Writing Your First FICTION Outline in 5 Minutes
If you’re writing fiction, it’s very similar in terms of time it takes to start. The first outline can be so simple your cat could do it. Wait, your dog! That’s right. Because every book has a beginning, middle, and end. Except for maybe James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and guess what?! It’s already been written and you don’t have to worry about it. I mean, unless you have to read it for school. Then you should worry. But otherwise (as I was saying) every book has a beginning, middle, and end, and if you can “nutshell” what you want to happen, you have broken the magic keep-you-from-ever-getting-this-book-out-of-your-head barrier, and you’re off and running.
No, it’s not always easy to move on from there, but the biggest single hurdle often turns out to be getting that first thing down on paper.
Before I go any further, there are two types of books in the world. (Don’t you love when people ruthlessly sweep the entire cosmos into two giant teams? It’s like grade-school kickball, only better, because you are playing against space aliens, and who knows what special powers they have?)
There’s fiction that is born because you have a great idea for a plot. In an amazing twist of fate, that’s called plot-driven fiction. Who thought up that crazy name?
Then there’s fiction born because you have a great idea for a character. Again, who would ever have dreamed it would be called… wait for it… character-driven fiction. I know, but try to stick with me for a moment.
The truth is that, either way, you can nutshell it down. The reason I even make the distinction is that if you have a plot-driven idea, you can do the MadLib nutshell, which I’m about to show you, right away. If you have a character-driven idea, you’ll have to give your character a purpose or destiny. Then you can nutshell it down.
If you have a genetically mutated plot-and-character-driven hybrid… Well, this is unexpected. We draw out simple little boxes for you and you have to color outside the lines. Clearly you were born to be a writer.
Read on.
Your Story in a Nutshell (and Possibly with Bunnies)
What is your book going to be about? Can you put it in a nutshell? Just 1 to 3 short, succinct sentences is all you need. Your first story starts here, even if it doesn’t end here.
If you need ideas for how to nutshell a story, you can find awesome versions of quickly-summarized stories on Amazon, on Wikipedia; hell, you can find them on the inside front cover of a book jacket. Probably my all-time favorite nutsheller is Angry Alien Productions, which is a site filled with 30-second re-enactments of movies, acted by fwuffy bunnies. Be prepared to lose quite a bit of time if you click through. (But you’re gonna love this.)
Here are a few “standard” nutshelled books, to get you started:
An orphan is mysteriously invited to attend a school of magic. He discovers an entire world that runs by very different rules, finds a group of unlikely cohorts, and is drawn into a nefarious plot to recover a fabled object of legend.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Plague escapes the Army’s control (surprise!) and kills off 99% of the human race. Drawn by dreams, nightmares, and other mysterious forces, the remaining humans must choose sides in the final, epic battle between good and evil.
— Stephen King, The Stand
In 1945 a former combat nurse is reunited with her husband and on a second honeymoon, when she touches a boulder in an ancient stone circle, and is hurled back in time to a Scotland torn by war. She meets a gallant young Scots warrior who shows her a passion utterly irreconcilable with her life (and her husband) in her own time.
— Diana Gabaldon, Outlander
You can even find them on Twitter…
Pride and Prejudice
janeaustin: Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.
Bridget Jones’s Diary
helenfielding: RT @janeaustin Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.
(Hah. Did you catch that? Different books, exact same story…)
And have you heard of Six-Word Memoirs?
The legend goes that when asked to write a full story in six words, novelist Ernest Hemingway responded, “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Here are more. (You can add yours, too.)
Thinking about, boiling down, or even just reading a few compact versions of stories is sort of like when you buy a new car — suddenly you’re seeing beautifully nutshelled stories everywhere! And now you get to do your own.
Assignment 5: Write Your Fiction "Nutshell," MadLib Style
Yes, yes, you can amp it up later, but for now, get three things down about your story. You can even do it MadLib style:
My story is about ________________________________
(a character or thing, like Harry Potter, or the plague)
who/which ______________________________________
(action)
so that _________________________________________
(the resulting shenanigans).
Now you can flesh it out a bit, but you have the first, critical, important step d-o-n-e. Your idea is no longer trapped in your head. It’s actually out in the world, where it can start to grow and develop and become real.
What to Do with Your Remaining 3 Minutes
Are you all excited? Do you wanna go further with your outline than just a MadLib? You still have time, after all.
Awesome. Here’s what you do.
You come up with the disaster. That’s the consequence that will happen if your main character or characters don’t achieve their goals. This may be related to a villain or antagonist, and it can have epic proportions if you want (although it doesn’t have to).
If the Joads don’t leave the Dust Bowl, they’ll all starve and die (John Steinback, The Grapes of Wrath). If Patel doesn’t figure out how to survive on a boat with a tiger, he’ll be eaten (Yann Martel, Life of Pi). Unless Shrek stops Lord Farquaad, he’ll lose his swamp to a horde of fairy creatures (Shrek, duuuh). If Ulysses doesn’t get home soon, his wife Penelope will be forced to marry another man (Homer, The Odyssey).
