Outlines?

[crich70]

I was watching a video about outlining on youtube this morning and it got me to thinking, how many people here do outline? And is it a detailed outline or just a rough sketch outline?
The posted of the video presented an outline something like this:

Act One

1. Opening conflict
2. Protagonist Introduction
3. Chance for change
4. Resistance to change
5. Point of no return

Act Two

1. Entering the new situation
2. Meeting friends, enemies, etc. Tranformative experiences
3. Problems bring them together
4. Problems draw them apart
5. Crisis hits!

Act Three

1. Troubling secret revealed or attack starts
2. All seems lost
3. Self-sacrifice or symbolic death
4. Final showdown
5. Conclusion- wed or dead

She suggested about 30 chapters of 3000 words in a problem /solution format (though it can be less chapters) and was of the opinion that with something like the above outline the book can practically write itself. I think it bears a similarity at least to the Hero's Journey outline though I can't argue with her point of needing to know where you're going so as to not lose the thread of your story.

[cromag]

I seem to be wired for short stories. I have a good idea in my head for the whole story before I start. So, maybe a framework, at best, but no real outline on my part.

Maybe, if I ever get an idea for a longer work ...

[VictoriaP]

What video was it? I'd be interested in seeing it--maybe I'd learn such things better via a different media, because the eight billion or so books & posts I've read on outlining still don't seem to help.

As you can guess, I've yet to manage a successful outline. To be fair, I hated them in school as well, and very often produced the required formal outline based on my already written or presented speech. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I'd like to figure it out, as I have a novel in progress that could certainly benefit from a better organized process!

[crich70]

Originally Posted by VictoriaP

What video was it? I'd be interested in seeing it--maybe I'd learn such things better via a different media, because the eight billion or so books & posts I've read on outlining still don't seem to help.

As you can guess, I've yet to manage a successful outline. To be fair, I hated them in school as well, and very often produced the required formal outline based on my already written or presented speech. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I'd like to figure it out, as I have a novel in progress that could certainly benefit from a better organized process!

The one here. Not a long video but interesting.
Click

[VictoriaP]

Originally Posted by crich70

The one here. Not a long video but interesting.
Click

Thanks!

[crich70]

Originally Posted by VictoriaP

Thanks!

You're welcome VictoriaP.

[Lemurion]

I do a very rough plot based outline - usually a skeleton of what happens in each chapter, then as I finish a chapter I do a scene outline of the next. Works for me.

[gmw]

I don't outline as such, certainly not the to the extent of planning chapters. I start writing and things evolve. I do keep notes, both about where I've been and ideas about where I think I'm headed. In the series I've just finished I knew, very roughly, what the last/climactic scene, and even the epilogue, was going to be from somewhere around halfway through the first book, but I had very little idea of what would happen in between (other than a few critical milestones and a cloud of vague ideas).

I like it that way. It makes the writing an exploration for me, more interesting and intriguing. I think, if I knew in detail everything that was going to happen, I probably wouldn't bother to write it down.

[crich70]

Your more of a 'pantser' type of writer huh gmw. Do you ever find yourself painted into a corner somehow by what you've written? And if so how do you usually get out of it?

[gmw]

I've had many stories ideas that have gone nowhere* (or haven't yet, maybe they're just waiting for another ingredient), but I don't see that so much as painting myself into the corner as it is discovering that something simply doesn't work. Such things get put back into my pile of thoughts/notes for consideration at another time when I'm hard up for ideas.

My characters don't always do what I thought they were going to when I first pointed them in some particular direction, but so far they've always found their way through without me needing to invent some magic pill, call upon divine intervention**, or break the rules of my fantasy.

One of the things that I like about letting the story evolve is that it also lets you incorporate things that you discover along the way. For example, a girl turned up for a walk-on role in the first book of the series I've just finished, but I liked her, she felt right, and she went on to play an important role right through to the end. Another character, while still only part of my background work, turned out to have quite a distinct personality that ended up being the biggest change I made to the final scenes from what I had originally envisaged.

Which is not to say that you cannot adapt an outline as you go, and achieve the same sort of result. But I've found that it can be difficult for me to let things go that I've already put down on the page (which, of course, we all must do). So I think a detailed outline would have a constraining effect on me, and I would avoid accepting the evolving nature of my story in order keep to my outline.

