Outlining
Possibly the hardest thing for first-time writers is actually
finishing a book. Lots of people can
start a great book, but a lot of those starts peter out into nothing, or get written into un-endable corners. In the interests of seeing the finished products of a lot of folks hereabouts writing on bookshelves, I'm going to spend some time in this series on helping people to avoid getting stuck, and to get unstuck when the inevitable happens.
I'm a big believer in outlining. (Not all writers are, of course. Today's advice isn't exactly universal.) There are a lot of reasons for outlining your book, and some of them are more life-related than writing-related. When life gets in the way and you have to put your novel down 100 pages into the story, and three years go by before you can pick it up again, if you have an outline it's fairly easy to see where you were going with the story. If there's no outline, you have to basically start from scratch... and chances are good that you'll never finish it.
One of the reasons some writers shy away from outlines is those painful, PTSD-like flashbacks from those painful sixth grade outlining exercises. (I still remember being forced to outline The Art of Loving in high school, which would probably be a useful exercise for Rick Santorum - sorry Rick, no dogs, it's not about that kind of love - but was pretty much wasted on me.) There is usefulness in that sort of I-A-1-a outlining, and I sometimes use it for more technical kinds of nonfiction or how-to writing (especially since it can easily be turned into a table of contents), but for fiction and a lot of essay writing it's of pretty limited utility. While it keeps you organized and moving in the right direction, it doesn't really make it much easier to create the finished product, and the outline can become as intimidating as a blank Word document staring at you.
Creating an Outline
For fiction I tend to write paragraph-style outlines, with a paragraph or so for each chapter or major scene. To return to the Leaving Laura motif from episode 5, the first few paragraphs might look something like this when you begin the outline:
George is in the middle of frenzied sex with Condi when the special phone (a black rotary phone) rings. It's Karl, with the news that Commander Markos his army of bloggers plans to mobilize 700,000 talking mice to take the White House by storm. "Have you been drinking, Karl?" George asks. But Karl insists he's sober. George takes a long drink himself, deciding that talking mice - if they really exist - are nothing to be faced when sober.
Trying to shake off the phone call, George returns to Condi. But when the bed starts to squeak in the midst of their passion, George is too distracted to continue - the squeaking sounds too much like mice. Why would Karl lie to him? George wonders, but the story is too outlandish to be believed. Condi tells George that she understands he's under a lot of pressure, but he knows she thinks his drinking is behind his performance issues in bed. She doesn't respect me anymore, George realizes. It's just a matter of time until things are over between them.
At dinner, George's wife Laura is unusually quiet, and George wonders briefly if she suspects some of his affairs. In a flashback, he thinks back to their early years, when they would get drunk, hop in the car, and terrorize hitchhikers. If only things hadn't gotten so out of hand that last night... Laura brings him back to reality with a question which George only half hears. He says yes distractedly and leaves the table before she can ask him anything else.
The next morning, Karl reassures George that things are under control, and ABC will be broadcasting a series blaming talking mice for the rise of prostate cancer and erectile dysfuntion in American males. (Karl misses George's angry look.) Karl has scheduled a major speech for George at a Heritage Foundation function on the subject of the looming mouse threat, and Arlen has agreed to hold hearings on a proposed Mouse Muteness Protection act (popularly nicknamed MUMP) in the Senate. Everything seems fine, yet George can't feel comfortable, and spends the day in a haze.
That night, while George is in the middle of his weekly naked karaoke night with Ahmed Chalabi and several ambassadors and old Yale friends whose names he can't remember, a mouse runs across the floor right in front of him. When Chalabi jokingly blames the bloggers for the disruption, all the ambassadors laugh along, but George finds he can't share their humor. It seems like too many mouse coincidences. George is rattled, but doesn't know who to turn to for advice. Karl told him not to worry, and he's afraid Condi no longer respects him. He knows he'll wind up in Condi's arms that night again anyway, even if she doesn't respect him. For a moment he longs for the innocent times with Laura before disaster came between them.... He forces the thought down before the memory of what happened to him and Laura forms, and staggers off to console himself in Condi's condescending arms.
