Outlines Would Require Organization

And since this is the second post I've messed up this month, it's clear that organization is a foreign language to me. I'm trying to learn it. I swear.

Last week, one of my mom's cats had a leg amputated. I have photos of the aftermath. I won't show them to you. You're welcome. I missed my post last week because I was chauffeur and the post surgical nurse the day the cat came home from the hospital. This boiled down to me forgetting what day of the week it was in the churn of waking up every hour to check the poor guy and medicate him every few hours.

This week, after coming home to one of *my* cats being sick (2 vet visit bonus!), my family finally got out on vacation. We had it all planned out. Thursday night, we'd be someplace with internet access so I could take care of everything. And then the weather service posted a small craft advisory. Then they upgraded it to a gale watch. Dangerous wind and wave conditions meant we made our wisdom check and stayed an extra day in a port we hadn't planned to stay in. I bought this:

The weather wasn't going to break in time for our plans to bear out. So we punted and headed away from the bad weather.  It totally messed up our ability to get to internet. We looked for someplace quiet and tucked away where we could hole up and snivel over the fact that we didn't get to go where we wanted.

This is Port Ludlow. We anchored out and listened to the great blue herons, the eagles and the harbor seal (I couldn't tell initially whether it was a critter or an engine trying to start - it was the critter - snorting water out of his nose. Most attractive.)

We would still be there except the boat batteries are doing things that boat batteries should not do  - like trickling off their charge, which we need. So, once again, flexibility was the name of the game. Up anchor and head for someplace with electricity so we could trouble shoot the batteries. Oh. Look. Our first choice is full up for the night - at least we called ahead to find that out before sailing all that way. Second choice. And here we lie on the guest docks in the Port of Everett.

Funny. When I began this pathetically late post, I hadn't thought it was related to writing. But it is. Organization is a great thing, but is it a hill (or a major water crossing) you want to die on? I don't. Flexibility. Second plans. Third plans. Watching the sky, the wind and the waves - or the plot points, characters and motivations - keeps boaters alive and stories flowing.

My Nemesis, the Outline.

by Allison Pang

Like so many others this week, I rarely outline. While I can definitely see their merit, they just don't work for me. I suspect many of my failed attempts with writing organizers like Scrivener probably are for most of the same reasons. Sometimes, I do think if I could just sit down and get it all put into an electronic binder of sorts, I'd be better off, but for whatever reason I always feel like I'm wasting writing time when I do that.

At any rate, I don't tend to outline much - and if I do, it's usually just random notes jotted down in my notebook with some ideas of where I'd like the story to go. I don't go so far as to plot out scenes or anything, just more of a running stream of consciousness. Otherwise I have a hard time getting motivated to do the actual writing - I already know what happens, so my interest level tends to drop.

Most of the time, I only do this when I get stuck. I find the physical act of using a pen and paper tends to jiggle things lose idea-wise and then I figure out what I need to do and I move on.

However, as fancy free as my writing style tends to be, I still have to buckle down to publisher requirements when they are requested. Part of what got me paid was when I turned in outlines for the upcoming books, so I will grant you that money makes a compelling motivation at times.

But what was interesting is that my editors didn't seem to care much if I deviated from those outlines. I think they were really to help assess if I had plans of doing something a little too outrageous with the characters or storylines (e.g. Abby runs off to the Avocado Jungle of Death to live with the Amazons or something). That said, I really hated having to come up with them and the finished book often only bore a really vague resemblance. Hell, most of the concepts in the outline for A Sliver of Shadow actually ended up in A Trace of Moonlight, simply because the muse took me in a different direction once I got there.

It's also often true that plot threads don't always click together for me until I get to the end of the book and then suddenly I'll look back and realize "oh - *that's* what that means!" and then it all makes sense with a few careful tweaks.

Now, I do outline/plot for Fox & Willow, as I've noted before. It's a collaborative project, and it's not fair to Aimo to have her drawing things on the fly, so it makes sense that we know where things are headed. It's not like we can go back and change it once it's out there, after all.

Whether you outline or not, I think the key is having a flexible outlook. Different projects can require different ways of tackling them. Novels can be fun to panster - they offer a lot of room to play around with concepts and to get your act together, but getting to the 90k mark and realizing you've written yourself into a corner due to something you wrote at the 10k mark is usually pretty awful, so YMMV.