I accept that my method of writing means that I throw out a lot, and if I was doing this to try and make a living then I might have to re-think my approach. But I'm doing this to write stories that I want to write. Sure, I'd love my stories to sell and make money, but I'm realistic enough to accept that that is unlikely (especially with my lack of marketing skills or inclination). So if I'm going to spend time writing, I'll do what feels good to me. I like being surprised by my story and my characters, it makes me feel involved in the story, which is largely why I'm here in the first place.


* It might be more accurate to say that, at least for a very long time, most of my stories when nowhere. If they can't keep me interested when I re-read them then I don't burden anyone else with them.

** There is one particular fantasy author that has written many books that I really enjoy EXCEPT for the ending where he quite regularly pulls in (what feels like) a deus ex machina to get his heroes out of their bind. I'm really hoping I can avoid that in my own writing, but I'd also like to be able to write as well as him for the rest of it.

[gmw]

I got so carried away waffling I didn't address your question about how I get out of a corner or bind in a story. I point you to this thread that I posted some time ago. In that Susan Sontag offers the hint that the problem IS the solution.

This resonated with me because it is the way it seems to work for me (when I can make it work). Whenever I thought I was getting into something I couldn't get out of, it turned out that the problem itself was a significant part of the story. One big (for me) example: As I was writing the background story behind my series, I hit some difficulties with the way a character interacted with others; the character needed to keep a secret and I wasn't sure how. The solution to that, that a secret was possible, and the reason why it was possible, had implications that ran right through the background and to the end of the series. (I still remember where I was and what I was doing when this came to me, it was a very significant moment.)

[crich70]

Some of your points in post #10 reminded me of something I read about Herman Melville when he was writing Moby Dick. He had this character show up out of nowhere and take over the story. The character's name? Ahab. Prior to that he thought it was a man named Bulkington who would be the main character. Of course (according to the author of the book on writing that I was reading) Melville didn't really clean up after himself when he switched to Ahab either. Bulkington is just swept overboard one night while on watch or something and never found which leaves the reader wondering what was so important about the character who just vanished like that. Of course Melville didn't have a word processor (or a program like Scrivener) to help him keep his story organized either. He likely wrote it by hand over the course of some months while not working at his day job in the custom's office. And the typewriter wasn't really a functional tool of writing til Mark Twain took it on as a means of writing as I understand it. We've come a long way in terms of tools available to us to write stories and books since then.

[gmw]

Yes, if the story evolves to alter existing details then that can be a problem, word processor or no word processor. For some reason I've had very few of those (touching wood as I write this, which makes typing difficult), perhaps because I tend to obsess for a long time before committing things to the story, or perhaps it is what I was saying about the strange permanency something attracts (for me) when it's written down. (Such stability is, to a certain extent, necessary. A story can't evolve stably/rationally/reliably if the base is always changing - that sort of thing leads to nasty inconsistencies that can be hard to eliminate.)

The ones I really like (which include the examples I noted above) are the ones that come in and add to the story without actually changing what has already been written, they just slot in and make sense as if they had always belonged there. It feels like kismet or something, or as if it was something I must have known subconsciously but can only see when setting was right. (I'm starting to make it sound mystical, and I'm sure it's not, there's bound to be a rational explanation if I went looking, but I'm just happy that - some of the time anyway - it works.)

[Lazer]

In Stephen King's, On Writing, he says that books written from an outline can be flat. He suggests putting your characters in a situation and letting them trowel out the story like archeologists on a dig.

I don't use an outline. I used King's suggestions on my last book and believe it worked. I'm using the same methodology on another project and have not much of an idea where it's going. I sure don't know how it's going to end.

TL

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by crich70

Your more of a 'pantser' type of writer huh gmw. Do you ever find yourself painted into a corner somehow by what you've written? And if so how do you usually get out of it?

Depends on the problem. Sometimes the answer is delete the chapter and try a different path. Sometimes there is new story in the problem that needs to be told as a sub-arch, and sometimes that problem needs to be broken out into its own novel.

The point is there is no ONE answer.