Oh, hey,
it’s Thursday again.
A few weeks
back I asked for possible topic ideas and somebody mentioned outlines. It’s a good topic, and a good time for it
since I’m early into a new book.
Fair
warning up front. This whole post is
very much going to follow the golden rule. Outlining is an intensely personal
process, and it changes from author to author and even from project to project. Figuring out what works best for me (or you)
might take four or five or twenty attempts.
Hey, nobody
said this was going to be quick and easy.
Nobody who knew what they were talking about, anyway...
As I
mentioned above, I think outlines are incredibly personal. I’ve talked once or thrice before
about how everyone has their own method when it comes to storytelling. Maybe outlines are part of that method. Maybe they’re not.
A good analogy—one that’s going to come up a lot here—is travel plans. There are lots of different ways to travel. Some of them might make perfect sense to you. Some of them might be terrifying. Again, it’s all about what works for you.
A good analogy—one that’s going to come up a lot here—is travel plans. There are lots of different ways to travel. Some of them might make perfect sense to you. Some of them might be terrifying. Again, it’s all about what works for you.
So let me
blab about how outlines fit into my method a bit.
Or how
they’ve fit over time.
First,
there’s a pair of terms you may have heard before—plotters and pantsers.
It’s (supposedly) the two big groups writers can get divided into. Plotters are the folks who plan everything
out in advance. Pantsers make it up as
they go along—by the seat of their pants.
Get it? Hahaa, funny stuff.
This is
pretty simplistic, though, and I’ve had a couple discussions with other writers
about the problems with such basic classifications.
I started
out as a pantser. I’d sit down at the
keyboard and just type and type and type.
New characters, plot points, subplots... the book just went where it
went, y’know. This was how a lizard man
from the center of the Earth ended up finding a crystal cave and wielding
Excalibur. Yes, that Excalibur.
Granted, I
hadn’t even hit puberty yet. But even
after I did, most of my attempts at writing were usually just me coming up with
one clever idea, starting at a point that I knew would take me straight
to that idea, and filling in the rest as I went along.
And there’s
nothing really wrong with that method.
It’s kinda like grabbing that special someone, throwing some clothes in
a bag, and just going. Pick a direction
and drive. Choose a flight at the
airport. Just go and see where
you end up.
I still
remember when I made the next big leap in my sophomore year of college. A lunch conversation with a woman I was
dating sparked an idea for a story about an immortal wandering the world. Which sparked the story of another immortal. Which implied a third. And suddenly I realized this would be the
beginning of a really cool book.
A week or
so later, in the midst of writing all this down, it struck me that I had no
idea what this book would actually be about. I knew the characters, had cool origin
stories for them, but past that...
So, for the
first time, I sat down and figured out—in advance—more or less how this story was going to end. I came up with a
pretty solid idea what actions the heroes and villains would be taking on the
final page. Who was going to win. Who was going to lose. Even a clever denouement. And I knew it was a denouement because I’d
just learned that term a few weeks earlier.
This is the
slightly more planned trip, if we want to keep using that analogy. Also in college, one of my best friends and I
talked about driving cross-country after graduation. We knew we wanted to end in California ,
but past that... The rough plan was just
grab clothes, maybe cameras, and go west. Probably in her car, which was much more
suited to a roadtrip than mine. We knew
eventually we’d hit California
and the Pacific and who knows what along the way.
We never
ended up going.
Anyway...
time passes.
My next big
outlining leap was kind of a bookkeeping thing.
I tended to scribble out five or six key plot points, but kept most of the story in my head. Even with big,
novel-sized projects. When I decided I
really wanted to start taking this seriously, one thing I started doing
was writing everything down.
Every plot point, every idea, every snippet of action or page of
dialogue. When I finally sat down to write,
I’d already have five or six pages of jumbled... stuff. I might spend an afternoon putting it into a
rough order and then—done. Outline.
If we want
to stick with our road trip analogy, this is when we know we’re taking the
southern route across the US
on our way to Los Angeles . We’re also going to be stopping in Graceland
and Roswell . A pretty good idea of direction with a few
markers along the way.
Again,
perfectly acceptable method. Fine way to do things. The first four books I sold (sold for actual
money) were all written that way. My
book -14- had a little over eight pages of notes, and that
included two and a half pages of character sketches.
It was
right around this time that I ended up with Crown Publishing (a division of
Random House) and became a writer with a contract. I mean, I’d had contracts before, but this
was the first time the contract came first. Everything I’d done up until this point had
essentially been on spec, me writing the book at whatever pace I wanted and
then hammering out a deal afterwards.
What I was
really dealing with now was a schedule.
A timetable of when things had to be done. This wasn’t just about me anymore. People had given me large advances based on
the idea I could stick to these schedules.
My first
contract with Crown was rough. Exciting,
but rough. I ignored a lot because holy
crap I was a Random House author now!!!
