Today's post comes courtesy of commenter Chicke3, who asked, via
Daphne’s post last week:
Oh and I have a question since I am new to this writing thing...how does outlining your story or novel first work? Half the time when I am writing I have no idea where it is going to go and I am not sure I like knowing where it is going to go. I guess I just want to know some of the benefits of outlining first. Thanks!If you read closely, you will notice that Chicke3 has in fact asked two questions. They're both excellent, and I'll take them in reverse order.
(Also: The short answer to both of these questions is, "buy
Robert McKee’s book, STORY.")
What are the benefits of outlining?I have started outlining because I realized that, for me, writing a novel had two components--deciding what was going to happen, and choosing the right way to show the reader what happens--and trying to do them both at the same time was too frustrating. Writing an outline separates those two things. Other writers disagree, and that's okay too.
When I was studying theater directing in college, a number of my fellow classmates complained that the extremely technical class assignments were cutting off their inspiration. Our teacher gave us one of the best reasons I've ever heard for learning the craft of an art form:
This is not meant to replace inspiration. This is what you use when inspiration fails.You can write a book however you want, however works for you and keeps it fun. It's true that there is a certain joy in not knowing where a story is going to go--in discovering your story as you write it--but it's also true that there are principles of storytelling that were old when
Aristotle wrote them down, and knowing them can help you avoid a lot of frustration.
You know how editors often say that some of the most heartbreaking manuscripts they have to reject are beautifully written, but don't seem to have a story? An outline can help keep your manuscript from becoming one of those. You can write a whole book, then outline it and see if the structure holds together. You can even decide that the traditional structure doesn't work for your story. The important thing is to know what you're using or rejecting.
How does outlining an unwritten story work?Well, first you have to know what a story looks like. Here is a nice diagram from Wikipedia's entry on
Dramatic Structure:
(And here's a
link to a more detailed version, with lots of explanations.)
Here's how you use that diagram to create an outline for your own unwritten story:
1. Apply it to other stories.Way back before I'd even thought of applying for MFA programs, when I was trying to write my first novel and slowly realizing that I had a situation but no plot, I spent days re-reading the novels that most inspired me and charting how their stories fit into that structure. Before I let my seventh-graders write their own stories, I had them draw maps of the folk tales we were reading in class. This is one of those things that's way easier to learn from other people's work than on your own.
One thing: you will notice that the pyramid of most contemporary stories is a lot less symmetrical than Freytag's. Nowadays, the rising action tends to take 2/3 - 3/4 of the pages, while the falling action and resolution take the last 1/3 to 1/4.
2. Apply it to your own story.This is the hard part. Here's how I do it:
I start with the pyramid. At one end, I write how things are at the beginning of the story; at the other, I write how I want them to be at the end. That's the easy part.
The hard part is figuring out the middle. When I first come up with a story, I don't necessarily know consciously what's going to get my character from where they are to where they're going. I might not even know what the climax is going to be.
However, by this time I've read a lot of books. And I've taken them apart to see what makes them go. So I know pretty much what my options are, and I can make a list of those. Maybe the main character is the butt of a cruel joke by the best friend's other friends. Maybe the best friend gives away the main character's secret. Maybe the main character gives away the best friend's secret. I pick the one I like best.
I go through this same process of figuring out my options for each major point on the pyramid. If I start with the important bits--the status quo, the
inciting incident, the climax--I have a pretty decent roadmap that will help guide my choices about what my main character should do throughout the book.
Plus, usually by this point I'm on a roll, so I can go ahead and write my spreadsheet outlining the five acts and what scenes I need to bring them to life. (I got the spreadsheet-outline idea from Justine Larbalestier; you can see what she has to say about it
here.)
Then I run into the downside of the outlining process: after I finish, I have to take a few days off from the WIP. Having outlined my story, my brain becomes convinced that I have finished the book, and it doesn't want to keep writing. Fortunately, this feeling goes away.
And then the fun part starts! No more tossing and turning nights, trying to figure out how to get my character from one situation to the next: I've done all that already. Now I can just sit down and do it. AND, if I'm writing and a bolt of lightning strikes with a much better idea for the story, I can scrap the whole thing and follow that idea. (I usually do take some time to revise the outline, just to make sure the lightning didn't burn anything out. It usually turns out to have empowered it, though--to stretch a metaphor to the absolute breaking point.)
As with all advice about the writing process, you have to keep in mind that an outline is a tool, not a shackle. As you move forward in your writing, you will find out what produces the best results for
you.
Happy writing!
--Kathryne
I'm sure some of you can relate to this: the terrible sadness when a beloved writing spot closes its doors.