I Dare You to Outline!

First...
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Outline? Sure. Go ahead. I dare you.

Rest assured, dear reader, I am not preaching a "do as I say, not as I do" sermon today, but I have to admit, like my Word-Whore blog family, outlining is not how I work.

Oh, as a newbie, I outlined one hell of a story. *sits back and looks contemplative at the memory*

YOU CAN WRITE THAT NOVEL!!!

It was my first legitimate adult attempt to write a novel. I'd had a dream, and from it sprang this idea. I started getting it down on paper. My English teacher would have been so proud! I was building an awesome, organized and thoughtful product ready to springboard into the writing part of creating a novel. But as I progressed and figured out more of the plot, the more the outline evolved. Every new creative idea meant rearranging or adding things to this pretty, pretty outline.

Before long, I had a 29 page monster. (Makes me cringe just thinking about that now.)

When I decided to start writing it out, I wasn't feeling it. All the details were in there already. There was nothing new for me to discover. New ideas that dared to appear had the gall to wave their arms around like shipwreck survivors on a beach, begging my brain to acknowledge and rescue them. But they were ignored because they didn't fit with HOW THE ALMIGHTY OUTLINE DEEMED IT MUST BE.

*facepalm* Ah, what might have been.

New writers make all kinds of mistakes. It's normal. It's okay, even. There are many ways to squeeze all the love out of a project. Locking yourself into the stringent constraints of a biggie-size outline is just one of the ways that I personally sampled.

DON'T MARRY YOUR OUTLINE!

What I learned: DON'T DO THAT.

Over time, I've also learned that a single page full of written notes to myself, a handful of major plot points, a note on the development of this or that character arc, a comparative/contrasting subplot, and I'm good to go. With the series, I will reference previously used locations for consistency and add sticky-notes to both sides of my page, but that's hinging on another subject.

Maybe I can work this way because I have proven to myself that I can work this way. I wouldn't have dared to try in the beginning. I NEEDED to see the big picture. I NEEDED to explore all these possibilities and tame them into manageable sheets to reference at any given point, to see where I was putting my foot down next so I knew it was solid and safe and I wouldn't trip and fall.

Maybe I've come to trust myself with "major points" because I allowed myself, eventually, to break free of the outline and see what happened. Confidence is earned by daring.

NO MAROONED IDEAS HERE

So write an outline. Make it good. Then write! When you're sailing along, happy-go-lucky, and suddenly you discover there are some ideas off to the side, marooned either by your muse or someone else's, waiting on that little skiff of sand over there. Look at how hungry they are. Some of them, guaranteed, will be about dead...with practice you'll recognize them more readily, and be able to pinpoint the healthy ones, too. You'll understand how grateful these ideas will be for your rescue, and how much more you'll gain for giving them a chance.

Go ahead. Change course. Pick 'em up. Put 'em to work.

Write that outline. See what you learn.

Outlines: Being Their Bitch

I am an outline's bitch.

Woof. Woof. Howl.

Unlike Jeffe and James, I really, really should not write without having some sort of outline in place. Without one, I start typing merrily away at a contemporary erotic romance and wrap up slogging through the bowels of Mordor. No, really. I'm the queen of tangents to Neverwhere. I've also a tendency to over-correct, which leads to such detailed outlines the only things missing were the narrative trappings.

Neither extreme is a good idea. 

I'm still working on the sweet-spot for how much detail I actually need while still allowing the story to organically grow and flow. For the latest WiP, something slightly more than a synopsis with barer bones is keeping me on track. Now, lest you think I'm wasting my time or deadening the art of creation by using an outline, here are my Top 5 Reasons to Kneel Before the Power of the Mighty Outline:

