Outlining

Outlining

It took a long time before I learned the benefits of outlining. For years I wrote one page at a time without any idea where the story was going, without taking notes, without any sense of direction. I did it this way because my favorite authors said this is how they write, so I adopted their work habits.

The fact of the matter is a book is a big project whether it’s 200 pages or 2,000. There are many moving parts, characters, situations, conversations that take place within a book. Outlining helps to maintain consistency as well as to shorten the writing process.

Regardless whether or not an author claims to use an outline, the fact of the matter is the first draft is essentially an outline of the overall story that will need to be refined with subsequent drafts. By writing an outline before committing to the book, you get a sense of the characters and the story before taking the big plunge.

Creating characters

You can’t have story without characters. Everything I have ever written started with a character I wanted to know more about, a character that finds themselves in a situation or a series of situations that only they can resolve. My outlining begins with characters, and then I think of scenes I would like to see them in.

Character building can be as simple or as complex as you like. If you write thrillers with more emphasis on plot, think of a name, a distinctive personality, some personal flaws, and hit the ground running. If you write literary fiction, then your character’s information could fill pages, very little of which may actually make it into the book.

What I find helps me with character creation is thinking about their life, their upbringing and family, their hopes and dreams. From there I get an idea of who they are, and it gives me ideas for the kind of story I’d like to see them in even though very little of their backstory will make it into the final product.

Scenes scenes scenes…

Once I have a few characters, I write scenes. I write as many scenes as I can. Sometimes they’re a few sentences long, sometimes they go on for pages. I write scenes regardless whether or not I like them. If I really don’t like something, I’ll drop it and work on another scene.

For example, my outline for Deb Dawson Psychic & Spiritualist was 180 pages long after four months of outlining. About 2/3 of the outline made it into the final book. I wrote scenes, alternate scenes, I replaced characters in scenes, and all of this work helped me to see how the book should play out. My original idea for Deb Dawson was much different than the final book, but this method made it a much better novel I think.

Outlining doesn’t stop when the book starts…

Sometimes you hit a wall. Something happened in the book the book I didn’t expect, or I don’t know where the story should go next. Instead of worrying endlessly about it as I used to, I take a break from the book and I outline possible solutions or alternate scenes to address whatever problem I’m facing.

Back in the days when I wrote without outlines, if I hit a point where I didn’t know what would happen next and my writing seized up, I could go weeks without touching the book not sure what I was supposed to do. This is how blocks happen. So rather than dwell on the problem, I now outline to get myself out of that hole.

Should the scene go this way or that way? I now write out both versions, or as many alternates as I can think of, and decide from there which I feel is the best path for the book. This takes a lot of the anxiety out of writing that I used to face before I utilized outlines. In Deb Dawson I was outlining alternate scenes up through the final draft of the book. It is never too late to outline.