining experience?
A solid grasp of the fundamentals, what I call the Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling. One of them is story structure, and this alone is the great liberator, the empowerer, of successful authors. But you need all six—concept, character, theme, structure, scene execution, and writing voice—to get into the hunt. Once you can deliver a story at this level, the bar goes up even higher, because now you need one of your six core competencies to be astoundingly good in order to stand out among a huge crowd of other writers who understand the same dramatic physics you now understand.
Chapter Three
Crafting Your Premise
“…your premise is your inspiration.
It’s the ‘lightbulb’ moment when you say,
‘Now that would make a terrific story’….”
—John Truby6
By the time I sit down to begin outlining a story, it’s usually been chasing around in my head for at least a year or two. I almost always have ideas for several main characters, a handful of scenes, a general conflict, and a broad sense of the ending. My first goal is to hammer all this down into a premise: a single sentence that conveys the plot and the theme.
Do you know what kind of story you’re writing? The premise is where you discover and solidify these decisions.
I know this sounds basic, but be able to create a mission statement along the lines of “I’m writing a relatively fast-paced action-adventure story with a subplot involving espionage and a tragic love relationship.” You may vary from that description, but being able to on the macro level tell yourself what it is you’re trying to do is very useful.7
Your premise may actually change several times throughout the outlining process, but, to begin with, it will help you focus your thoughts. Your goal is to create a sentence that conveys the characters, setting, and central conflict, first generally, as in the example in the paragraph above, and then in the most specific way possible. That’s asking a lot of a single sentence, but being able to focus your story into such a compact package will help you stay on track throughout your outline and first draft.
The “What If” Question
All stories begin with a premise (a battle in space, two people falling in love, a dog getting lost), and most premises begin with a “what if” question:
• What if a little boy’s brain grew too quickly for his body to keep up? (Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card)
• What if an orphan were given a fortune by an unknown benefactor? (Great Expectations by Charles Dickens)
• What if our dreams were actually taking place? (My own Dreamlander)
Every writer is familiar with the power of the “what if” question. Even when the question isn’t articulated, every novel, every story, and every article is ultimately inspired by those words. Many of us, however, fail to tap the question’s full potential, simply because we don’t make a conscious effort to answer it.
My historical novel Behold the Dawn, a medieval epic set during the Third Crusade, was, in many ways, the changing point in my writing process—not in small part because it was in outlining this story that I learned to deliberately answer those magic words: What if?
On the first page of Behold’s outline notebook, I wrote What if…?, and, below it, I dashed off every single question that popped to mind:
What if Annan (the main character) isn’t a knight?
What if Mairead (the female lead) isn’t nobility?
What if she doesn’t die?
What if Annan kills her?
What if Marek (Annan’s indentured servant) kills her?
What if she were married to Sir Enemy?*
What if Annan was hired to assassinate King Richard? Prince John? The Queen?
What if Mairead were insane?
What if she were the assassin?
What if she were killed for beliefs contrary to the Church—that would maybe force Annan to reevaluate things?
What if Annan had done some indiscriminate killing as a young man?
What if he were hired by Richard to take out certain political enemies—only to be bought over and sent to kill Richard during the siege?
What if Mairead had a child by Lord William?
Most of these ideas were completely off base, some of them laughably so, and most never made it into the book. But they opened the floodgates of my imagination and prompted me to think about my story in ways I hadn’t previously considered. By allowing myself to write down every idea, no matter how crazy, I came up with gems I would never have thought of otherwise.
Underneath my list of questions (which I continued to add to whenever something new popped to mind), I tried another variation of the “what if” question, by asking, What is expected? I made a list of everything I could conceive the average reader expecting to happen in my story—and then turned each expectation on its head to insert the unexpected wherever possible:
It’s expected Annan and Mairead will fall in love. And I definitely want them to.
It’s expected they’ll live happily ever after. Maybe they won’t—although I don’t want readers to start expecting characters to die. That destroys the power of it.
It’s expected the bad guy will lose and die and the good guy will win and live. Yes, I want that to happen. The ending will lack finality if Sir Enemy lives.
It’s expected Annan will remain unwaveringly loyal to the Crown, to King Richard, and to the Crusade. But he doesn’t care about the Crusade, and maybe he doesn’t care about the King. That would be bucking tradition—to show that Richard wasn’t this savior of England—he was a politician like all the rest through time.
It’s expected Annan will be essentially good. But maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s a mindless killer. Maybe Mairead is repulsed by him. Actually, come to think of it, I like it so much better when a good hero is suppressed (by himself) and then rises to conquer—rather than a hero who starts out as a bad guy who changes his ways. So make Annan a good guy who just isn’t, can’t, or won’t rise to the mark. Think Maximus from Gladiator.