1. They're Plot Maps: Yes, this is the most obvious reason, but I'mma mention it anyway. Let's say you want to go antiquing for your annual vacation. You intend to drive from Kissimmee to Bangor in a reasonable amount of time with minimal cost in a vehicle that can carry your crap. You figure out the highways, back roads, and rest stops. You know when to take a beltway versus plowing through downtown traffic. You mark the hotels, eateries, and swap-meets. Without the map, you'll end up making a left-turn in Oklahoma City, hitchhiking through the Great Basin, and getting arrested for manslaughter in Vancouver.
2. They're Time-Savers: This may seem counter-intuitive, but investing three days upfront eliminates three months of deep rewrites at the end of the first draft. You won't have to worry about the original plot disintegrating around Chapter 6. The characters will never jump from action sequence to action sequence without reason or rationale. Repercussions and consequences will be properly escalated, keeping the pacing and tension tight. All that equals less time in revisions.
3. They're Lojack for Characters: I write fantasy, which, by its nature, employs the infamous a Cast of Thousands. Logistics for who's on stage, who's being referenced, who's gone MIA, and who's eligible for an offing are much easier to track with an outline.
4. They Cut The Crap: How many places, races, magical gewgaws, and laws-of-the-world are defined in the outline. If I can't keep my enemies straight through the rough strokes in the outline, the reader will never be able to do it in the book. So, consolidate. K.I.S.S.  Also? I hate writing settings. It's my quirk. If introducing a new location isn't really necessary, why waste my time on it?  An outline saves me from "ugh, another bedroom" syndrome.
5. They Keep Me Sane: I'm all about reasonable expectations creating a healthy and happy life. An outline helps me manage my own expectations, to include how long it should take me to finish the first draft. Certain types of scenes are more time-consuming for me to write -- it's something I've learned about my process. These are not to be confused with the days I have to shout "just put words on the page" to slog through a scene when my brain is being recalcitrant. With an outline I know what key revelations, actions, and consequences have to happen before I can move to the next chapter. I can keep to a schedule. Should the day finally come that I have 3rd party imposed deadlines, I ought to be able to meet them without curling into the fetal position and sobbing.

There you have it, dear readers, my top 5 reasons why I'm a bitch for outlines.  ~scratches behind ear~ Are any of you pro-outline? Why or why not?

image taken from: http://alchemyofwriting.blogspot.com/2012/07/four-short-walls-51-novel-outline.html

Jeffe's Five Smartass Purposes for Outlining

This week's topic is, get this, "The Purpose of Outlining."

Giggle.

Snort.

Yeah, okay - I'm absolutely the kid in the back of the class rolling my eyes as the teacher explains outlining. When we had to do the exercise of outlining a research paper, turn in the outline and later turn in the paper? Yes, I wrote the paper, then outlined it and turned that in. When I think about jumping through those particular hoops, I remember being forced to "show my work" on math problems. This was always to prove that you followed the teacher's method, rather than skipping steps to simply produce the answer.

I'm an incorrigible step-skipper.

It's how my brain works. I seem to organize information in a different way. Or maybe it's that I organize as I go, so all of these ideas and mathematical solutions are already filed. Asking me to go back and retrace my path to get there can be... well, infuriating.I loathed those pointless exercises.

You can just imagine how my more pedantic teachers felt about me. Nothing worse than a student who produces the correct answer or an acceptable final paper without being able to demonstrate how she got there.

Magic.

No, really.

Because, to me, making an outline before hand means precluding those bursts of inspiration that happen along the way. I'd rather follow my intuition and see where it leads.

So, now that I am writing my own books and don't have to prove my methods to anyone, guess how much outlining I do?

That's right. ZERO.

And yet, I must answer the question posed. Thus, Jeffe's take on five purposes of outlining:

1. To con the teacher into giving you a good grade.
2. To procrastinate actually writing.
3. To take advantage of those bullet-point formats and subcategories you don't otherwise use.
1. Cuz, see? They have cool tiering functions
1. And you can make a lot of sub-points to overall points
2. Sometimes more than one
1. More subtopics abound!
2.  
3. You can even leave some blank, just for grins
1. Yeah. Not all that fun, really.
4. To suck all the magic out of the creative process.
5. To persuade yourself you have control over the fundamentally uncontrollable. 

 I know I'm terribly biased. And a smartass, too.

 Really, I know outlining works for many writers. I'm sure we'll hear from some of them this week. But the upshot is, creating an outline is a way of organizing your thoughts about a story. It is, however, only ONE way to do that. The outliners and preplotters of the world love having that level of (apparent) control. They view anyone without that control as being kind of crazy undisciplined.Thus the moniker "pantser" from "flying by the seat of your pants." Note that this is not an admiring description.

Do not listen to their blandishments!

Everyone organizes their thoughts in different ways.

Follow your own genius.

Make your own way.

Find the magic.