(When they find me in a shallow grave beside that Maine trooper who pulled G.W. over for DWI, you'll know why.)
This is a pretty simple paragraph outline, which can be easily expanded into the scenes described. Depending on how fully you choose to write them, the paragraphs may correspond to a scene or two or to whole chapters. The details of the scenes themselve may be pretty sketchy, but the paragraphs each contain details such as:
characters involved - Who's onstage and who isn't may be crucial as the plot evolves.
events - What actually happens and how do the characters react to it at the time. Are there key implications that you need to remind readers of?
what needs to be set up or foreshadowed - Are there details that need to be inserted here to set up something that happens a few chapters later? Do readers need little hints or reminders so they don't forget crucial details (or red herrings so they don't put all the pieces together too soon)?
key emotions or details - If the black rotary phone is important, mention it in the outline. Are there key images that belong in the story, but you won't get to for six months? Write 'em down in the outline.
lines of dialogue you want to remember - If George has a snappy comeback you want to work in somewhere, put it in the outline now, before you forget it.
evolution in character - Your characters will be changing and growing emotionally as the story goes on. The outline should remind you places where you need to show this change, or other key emotional moments.
key pieces of setting - What parts of the world do you have to put in or keep in the background? What details do you need to tell the reader by a certain point so the story makes sense (but not so early that the reader feels like the setting is too convenient).
Writing the outline helps you know what to set up when in the story, as well as reminding you of all the details you need to keep track of. That's especially important if there are long delays while you're writing, if you're writing bits of the story out of order, or if you're writing about anything particularly complex. (Which covers most of the writing you'll probably do, if you aspire to anything more nuanced than My Pet Goat.)
Changing the Outline
Like the President of the United States, the outline works for you, not the other way around. The purpose of the outline is to make your writing easier, not to force you to stay the course when the details of your story aren't working. While you're writing, your outline will constantly be evolving. It should keep you focused on where you're going and what you need to set up in the story, but many of those details will change as your book grows and becomes richer and more complex. Invariably, someone you thought was going to be a minor character will turn out to be so dynamic that she forces her way, kicking and screaming, into a much larger role in the story. Another character who you thought was important will prove to be really boring to write (and read about), and his role in the story will be minimized.
Don't ever be afraid to change your outline. It's an evolving document, and the final version will be quite a bit different than what you originally envision.
For example, let's go back to our original first chapter of Leaving Laura:
George is in the middle of frenzied sex with Condi when the special phone (a black rotary phone) rings. It's Karl, with the news that Commander Markos his army of bloggers plans to mobilize 700,000 talking mice to take the White House by storm. "Have you been drinking, Karl?" George asks. But Karl insists he's sober. George takes a long drink himself, deciding that talking mice - if they really exist - are nothing to be faced when sober.
As you're writing the key scene where Laura poisons Condi for the first time, you impulsively throw a canopy bed into the description. Suddenly something clicks into place in your mind. Far from being a minor piece of background, the canopy bed can be an important narrative motif - both as a clue to the murders and in a key metaphoric role.
However, to make it work, the canopy bed needs to be introduced very early in the action, along with the way it looms, figuratively and literally, over the key decisions that George makes in those increasingly harrowning hours before the talking mice besiege the White House. So the chapter becomes:
George is in the middle of frenzied sex with Condi on her giant canopy bed when the special phone (a black rotary phone) rings. Sitting up on the Princesss Diary-themed sheets, George answers the phone. It's Karl, with the news that Commander Markos his army of bloggers plans to mobilize 700,000 talking mice to take the White House by storm. "Have you been drinking, Karl?" George asks. But Karl insists he's sober. George leans against an oak bedpost and takes a long drink himself, jokingly lifting the bottle in toast to the princesses on the sheets as he decides that talking mice - if they really exist - are nothing to be faced when sober.