What’s unexpected?
That someone isn’t who he seems.
That someone is unexpectedly alive.
That someone is unexpectedly dead. Someone is working hard to make it seem as if he is still alive.
That Lord William doesn’t really die.
These simple exercises bore fruit beyond my wildest hopes. In the space of a few notebook pages, my story leapt from a simple tale of vengeance, redemption, and love in the Middle Ages, to a complicated story of intrigue and suspense.
Make the “what if” question a part of your routine for every story. Write the question out to provide yourself a solid visual, and let your imagination take off. Once you’ve selected the few ideas that might work, start looking for tangents: “If such and such happened, then what if this also happened? Or what if this happened instead?” The possibilities are endless.
The Premise Sentence
“What if” questions are hugely powerful. But if we don’t refine them into full-blown premise sentences, we’re not taking full advantage of them. Crafting a good premise sentence is valuable for a number of reasons.
Identifies Viable Ideas
Condensing and solidifying an idea into a premise sentence gives you an immediate assessment of whether this idea will stand up for the length of an entire story. Let’s take the “what if” question that inspired my fantasy Dreamlander: “What if our dreams were actually taking place?” It’s a good idea. But we don’t know if it can carry the weight of a plot until we nail down the details in a premise sentence: “Renegade journalist Chris Redston discovers his dreams are really memories of a world he lives in while he sleeps, w
hich he will, reluctantly, have to fight to save from destruction.”
Solidifies Characters, Conflict, and Plot
A premise sentence forces you to identify a main character (as explicitly as possible: you’ll note my premise sentence indicates his name, his occupation, and a personality trait), a central conflict, and, as a result, a general plot. Your “what if” question gives you an idea; your premise sentence gives you a story.
Distills the Book’s Essence
In the madcap frenzy of creation, particularly in the early days of inspiration, it’s easy to be overwhelmed with all the colorful possibilities. A story has so many potential directions that the task of selecting the best one can prove difficult. Sometimes you’ll be chapters into the story before realizing you should have taken another path. A premise sentence is like a mini-outline, one that’s useful even to those who dislike outlining. Writing down your idea (and it is important to actually write it down) gives you a guiding star by which to direct the frigate of your story.
Guides You to the Next Question
Once the premise sentence has given you the central crux of your story, the next step usually becomes obvious. As soon as I knew my premise for Dreamlander, I knew some of the questions that needed to be answered. What was this dream world like? Why was Chris the only one who discovered it? Why was it in danger of destruction?
Provides an Easy Answer to Questions About Your Story
When well-meaning friends, family, and fans ask, “So what’s your new story about?”, you hem and haw, flustered by the difficulties of explaining a 300-page novel in a few words. The easy solution is to offer them your premise sentence. It’s an answer that satisfies their curiosity and allows you to appear confident and prepared.
Prepares You for Selling Your Work
Finally, creating a premise sentence early in your writing process prepares you for pitching your work to agents, who inevitably require a concise, gripping description of your story. If you start now, you can polish it to perfection by the time you’re ready to start shopping your book.
Pre-Outline Questions
How many times have you been thrilled by a book’s amazing plot idea—only to be disappointed because the author never took full advantage of the idea’s capabilities? It’s relatively easy to come up with a plot idea, set the characters in motion, and then watch hopelessly (or sometimes obliviously) as the story meanders away from the original premise idea.
Inevitably, new and improved ideas will present themselves to you as you dig deeper into your outline, your first draft, and your multiple edits. But if you can grab some of the best ideas while your story is still nothing but a premise, you can save yourself the work of having to revamp the story in time-intensive ways later on. Stop for a moment at this stage and ask yourself if you’ve taken full advantage of the possibilities offered by your premise. Your premise is the foundation for every other facet of your story—character, setting, theme, plot. Without a solid premise, your story will turn into the Leaning Tower of Pisa, no matter how strong the other elements may be.
Enchantment, Orson Scott Card’s modern take on the Sleeping Beauty legend, offers a marvelous example of how to strengthen your story by taking full advantage of the premise. Card’s story dumps a young man from modern America into a 9th-century Russia rife with interesting story possibilities and all kinds of conflict. Card could easily have written an entertaining tale set entirely within this framework. But because he understood his premise of magical time travel supported more, he masterfully upped the ante and turned the tables on characters and readers alike by sending the hero and his Russian princess back to the modern world halfway through the book. Because Card realized his premise could handle so much more than just the obvious first step of sending the hero to Russia and letting him fight his way through an antagonistic medieval society, Card offered a story that literally gave us the best of both worlds.
