Baby Steps: Phase One Outlines

[goadingthepen]

outline!
outline!
outline!
outline!
outline!
outline!
outline!
It can't be that difficult, can it? I'm not usually one to outline. On the flip side, I'm not usually one to finish a manuscript either.

Would love to know:

Are you an outliner??
Does it help you?
How do you outline: brief statements, paragraphs, just your basic outline, etc.?
Do you have a

Comments

[fandoria]

I didn't want to be an outliner, but I've found that I have to or my plot falls apart and I have to rewrite more times than I care to count.

I usually start out with a short, query-length summary. Then I take the MC(s)and write out a full-length summary of the story from their POV(s). Length varies for that. However long it takes me to tell that character's side of the story from beginning to end. It doesn't have to be super detailed, just enough for me to figure out the plot and make sure there aren't any holes.

Then I take all the secondary characters and write information down on them. Some only get a paragraph, some get a whole page. Just enough that I feel like I know them enough to start writing them.

When I'm doing this, I know that I'm not going to stick religiously to it. It's mostly a guide for me to know I'm on the right track and my plot does work. But I give myself freedom to veer from it whenever the story/character dictate that it's necessary.

[goadingthepen]

I love the idea of summarizing from the different character's perspectives. I also like the idea that outlines are more of a guide than a concrete map of a story.

Thanks!

[ex_lgburns]

I am an outliner, and here is the wonderful thing I have learned: outlines are disposable! Seriously. I find that having a game plan on paper helps me move forward, and as soon as I move forward a few steps (paragraphs? pages?), I see the folly of my first outline and hash out a second. This new vision propels me forward, too ... and the cycle continues on and on to THE END. Works for me.

Good luck!

[goadingthepen]

I have a feeling that I would spend so much time hashing out a second and third and fourth I might get in trouble. I am one of those edit as you go kind of people and it REALLY slows me down.

I love that outlines are disposable though.

[olmue]

Outlining too much for me takes the place of the telling the story, which kind of wrecks it for me (like other people can't talk about it too much too soon or it's gone). But once I've done a bit of prewriting (like maybe 30K!), then I start to feel natural plot nodes. I guess that could be kind of outlining. I know that the initial event has to propel the story toward a certain choice, which makes it impossible to back out now, and from there it has to go to another node or two that are also both reversible, and which make things more complicated. And that the climax has to come in after that. It helps me line up all the arcs and threads running through the story so that they mean something in the context of the whole book.

[olmue]

"and from there it has to go to another node or two that are also both reversible, "

Sorry, I meant IRreversible!

[goadingthepen]

I'm one of those who can't talk too much about it because it will ruin it. I always end up hitting a dead end.

[mela_lyn]

Ok, now let me preface this by saying that I haven't finished a project BUT I use outlines

[goadingthepen]

Love the brain goo!
And Wow- that is detailed outlining. You must be mega organized too!

[mela_lyn]

I have binders with dividers for each project I've started on and want to finish. :) Yes... I am an organizational freak!! :)

[brian_ohio]

I was always anti-outline, but I use one now. Usually scene by scene.

It begins like the trunk of a tree, than, as I write, it births a few branches, then a few buds, then a few leaves, becoming a fully bloomed massive oak.

The outline is merely a map, a simplistic map, the ACTUAL story is the scenery, the characters, the emotion and textures you experience on the way. And you don't always end up where the map was leading you... I think that's the best part.

[goadingthepen]

Oooh. Think I might have to bloom me a tree!