That last one, by the way, is a popular disaster. The Princess Bride is one of my favorite versions of The Odyssey, apologies to Homer.
Once you have a disaster, your characters have some work to do. How will they overcome the obstacles they face? Still have time in your 5 minutes?
Jot down what they’ll have to do in order to accomplish their goals and save the world. Or their lives. You get the idea. What human or paranormal powers will they need? Who will be their friend? Their foe? Will your Ringbearer have a Fellowship?
See? You’re doing it! You’re doing it! Told you you could.
Why You Should Write Your Outline on a Bar Napkin (or Toilet Paper)
Bar napkins were actually invented for writers to create plots on. C’mon. How many times have you been sitting at the bar with your buds (or alone) when some incredibly brilliant idea flashes through your mind? Hey, us too! Artist Hugh MacLeod has this happen all the time, and he draws on the backs of business cards. I never have a business card handy. However, there are always bar napkins where I am.
So find a woman — women have purses, and therefore have pens you can borrow — then jot your idea on the bar napkin as soon as possible.
If you don’t happen to have your idea yet, go drinking with friends and get one. Lots of ideas live in bars, and they often become visible after you do something utterly crazy (skydiving, spelunking, nude frisbee golf) and need to go get a drink to celebrate, brag, or erase your shame. Sometimes ideas just hang out in bars waiting for people to loosen up enough to take them home.
Here’s why a bar napkin (or ok, a business card, sticky note, receipt, etc.) is perfect:
1. A bar napkin is small.
You don’t have to write the whole fucking novel on it. You’ve been drinking and you only
think you are ready to write the entire thing, start to finish, right this instant. Just get the basics down, okay?
2. It’s more fun to write in a bar.
There’s the whole adult beverage aspect, you know. Sometimes you need to quit being so damn moany and serious about “I wanna be a wriiiiiter,” and just have a little fun with it! You could just buy a stack of bar napkins and take them home and… No, that can’t actually be done. Never mind.
3. There are plenty of bar napkins.
Sometimes writing down your first outline is like popping the cork out of the champagne; now you’re rolling! You have more ideas! You’ll write a (bestselling) series! Across genres!
That’s why God invented bar napkinS (plural). And that’s why your friendly neighborhood barkeep has a whole stack of them, just waiting for you.
4. It’s traditional.
Think of all the movies you’ve seen in which famous writers are hanging around in “salons.” That’s just a fancy word for bar. (We were going to include historical data, but that would necessitate footnotes, and we’re allergic to footnotes. So just take our word for it. Writers hang out in bars and salons.)
5. It’s biodegradable.
This is a good thing. Because your first outline may need to be carefully stored in the landfill. If it turns out that you’re not embarrassed about your very first bar-napkin book outline, fabulous. You can sell it on Ebay after you’re famous.
Just think what Stephen King’s initial scribble-notes for his first published novel Carrie would sell for. Did you know he wadded those up and threw them away, and his wife pulled them out of the trash and convinced him to keep working on it? True story.
Minor (related) tangent: Here’s the nutshelled version of Carrie, straight from the mouth of Wikipedia: “A shy high school girl uses her newly discovered telekinetic powers to exact revenge on those who tease her.”
It's ALIVE! Letting Your Book Lurch Around On Its Own a Bit
Now that you have your bar-napkin novel, you may feel hung over and even a little intimidated by the unnatural life you’ve just created. Don’t worry. Unlike Dr. Frankenstein (who is eventually killed by his monster) you won’t die at the hand of your creation. But here are some questions you might have…
1. Am I stuck with this thing?
No. Remember, that’s why you jotted it on a nice, recyclable material. But don’t shitcan it just yet.
2. Why do I feel so scared?
Because you’ve finally let your idea out! And now it’s going to start to gain some power of it’s own. It’s like that Homer Simpson Chia Pet you got for your birthday: Once you mix the seeds with water and spread them on Homer’s head, something is gonna grow. It’s okay to be scared. Scared is normal.
3. This is a stupid idea. I can’t believe I even wrote it down.
See number one, above.
4. This is a brilliant idea. I’m gonna make millions.
Hmm, well, you’re at least optimistic. We can work with that. Skip to the next chapter. And if you’re right about this, please remember us in your will.
5. It’s… What… I have no idea what to do now.
No problem. That’s why we’re here. The main thing to remember at this point is that you need to give your book a little room to grow.
That means you do with it exactly what you would do with a new model rocket engine: You inspect it, poke it, modify it, find a rocket body to house it, then take it out and see if you can blow something up with it. It probably won’t operate exactly how you think it will, because these things have a mind of their own. But that’s okay, promise.