That leads to an additional problem, since it means they need to be in Condi's room, not George's, when the phone rings. Not a hard detail to fix, but it requires more changes that will ripple through the outline:
George is in the middle of frenzied sex with Condi on her giant canopy bed when the special phone rings. (It's one of hundreds of identical black rotary phones that Dick had insisted be installed next to every bed and toilet in the While House so he could reach George at any time without risking an unsecure cellphone collection. Only George, Dick, and Karl are allowed to use the phones, which all ring simultaneosly whenever any of them is picked up.) Sitting up on the Princesss Diary-themed sheets, George answers the phone. It's Karl, with the news that Commander Markos his army of bloggers plans to mobilize 700,000 talking mice to take the White House by storm. "Have you been drinking, Karl?" George asks. But Karl insists he's sober. George leans against an oak bedpost and takes a long drink himself, jokingly lifting the bottle in toast to the princesses on the sheets as he decides that talking mice - if they really exist - are nothing to be faced when sober.
The change in the phone solves the minor plot problem here, and it also helps resolve things later in the story: The gravely wounded Laura can accidentally knock the phone off the hook as she falls, allowing both George and Dick to hear her prophetic last words - which Dick will attempt to use in the blackmail scene toward the end of the novel.
Making Your Life Easy
There isn't a right or a wrong way to write an outline. The important thing is that it be in a format that makes it easy for you to see where you're going with the story (even if you've have to put it aside for years). It should be flexible enough for you to change it easily, and in a style that you can easily convert into prose. If that style is a paragraph outline, that's fine. If it's a more formal outline, that's fine, too. If it's a set of tightly constructed haiku laying out the elaborate imagery of your story, that's ok as well. Use whatever will be clearest and easiest for your own reference. Your sixth grade English teacher will never see it, and neither will anyone else but you, your agent, and possibly your editor. Don't worry about if it's pretty or follows formal guidelines; worry about if it makes it easier for you to write the book.
When you're outlining, don't force a scene to conform too much. Sometimes a paragraph in the outline will turn out to only take up three sentences of text. Other times, one sentence in the outline will take up two chapters of book. Your outline may have huge variations in paragraph lengths, since some scenes need to convey a lot of details while others, such as conversations or fight scenes, may take a lot of book pages but not much space in the outline. ("From her hiding place in the back of his office, Laura hears Dick recounting the blackmail plot for his podcast. She rises and shoots him in the back, then turns and leaves without checking to see if he's still alive.")
Just remember, the outline works for you, should be written to make it as easy as possible to expand, and will constantly evolve during the writing process. The rest is as easy as Leaving Laura....
The Rest of the "How Publishing Works" Series
I'll be around for a little while now, then back in a couple hours to answer more coments. I do still monitor and respond in the previous episodes, so feel free to post questions or comments in them if you'd like.
Part 1 - Why bad things happen to good books.
Part 2 - Avoiding publishing scams.
Part 3 - Literary conventions (with an emphasis on SF Conventions).
Part 4 - Book packagers.
Part 5 - Submitting a manuscript.
Part 6 - Publishing lists.
Part 7 - Literary agents.
Part 8 - Copyediting.
Part 9 - Marketing and publicity.
Part 10 - Outlining.
Part 11 - Editing.
Part 12 - Ideas.
Part 13 - Contracts.
This diary got significantly delayed by a kitten rescue in a decaying carriage shed behind my house. The kittens and their mom are doing well, including the one that tried to avoid being rescued by ducking into an underground drainpipe. (The fire department eventually got involved.) As soon as the semi-feral kittens have adjusted to human contact, they'll be off to new homes, and the mom (who must have been a housecat once, since she got very friendly once we caught her) will be spayed and off to a new home.
Updated with More Pootie Pics
Next episode in the wee hours of Thursday night or Friday late in the morning... hopefully. (And let me know if you want me to cover a particular topic, since I'm doing these based on a combination of people's requests and my own whimsy.)
