Quiet Rebel Writer

Last Wednesday, in our weekly examination of publishing aspirations, I encouraged you all to view the outline as a power tool. Outlines are critical for writers to create and finish books, just as carpenters must have their, um, jigsaws and, um, other stuff, to finish a house. (Right? So I don’t know my powertools. You get the point.)

No longer should outlines be viewed as creativity stiflers, or mere busy work that distracts from the task at hand. Making an outline forces you to think everything through and encourages your mind to travel in exciting new directions. An outline gives you a road map when you get lost or distracted over time, and also a tether – while you let your creativity run wild in certain scenes and descriptions, you still have your plan that brings it all together.

So what does an effective outline entail?

Paperback Writer offers these thoughts on an outline:

The two novel elements that go into an outline are characters and plot. Like the nouns and verbs that go into making a sentence, characters and plot are the novel. Setting, motivation, timeline, story styling and whatever else you’ve got in mind aren’t necessary right now; they’re the adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, etc. that you’ll use to enhance the nouns and verbs. Put all that stuff to one side of your head; focus only on the group of characters that populate your story and what they do.

Outlining, then, is a two-step process. Writers should create outlines for each character, listing assets, flaws, and problems. For plot, writers should create a list of five major events throughout the novel, and leave space for all the subplots and events that happen in between. The key then is analyzing these outlines – are characters going to be rich and indispensable? Is the plot compelling, but not overly, unnecessarily crazy?

Advanced Fiction Writing gets more in detail in a popular post on outlining:

Good fiction doesn’t just happen, it is designed. You can do the design work before or after you write your novel. I’ve done it both ways and I strongly believe that doing it first is quicker and leads to a better result. Design is hard work, so it’s important to find a guiding principle early on… I claim (the snowflake method is) how you design a novel — you start small, then build stuff up until it looks like a story.

Randy goes on to offer a ten-step outlining process, starting from a one-sentence description of the entire book, building to one-page summaries of plots, characters, and motivation, and culminating in writing a draft (and making it crappy).

Should outlines be written by hand? On notecards? In some sort of fancy (and expensive) software program? The Average Idea describes a technologically savvy (and free) method to plot the novel - Google Notebook. Through the app, writers can create scene outlines, organize chapters, and develop characters.

Good ideas, all. What’s the best, you ask? (You focused readers, you.) Truth is, of course, there is no best method. I list these ideas here for one reason only - to spark some brainstorming on your own system.

For my own system, I find the simpler the better. In my last go-round, I used Word documents. Not perfect, but it worked. I had an overall outline resembling a table of contents, where I listed the chapter, the events and characters, and the major plot movement. I also had files for each character, describing them inside and out, and each chapter. My problem was in not outlining early enough and thoroughly enough, a major reason why I kept getting sidelined, distracted and discouraged. For my next novel, I plan on taking a few weeks to simply think things through, creating outlines (either in Word or a tangible notebook, I haven’t decided), and making the actual writing process much simpler and more enjoyable.

Outlines are a powerful way to prepare you for the long haul. They help take care of all the details so that your creativity can work to its fullest. Develop your own system, something that makes the most sense for your style, your habits, and your book. In that way, outlines will be what you make of them, just like any good writing tool.

What do you think? Any outlining tips to share?

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