Your Mini-Award Ceremony
Before you head into the next section, we both want to take a minute to congratulate you! You’ve made it past that first, scary-ass hurdle! And you’ve just distinguished yourself from the bazillions of people who want to write a book, but who never actually start the process. You are an official badass.
What can you do to celebrate this moment? Here are a few options.
The Jack Palance celebration. Do some one-armed push-ups as you go up to accept your Oscar.
The Peter Crouch celebration. Do the robot, badly. Make sure no one is watching.
The glowstick celebration. Get some glowsticks and a camera, quick!
The Diet Coke and Mentos celebration. If you haven’t done your own Eepy Bird show, do so.
Whew, that was fun! Proceed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
You Got the Guts (and Maybe the Skeleton), Now Flesh It Out
So you did your book in a nutshell, or your minimal outline. It’s still a squishy pile of guts, tied with string and twisties to a slightly skewed, possibly incomplete skeleton. That's okay. Now it’s time to give it some wet ropey muscle and tendon, and set the blood pumping.
The next steps are about getting lots of word buckets added to your monster, adding them in the right places, and getting it done quickly, before you decide to chuck the whole thing because it’s stinking up the place.
Flesh it Out (Don't Flush it Out)
You did a great job getting here. You built your lab, you scrounged some tools, you washed your hands (that was optional), and now it's time to put in the seriously hard work of filling word buckets. Here's where we're going to go with this:
Filling word buckets
How many word buckets do you need?
What size bucket should you buy?
How fast you can fill a word bucket?
Where should you apply your word buckets?
After that you’ll find two worksheets; one for setting timeline and word bucket goals and timelines for a non-fiction book, and another for doing the same for a fiction book. Do ‘em both! Twice! (Hah.)
Filling Word Buckets
Recently I was chatting with a girlfriend who casually asked me how many “pages” my most recent book was. I was baffled. I’ve never even considered pages, and in Scrivener (where I often write) there aren’t page indicators at all. Because your number of pages on a Kindle may be one number, on Nook it’s another, the PDF version has its own settings, and the audio file doesn’t even take pages into consideration. Even print books can have different numbers of pages, depending on edition, size, and format.
Talk to a few writers and sooner or later you’ll hear them talk about “word buckets.” Readers (or new writers) might think “pages,” but as every 6th grader ever assigned to write a “3-page paper” knows, you can crank up that font size, increase the margins, and get away with writing barely more than 2 paragraphs and still technically fulfill the assignment.
Word counts are far easier to measure.
How Many Word Buckets Do You Need?
So how long, exactly, is your average novel? Years ago I figured this out by picking a paperback at random off my bookshelf and counting all the words on a single page, then multiplying by the number of pages in the book. Books are all different, of course, but in the end, I discovered that 100,000 (100k) words is a polite, easy-to-remember, rounded-off number that lands neatly in the ballpark.
National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, is an annual creative writing event that encourages participants to write 50k of a novel in a month's time. 50k may not be the entire novel (or it may, see below), but it gets you a fair chunk down the road.
Here are some basic numbers for you to use to get started thinking about how many words you might be aiming for. (Of course, all these are flexible! Think Cirque du Soleil flexible. They're very flexible.)
Short Story: 1k - 8k words
Amazon “Singles”: 5k - 30k
(Many) “How To” Books: 15k - 30k
Young Adult Novels: 40k - 60k
NaNoWriMo Goal: 50k
Novel: 75k - 100k
Ever wonder why Stephen King is such a prolific author? It's because he typically writes 2k per day, and he writes every single day. That's every day, including weekends, birthdays, and 4th of July. That's a pretty tall stack of word buckets, and if even if he miss
es 15 days a year (or edits down his buckets), that's still 700k words, every single year. Seven average-length novels.
Of course, the math isn't that simple. Sometimes your writing is notes, or plotting, or grocery lists, or character studies, or exploratory exercises that go nowhere, or borderline psychotic ranting, or any number of things.
But if you could even write 2k one time a week, and drink too many whiskey sours to even find your word processor during the entire Christmas and New Year's holiday, you'll still have your 100k novel in a year's time.
What Size Word Bucket Should You Buy?
I like the 1k word bucket size. It's just a nice “chunk.” And the buckets are so lovely and shiny! Some of mine have Hello Kitty unicorns on them. (Some have gothic clowns, though, as it serves my sense of drama.) A 1k-a-day word bucket fits with my life, since I do this full time, and not just in my spare time. If I'm not writing at least 1k per day during the work week, I'm probably falling behind on client deliverables or personal goals.
Lots of people like buckets that hold 250 words, because if you fill one every day, you still get a novel at the end of the year.
You can buy whatever size bucket you like. Especially since they’re on sale right now! Hell, they’re practically free. Snag as many as you like, any size.
Bagels, Dirty Limericks, and Martinis: The Badass Guide to Writing Your First Book (Badass Writing) Page 5