Outlining - how do U feel about it?

[robert walker]

It seems to me every creative imaginative mind has its own path to crafting story and novel. I know some people who outline the hell out of a story before setting down a word of the actual story and they do well to "live with" their characters for some time, but myself I choke on the idea of character cards and pages of Roman Numeral Outlines or a 70 page treatment of the story with details about eye color and favorite toothpaste used by each character. It's to me the equivalent of filing an IRS form. I write sometimes up to a hundred pages before I even begin to have any idea of where the hell I am going, and I have found that while at times I wish I could do better, I have decided that my totally "organic" approach, allowing the flower of the story to be nurtured and grown from a seed is an okay way to go. To explore where no one has gone before is just fine with me. Opening a first chapter on a What If premise without a single answer challenges me to craft a novel that does indeed answer what in chapter one appears Unanswerable. So how about you? HOW do you Outline or Organize your novel or story? Do you outline heavily with an ending in mind and plot points clearly set on certain pivotal pages? Or do you WING it and work without a net as I do?

[robert walker]

At some poin if you intend to sell your work, you will need a pich/synopsis, and editors want and need for distribution your ouline. I get around this often difficult chore often by writing the novel real fast and then crafting the sales material and outline afterwards. Works for me.

[minervaK]

I do both.

I start out with a basic idea, and just start writing. When I get to a point that I don't know where to go next, I outline. When I hit a point in the outline where I don't know where to go next, I go back to the manuscript and write some more. I wrote the first draft of my first novel this way.

I should qualify this by admitting that I'm still working on this first draft of my first novel, so I don't even know if what I'm doing can be defined as a method at all, yet. Part of writing this book is figuring out how to write a book.

Right now, I'm outlining, and getting pretty damned anal about it. There are several places in the draft that make no sense, and I went back to my outline to try and comb through for solutions. I'm finding myself enjoying the process of outlining, in a different way than I enjoy the process of free-writing. They both appeal to me at different times in the process. So far, I'm saying. Ask me again in ten years.

MK
www.minervakoenig.com

[Bob]

Nice question. I go both ways. It all comes down to the type of fiction being written. When your setting is current and a complex chain of events must occur to ensure the ending is reached logically, an outline is a must. When the story focus/theme is character traits and personal interactions, an outline becomes a barrier. I couldn't even dream of starting a historical fiction without an outline.

[Pepper Smith]

I don't outline, except in a vague way in my head. If I write an outline out on paper, I never write the story. The thrill of discovery is gone.

[EDWARD C MORGAN]

For me, my shorter work is just very carefully thought out. I mull over the story (or column) until I have it fairly clear in my head, then commit to paper.

For longer works, I do outline. It is not a hardcore, firm outline, and doesn't have a lot of details. It is more a listing of pertinent points, items related to plot, character traits, etc. The most detailed outline I ever used was on a series of on-going articles & editorials for a newspaper I used to work for. The series had some fairly libelous possibilities, so I had to make certain all bases were covered and I did have a very detailed, on-going outline as the series unfolded.

[Donna Carrick]

I've written novels both with and without an outline, and with both loose and tightly drawn outlines. Most recently I used a storyboard. That was fun.

The needs of the story will dictate whether and how much I will outline in advance of writing. I've worked with a couple of intricate "multi-plot-lines", and for those I outline in great detail.

All of my stories begin with characters that interest me. The situations I envision may be organic, in which case no outlining is necessary, or they may be intricate. Also, I did one novel that was based on a true-life event, the 2004 tsunami, and that was outlined strenuously so as to be true to actual news timelines.

Whatever works, folks. I don't allow the outline to become an excuse to put off writing. When I do outline, the outline acts as a first draft and allows the "2nd draft" to flow very easily.

[robert walker]

I agree it depends so much on what you are working on; I do historical suspense novels and historicals are often based on facts and a real time line as in my Children of Salem, and my Ransom series. So much of it needs follow the outline of real time - a certain length of story surrounding months or days in history. Whereas if am working on a straight suspense or horror novel, I don't have that real timeline to pay attention to. It's kind of comforting to be able to hang your story on an historical timeline, but even then most of the scenes and chapters come about for me in an organic fashion, that is one begets the next. If you want to pull a number of threads or themes throughout, this can happen best in rewrites. Bottom line is the best writing happens in rewriting sessions for me. Rewriting is writing. Lately been busy with OCR technology and putting up ebooks out there for MONEY which is for a writer always in short supply. We are low man/woman on the totem pole for the green stuff.

rob