My second
contract...
I’ve got to
be honest, the second one was brutal.
I’m still kinda aching from it. Aching
in that “Maybe I shouldn’t’ve asked Conor McGregor if he wanted to step
outside” way. It was about two years of near-constant
stress trying to get through three books, start to finish.
And to be
very clear—it wasn’t about them. Despite
what you may hear on some sites, the folks at Crown weren’t evil taskmasters or
uncaring overlords or anything like that.
Hell, my editor gave me extra time whenever I even hinted at needing it. he wanted the best book they could get. Of course, extra time on book one meant I was
getting into book two later, so I’d have less time for that... But still, that was all me. He was fantastic and accommodating pretty
much every time an issue came up. Everyone
there was. So don’t even think of using
this as evidence of how “mean and demanding” traditional publishers can
be. It was absolutely, 100% nothing of
the sort.
No, all that stress was on me. My ambling, feeling-things-out-as-I-go method of writing was fine when I could go at my own pace. But now I was on a schedule. Those spaces in the outline where I still needed to figure things out had to be a lot smaller, because I just didn’t have time for them.
So—with some gentle prodding from my agent—I started doing larger outlines. Now I actually figured out the majority of the story points and plot beats and character arcs in advance. All the twists. I had to have an ending—an entire ending—mapped out.
If we want to fall back on travel plans, this is when you’re going past “plans” and into more of an itinerary. Things are mapped out hour-to-hour now. Most notably, when you’re done traveling. I just had that trip toTexas last weekend and honestly...
having a full itinerary set up for me was kind of comforting. Of course, my mom tried doing a family trip
like this for us when I was twelve and it was... well, a bit less than fun.
My first couple outlines like this were just shy of twenty pages. And really, that’s nothing. The book I’m working on right now has a forty-two page outline. I’ve got the next book about 2/3 plotted and it’s already close to thirty.
No, all that stress was on me. My ambling, feeling-things-out-as-I-go method of writing was fine when I could go at my own pace. But now I was on a schedule. Those spaces in the outline where I still needed to figure things out had to be a lot smaller, because I just didn’t have time for them.
So—with some gentle prodding from my agent—I started doing larger outlines. Now I actually figured out the majority of the story points and plot beats and character arcs in advance. All the twists. I had to have an ending—an entire ending—mapped out.
If we want to fall back on travel plans, this is when you’re going past “plans” and into more of an itinerary. Things are mapped out hour-to-hour now. Most notably, when you’re done traveling. I just had that trip to
My first couple outlines like this were just shy of twenty pages. And really, that’s nothing. The book I’m working on right now has a forty-two page outline. I’ve got the next book about 2/3 plotted and it’s already close to thirty.
Want to
hear impressive? Back when I was doing a
lot of screenwriting interviews, I talked with Tony Gilroy about his script for Duplicity. He had, by his guess, a sixty page
outline. For what would eventually be a120-130 page screenplay. He had
the whole thing nailed down.
And to be clear, this took time. Lots of time. It flexes different mental muscles to be examining the story in a much more clinical way. And twice I had to junk half my work and start again. A week or so of work—gone.
And to be clear, this took time. Lots of time. It flexes different mental muscles to be examining the story in a much more clinical way. And twice I had to junk half my work and start again. A week or so of work—gone.
I spent
about three months last year working on a handful of outlines (one of which I
may never do anything with, after all that hammering and rewriting)
To be
honest... I’m still not entirely sure I could say outlining saves time. It may cut four or five weeks off the writing
time, but if I spent four or five weeks working on the outline... well, it all
just balances out, doesn’t it?
I guess we’ll
have to revisit this six or seven months from now.
Again,
please don’t take this as me saying you have to use this last method if you
want to be a successful writer. There
are no such guarantees and it’s all
going to vary from person to person.
Like I just said, I’m still not 100% sure it’s going to help me
be successful. You may try a few of these
versions before you figure out which one works for you. Or you may find a different one altogether.
So think
about the path you want to take.
Next
time... I’d like to talk about why this is all happening. To be more exact, why it’s all happening
right now.
Until then,
go write.
Fascinating stuff; always interested in how other writers do things, even when it's not what works for me. So far, my personal experience is that a detailed outline doesn't survive contact with the characters; at least, some things get changed once I get into the characters and get them talking. Still working out my own process, which not doubt will be a compromise.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. Thank you very much!
ReplyDeleteIf you don't mind my asking just to slake my own curiosity, do these 30+ page outlines of yours resemble film treatments or are character sketches and worldbuilding notes a part of it?
I'm currently experimenting with different outlining techniques to see what works and what doesn't work for me.
Thanks again.
Every time I start to outline, I eventually end up wondering why I'm writing an outline instead of writing the book. I think I'm going to finish an outline when I'm done.
ReplyDelete