When it comes to story outlines, there seem to be as many opinions as there are authors in our community. Some will not begin to write until they have carefully constructed a voluminous “story-tree” that needs only its leaves to become a first draft.
Some prefer to draw a loose arc, allowing for deviations as the tale unfolds and even encouraging complete redesign mid-way. Others balk at preparing even a simple set of bullet-points, believing the outline enforces perimeters that restrict the natural creative flow.
Personally, I’ve had success using several different methods, leading me to believe there are no rules, only the individual needs of each writer and each story.
When I wrote The Noon God, words flowed organically from my mind to the keyboard in a series of sittings. However, I must add that I knew the story in entirety before I began. Even though I didn’t scribble a single word in preparation, I had spent the better part of two years getting to know my characters, their family ties and their conflicts.
By the time I started writing, an outline would have been redundant. The Noon God was already fully constructed. Not once did I deviate from the movie in my mind.
Gold And Fishes was an entirely different matter. Because of the nature of the story and the sensitivity of the subject matter (almost 300,000 lost in the Southeast Asia Boxing Day tsunami of 2004) it was imperative that I remain true to the events of that disaster. To ask less of myself would have been to disrespect the very real victims and their families.
My outline for Gold And Fishes was detailed and complex, to say the least. It began with a page-by-page timeline drawn from daily news reports. Each page represented a day’s news coverage, handwritten in bullet points with references to each source. Then, at the bottom of each page, I outlined my fictional account of aid worker Ayla Harris’s struggle to find her missing brother-in-law while assisting with hospital duties and body recovery in Banda Aceh.
This was a labour of love. My research spanned 6 months. Each day I spent from 1-3 hours perusing world-wide on-line journals and newspapers, constructing story details within a global catastrophe of monumental magnitude.
All this before I had written a single word.
The First Excellence was a combination approach — drawing on both of my previous methods. Originally titled Fa-ling’s Map, the story arc was formed in my mind long before I began to write. It first came to me while we were in China in 2003 and fermented for years until I finally set out to write it in 2008.
By the time I’d finished in 2009, The First Excellence was much more than the sum of its intended parts. What started out as a tribute to our adopted daughter became a complex tale of murder, kidnapping, political intrigue and suspense.
However, I have to admit none of this growth would have been possible without an outline. I loved my original story idea, but it alone would not carry me, a crime writer, to the final page. So I set out to draw an arc and a set of chapter outlines, loosely mapped and open to many deviations, most of which caught me completely by surprise when my characters presented them to me.
I wrote an outline, but I didn’t follow it with any great rigor. Still, it gave me a sense of story development upon which I could hang my research. Without it, the story would have collapsed.
What now? For the better part of the summer I’ve been stuck at the mid-point of the Fa-ling sequel. I’ve told my friends how busy my summers are, and how fall is always my most productive time.
And yet, the complexity of my work in progress is such that, without a complete story-board to lead me through the labyrinth of plot twists, there would be no hope of picking up where I left off.
Thank goodness I constructed just such a story-board before I began writing! Now, to dust it off…
Whatever your method, I wish you the very best in writing.
Sincerely,
Donna
Follow
Types of outlines are indeed various, and many of us, I suspect, have a love/hate relationship with them. There’s something about the way we were taught to make them in school, having to decide on a hierarchy of particulars perhaps too soon in the process of writing…
Your readers might enjoy and get something out of a post of my own on this topic: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creating-in-flow/201006/outlines-love-em-or-leave-em.
This picture makes me want to take a walk. It’s so beautiful, Donna. And your post gives me a renewed sense of confidence in my ability to write. I love “no rules”.
Thank you, Donna!
Glad you dropped in, Cynthia! There really are no rules–just what works best for each of us. Thanks for your kind words!
Thanks for sharing your excellent article, Susan. There are so many valid approaches, so long as we keep writing!
Since I have been writing short stories, the need for an outline is not as necessary for me. But having made the decision to begin a novel, I can see how a loosely mapped outline might be just the thing I need.
Loved learning your writing process!
Thanks for visiting, Marisa. Good luck with your new novel! Hope you’ll keep us posted on progress.
Best, DC
The only time I do an outline is when I go back and try to keep straight the timeline (sequence of events)–even then it’s very sparse. Writing “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” is better for getting me in the zone where good things happen (like characters and their dialog becoming alive). Sometimes going back to edit is difficult (and tedious), but that’s the way I work. I like to be the oil or watercolor painter who knows that the more you muck around with the colors, the muddier your painting becomes. This is just the way I work with fiction writing. I would never do a scientific paper this way!
Thanks for dropping in, Steve! I can sure understand your approach. Personally, I can do it either way, depending on the story and how well it’s rooted in my mind. The outline helps when I need to firm up plot or character, or just to keep me from forgetting necessary details. But for stories where that’s less of a concern, for sure “just writing” is a terrific method. Whatever gets us to the final page, in my opinion!