I hate outlining. It feels like work.
But I need to outline.
I’m an anarchic thinker who appreciates that my stories would benefit from better organization. I’ve tried pure run-with-it (à la Steven King, Lee Child, etc) and struggled through sloppy revisions. I’ve also tried strict, college-style outlining and hated my finished story.
Writing from an outline makes me feel like I’m donning a straitjacket.
Resigned to think of outlining as a future goal, “someday I’ll get my act together—probably”, I pursued outlining via inefficient, multiple revisions. As in, Oh, right, he’s a good guy now, I’ll have to take out the part where he bludgeoned sixty children on page 4. Or those beta readers who put a note on page 212, “Who is this lady? Did I miss something?”
For me, writing by the seat of my pants only makes my work more chaotic. I feel like I’m building a skyscraper with mud. It slips away faster than I can pile it up.*
GOOD NEWS! I found a method that works for me … and just might help you. I figured it out after watching my wife eat a bowl of gumbo at the local Cajun diner. I’ve noticed that gumbo is never the same thing twice. Everyone has a different take, different ingredients, different methods.
My system might not work for you. But how I arrived at it might. Like gumbo, it’s a mix of stuff. **
First, Russell Blake made an intriguing statement in his interview. On the topic of organizing books, he said, “I’ll write a few paragraphs laying out the broad strokes of the story – what it’s about. Then I’ll write the first fifteen chapter descriptions, which are single sentence blurbs to remind me what’s happening to whom in each chapter. Then I start writing.”
Wow. So easy even I could do it. Probably.
Except that for me, it’s not that easy. And I couldn’t do it. I had trouble visualizing the big picture, so my first fifteen chapters included chapter descriptions that I ignored. Once again, my planning had nothing to do with my final product and I was back to characters and plot points making magical appearances in the story.
I’d been toying with an idea Lance Charnes (a serious outliner and very smart guy) steered me toward some time ago: Alexandra Sokoloff’s storyboarding methods used in screen writing. She uses sticky notes on a whiteboard. I loved the idea of sticky notes! The climax/conflict/suspense points I wanted to hit in my books were never in question. What I kept screwing up was where they belonged.
Here is what my storyboard for my WIP looks like today (notice more stickies at the beginning):
(Eat your heart out, Saskatchewan Pam.)
By combining Mr. Blake’s fifteen-chapters-ahead method, with Ms. Sokoloff’s say-it-with-sticky-notes method, I was able to get a handle on what belongs in the story, where I’m running off the rails, and what’s indulgent crap. I’ve now used the storyboard for the parts I know, with the ability to shuffle things around as I go. I then write single-sentence chapter descriptions as far ahead as I can feel them.
Then I go for it.
And life is good.***
What methods do you use? What do you need to improve?
Peace, Seeley
* Or is that bullshit? Whatever it is, I’m always knee deep in it.
** For more ideas about how to organize a story, check out my interview series: Great Writers on Writing.
*** For me anyway. Jury’s still out on the readers…