Take a long, hard look at your premise: Are you milking it for everything it’s worth? Don’t settle for the obvious or easy answers. If you have a brilliant premise, don’t let a drop of that potential go to waste. For example, Card might have asked himself, “If the magic time-travel bridge can take my hero to the 9th century, why can’t it also take the Russian princess back to modern America?” The purpose of these questions is to force yourself to think outside the box. Very few story ideas are entirely original. Sleeping Beauty spin-offs have been done before. Enchantment could easily have fallen into familiar patterns, but because Card forced himself to think outside the box, his story offered a new slant on a familiar premise.
In addition to questions specific to your premise, ask some general questions:
• What are four or five big moments that will occur in the plot?
• Can you think of at least two complications for each of these moments?
• Will these complications push your characters in ways that make them uncomfortable?
• What additional settings will these complications demand?
• Which character will be the protagonist?
• Which character will be affected most by the inciting event?
• Does this character have at least two major problems or anxieties in his life? Which offers the most potential for conflict and drama?
• How does this problem affect other characters?
None of these questions has a “right” answer. Keep evaluating your responses, looking for those that offer meaty possibilities, until you feel you’ve exhausted the angles for the time being. Take note, though: this isn’t the end of your creating. This is just the beginning. A “well thought out [novel] ….does not include knowing in advance every line of dialogue, every scene, every exciting turning point.”8
How to Brainstorm
Some methods of brainstorming are more likely than others to put us in the way of viable ideas. Mind maps and “what if” questions, as well as writing prompts and free writing, are all valuable methods because they all have one thing in common: they allow us to move past the critical, analytical side of our brains and get in touch with the “dream zone” in the back. This kind of brainstorming is what Robert Olen Butler refers to as “dreamstorming.”9
Our work (and our lives) would be pretty useless without the logical sides of our brains. Our writing would be a frenetic wash of color and emotion indistinguishable to anyone but ourselves. We need the logical side of our brains to help us organize our thoughts into coherency. But the power of art is usually the result of the right side of our brains—the unconscious side. How do we keep our conscious brain out of the way long enough to tap into our unconscious creativity?
• Make time to dream. Quietude can be difficult to find in the midst of our hectic lives, but even just a few minutes of daydreaming every day can reap significant results.
• Don’t censor yourself. Creativity is a delicate and temperamental flower that often wilts under the weight of “the rules” or the hot carping breath of our infernal internal editors. Not everything that bubbles up from the depths of your unconscious creativity will have worth, but give yourself time to get it on paper and let it rest before judging it.
• Tell your left brain to zip it for a while. Your left brain can be a pushy character. When he’s telling you he thinks he knows best how to write this story, tell him to stow it for a bit, so his chatter doesn’t distract you from the offerings of your right brain. Your left brain will get his chance later.
• Focus on the senses. Our subconscious works on a level deeper than words. It feeds our brains with images, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings, which our conscious brains then translate into words. Nothing wrong with those words (they’re the tools of our trade, after all), but give a try to focusing on the raw sensations. Close your eyes and visualize the scene you’re writing. What colors stand out? What can you smell? What does your body feel like? This is the best way I know to find those all-important “telling” details that bring a scene to life.
&nb
sp; • Listen to your gut instinct. Ever get that itchy feeling that something is wrong with a story? You’re cruising right along, having a good ol’ time with your characters… but something just doesn’t feel right. I’ve learned to trust my gut instinct. I can’t think of an instance in which it has ever failed me. The only trick is learning to interpret what it’s saying.
Most authors would be the first to admit the best of their writing is beyond even them. It comes from someplace outside the conscious realm. Once we recognize and accept that fact, we are then able to take advantage of the tremendous opportunity of harnessing our unconscious minds. The two sides of our creativity—the conscious and the unconscious—working in harmony, the one pulsing and pounding ahead, the other slowing and refining, are capable of fantastic things.
Chapter Three Checklist
Write down your story’s primary “what if” question.
Craft your premise sentence to • identify your story’s central idea
• solidify your character(s), conflict, and plot
• distill the book’s focus (romance, mystery, historical, etc.)
Answer the appropriate pre-outline questions to make sure you’re considering all the options your premise offers.
Asking the Authors: Elizabeth Spann Craig
Bio: The author of three cozy mystery novels, Elizabeth Spann Craig hosts the blog Mystery Writing Is Murder, twice listed as one of Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers. Visit her at http://www.mysterywritingismurder.blogspot.com.
Outlining Your Novel_Map Your Way to Success Page 4