Outlining

[kdbleu]

I have come to the realization that I need to get the rest of my mystery out of head and onto paper, in short form, so I can check for plot holes, find the emotional connections, etc. Unfortunately my experience with outlines has not been good. It has been bad, in fact, resulting in me only writing the outline and not the actual story. Now, after a

Comments

[daybreak777]

My experience with outlining has been similar to yours. I've actually been struggling with my Big Bang and another fic. I just want to . . . write. It works best for me and then put the bits together later. But the Big Bang is mostly plotted and done. And that's what happens with an outline. I do all the work and the fun is gone after an outline. I know exactly where the fic is going now and it sort of kills my muse. No more mystery of where my typing fingers might take me. :-(

Good point about sometimes just wanting to hash out the fic. Actually, hashing out makes me want to write more!

But fics over 10,000 words do have to have some cohesiveness and I can't just go with the flow forever. I'm really struggling with outlining killing my muse, though. Hope others have some ideas.

[kdbleu]

I'm wondering if there isn't something about the completion of an outline that makes it hard to take the next step.

Although I'm pretty sure in the past I have outlined to avoid actually writing. ;)

[kakodaimon]

Continuity error is one of the very, very few things I can catch in my own writing. But I like to write a story about the story sometimes, as if I were describing someone else's work to a friend; this helps me sort out crucial pieces of plot and so forth. If you write it for a specific person it might be easier to change it later into the real story, since the details you would highlight for a specific friend will probably not be 100% representative. Or another trick you could try would be writing a fake summary/review as if on IMDB or the like. The best part about the latter is that you will be less forthcoming about the juiciest details (because spoilers!) and still retain your motivation to write them.

I was really struck by something Tolkien wrote about Lord of the Rings, which was that when the Hobbits got to the Prancing Pony, he "discovered" that Gandalf simply wasn't there, and he as author (!) was completely unsure of why. The story ended up taking a different direction, and he in many ways was feeling his way through. While

[kdbleu]

The thing is I need to know where I'm going or at least to write out the things I know (whether I write them into an outline or not) ought to be there.

But the story has never really been outlining itself. I've always had an map. I just haven't seen the value in writing it down before this.

[kdbleu]

I was really struck by something Tolkien wrote about Lord of the Rings, which was that when the Hobbits got to the Prancing Pony, he "discovered" that Gandalf simply wasn't there, and he as author (!) was completely unsure of why

A version of this is more or less the reason I need to start keeping track. I had a character kind of show up out of nowhere and upset my timeline. And I think that would have happened no matter how much preplanning I'd done so I'm not looking to give up my flexibility as much as track more effectively where I'm going.

[kakodaimon]

Absolutely, I didn't mean at all to challenge the idea that outlining is actually 9/10 extremely helpful, and specifically helpful to you, but sometimes I like counterexamples, because it's easy for me to get caught up in some idea like "real writers do X."

[ninety6tears]

I'm not a religious outliner and none of the ones I've used before have ended up being extremely important to the writing process. The most I get out of outlines is being able to get a good visual representation of what percentage of the story I've managed to get done or having something to go back to later if I'm in that stage where I have a lot of ideas about a story but don't have time to get started on something new any time soon (in that case the "outline" is more a disorganized jumble of vaguely chronological notes like "THE SHOWER SCENE OMG DON'T FORGET THE SHOWER SCENE" and tidbits of "this conversation needs to get this across," etc.) When I'm actually in the planning stage and I don't know where the story is going I really don't find that sitting down to construct an outline, as opposed to free-writing or just going out for a walk/drive and thinking about it, helps me much at all. (I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing, but I hate actually being in front of a computer while I'm thinking out the plot.) It's nice to have

[coffeesuperhero]

THIS THIS THIS. I do sooooo much of my planning walking/driving/cooking/taking absurdly long showers, and if I try to plan in front of a computer or holding a pen, nothing happens, there's just nothing there. And oh my word my all-caps notes. Some day I'm going to leave one in something by accident and everyone can have a good laugh.

[kdbleu]

TBH I don't think I do it because I have a hard time remembering those details as much as I just like to have some sort of bible for the idea sitting around.

I think this is kind of what I'm looking for on some level too. As well as a place to put the "this conversation need to get this across" and these are my over-arching themes, so it's all in one place.

[coffeesuperhero]

Up front: I don't do outlines. Never have. Hate it. Haaaaate it. Feels like a school assignment and not the fun kind. I mean, writing is work and sometimes it's not fun, but if I do an outline then I lose all interest in writing the thing itself, so I just don't do them anymore. To work around this natural contrariness, I write the story all over the place and leave myself all caps placeholders, sometimes in the middle of a thought

[daybreak777]

That was so helpful to me! THANK YOU. My one story that was 8,000 words I didn't have an outline. Just a timeline. It makes such a difference. I keep it handwritten too so it doesn't fool itself into thinking it's a timeline or something. ;-)

I so thought I wasn't writing a well-plotted story without an outline. I'm glad it's not just me. But those timelines are really, really useful! Really.

To help the OP, I think when I write the scene that's when I make notes as to whether this is inconsistent, a plot hole, or something like that. Then I make sure to ask my beta about it too. It's good to let them read it cold and get that first reaction. But on a second read, I will make note of those things I had questions about and ask them directly. Usually, if there is a big hole, they'll see it.

[ecstaticdance]

Yes this. Mine tends to run down several pages, then get transferred to sticky notes so I can move it around, but vague is definitely key.

[kdbleu]

See, I love outline, writing them, formatting them. Everything. And whether the thoughts are written down or not (and they're not) I have outline on some level or another for everything I write.

Right now, my issue is that my timeline (as I call my outline) is no longer working. I need to be able to track emotional growth and connective tissue along with my murder plot. The timeline is sufficient anymore.

Actually, your process sounds remarkably like mine except my timeline is in my computer because I like the ability to make really neat columns. :D

[embolalia]

I'm not sure what I did would be logical for other people, but once I had a sense of my story, I started writing drabbles for each scene. It helped figure out voices and point of view and so forth. I didn't know exactly where the ending was when I started, but I had a sense. By the time it was done, and a couple people read it, it was much easier to see where some of the characters were missing in certain parts of the story and that some of them needed stronger resolutions in a full length work. I also took the drabbles and broke them into rough chapters and made little timelines for each character of which chapters they appeared in - a sort of graphic way of seeing who had holes and where. That helped inform the changes I made as I expanded it.

[kdbleu]

Actually, I think what I'm going to do is pretty similar to your drabble idea. Somewhere between that and stubbing out scenes the way ecstaticdance does, each in their own document in their proper chapter in my Scrivener file. There are a number of reasons but part of it is to keep myself from seeing a complete outline document because I have a feeling that creates a psychological block me because it's 'done'. But it will also be more like writing. I can drop in bit of dialogue I want to use, and write out of order, as things occur to me more in the manner which I used to working. Just a different scale.

[embolalia]

and write out of order, as things occur to me more in the manner which I used to working

Absolutely! It was interesting for this project - that's what I usually do, and what I did for the drabbles, but once I had them done I found it much easier than usual to write more or less chronologically.

[kdbleu]

I also think that something closer to your drabble idea could be useful to me from the beginning. Even writing a timeline I don't do until I need to write dependent on a future I haven't encountered yet. But I could write (and more or less do) out bits of scenes with the intension of using that as a map instead of just trying to get the thoughts out of my head so I can focus else where. (or maybe it's exactly the same with a different intention ;)