Today, we’re continuing with our series of video/audio trailers, offering a sneak peek into the first chapter of Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success. We’re also continuing our month of prize giveaways, building up to the Grand Prize, worth over $400, on September 26th. Be sure to leave a comment on this post to register for today’s prize, a signed copy of my historical western novel A Man Called Outlaw. And now let’s talk outlines—specifically the misconceptions about outlining.
Video Transcription:
Misconception #1: Outlining Your Novel Requires Formal Formatting
Much of the avoidance of outlining comes down to nightmarish memories of the outlines we had to learn in high school. You know the type: Roman numerals, graduated indents, and perfectly parsed grammar. Just looking at one is enough to kill your creativity:
I. The Galactic Empire attempts to squelch the Rebel Alliance.
1. Big spaceship goes after little spaceship.
a. Big spaceship catches little spaceship.
i) Bad guy boards little spaceship; bad guy breathes heavily.
That’s just a whole barrel of fun, isn’t it? Even with an exciting story, you’re more likely to snap your pencil point in frustration than wear it down to a nub with a flood of enthusiastic ideas. Formal outlines such as we learned in school may suffice for recording the bare bones of our stories. But, let’s face it, they’re not exactly enjoyable. By the time you reach “II. Farm boy goes on mission to save beautiful princess,” you’re probably going to be yawning and checking Twitter.
Fortunately, outlines don’t have to look anything like this inverted staircase. In the next chapter, we’ll explore a variety of outline formats, but, for now, remember outlines don’t require the crossing of every T, the dotting of every I, and the buttoning of your top collar button. Rather, they should be opportunities for throwing caution to the wind, living on the edge, and breaking any rule silly enough to raise its head.
Misconception #2: Outlining Your Novel Limits Creativity
Authors sometimes feel writing an outline will box them into a rigid plan, which can be deviated from only under risk of death. As soon as they put an outline on paper, they fear they’ve locked their story into an immutable form that can never be changed, even if they come up with a better idea halfway through the first draft.
When I was a kid, I loved those connect-the-dots puzzles. The artists would remove the lines in their sketches and replace them with spaced-out dots, each of which was accompanied by a number. If I succeeded in connecting the dots in the correct order, I would magically end up with a kitten or a dolphin or a barn. It was fun, but it didn’t allow for much creativity. If I didn’t follow the dots exactly, I wouldn’t end up with a picture of anything recognizable. In other words, if I didn’t follow the predetermined outline, I was sunk.
Fortunately, however, this needn’t be the case with a novel’s outline. Like the pirate code in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Outlines should encourage wild creativity, daring experimentation, and focused inspiration. If you’re not encountering these elements in your own outline, you’re probably looking at the process in the wrong light.
Misconception #3: Outlining Your Novel Robs the Joy of Discovery
Some authors rebel against outlines because they believe creating one will sap the joy of discovery they find in writing a first draft. It’s true that for all the benefits outlining offers, it also requires a few sacrifices. The opportunity to write a first draft full of unexpected discoveries is one of those sacrifices. But it’s not as black as it sounds. You’re not losing the opportunity for unexpected discoveries. Not at all. What you’re doing is moving those discoveries from the first draft to the outline. All the fun’s still there; it just occupies a different place in your timeline. Thriller author and Edgar nominee Raymond Benson explains, “I figure out all the hard plot details in the outline, so you might say I really write the book when I do the outline.”
In many ways, an extensive outline is a first draft. The only difference is the outliner’s process takes maybe a quarter of the time. The outline, like the first draft, is the “mistake” draft, the dry-erase board where we unveil our ideas and see how they line up on the page. Outliners and pantsers alike go through this process.
Instead of stealing creative joy, the outline expands an author’s opportunities for exploring his story. He gets to experience the original act of creation in the outlining process, during which he comes up with the raw story idea, sorts out implausibilities, and fills in plot holes. In essence, he’s constructing the skeleton of his story. When he later begins the first draft, he isn’t retreading old ground. Instead, he’s digging deeper into his understanding of his story by fleshing out the skeleton: adding the new material that will become the inner organs, skin, hair, muscles, and cartilage. Using the outline to figure out the technicalities of your plot gives you the freedom to explore your characters, settings, and themes in intimate detail in your first draft. Prolific fantasy author Jeff VanderMeer explains:
Yes, I knew what I was going to write about in a chapter ahead of time, so there was less process of discovery in terms of what was going to happen. However, I found I could give more thought to how and why things happened because I already had this outline in place—on some level, I focused more on each scene, and how the scenes fit together…. I find that there’s relief and a great calming effect in knowing that I can extrapolate ahead of time on the macro level, fill in a certain level of detail, and still find the writing and the actual scene-writing vibrant and exciting.
Studies have proven most people are noticeably stronger in one hemisphere of the brain or the other, mostly due to their tendency to exercise one side more often. The left brain is analytical and logical, allowing us to plot our stories in a linear timeline and make rational decisions about our characters and their motives. The right side of our brains is where all the juicy creativity and raw inspiration takes place. The left brain thinks in facts; the right brain thinks in images and feelings. Neither side of the brain is better than the other. But, as writers, we can’t discount the value of figuring out which side we live in most—and then stretching ourselves to explore the uncharted territories on the other side.
Utilizing an outline allows us to take advantage of both sides of our brains by divvying up the necessary responsibilities of creating a story. When we outline, the creative process can be divided into four categories: conception, outlining, writing, revising.
- Conception is a deeply right-brain activity. We can’t explain where the first spark of an idea comes from. It’s often nothing more than an image or a feeling welling up from our sub-conscious and demanding an explanation. My own period of conception can last several years. I allow the story to kick around in the back of my head, adding to it through subsequent flashes of inspiration, until I feel it’s grown into an idea large enough to explore with my left brain.
- Outlining is where the left brain gets its first crack at the story. This is the phase in which I lay out all my touchy-feely ideas and analyze them with my left brain to make sure they all fit together. I identify the missing pieces and fill in the holes. Although outlines demand right-brain creativity as well, they are primarily a logical left-brain activity. I have to ask myself, Does this character’s motivation make sense? Does this event in the plot logically lead to this outcome? Does the story arc hold together? Getting the majority of the left-brain gruntwork out of the way in the outline allows me to once again turn my creativity loose in the writing stage.
- Writing the story is an intensely right-brain experience. This goes against popular opinion, which believes the outline quashes any hope of creativity by imposing a predetermined plan onto the story. Just the opposite is true. Because I know where the story is going and because I’ve already put my left brain to work ensuring the story makes sense, I can surrender the discovery of the story details back into the capable care of my creative right brain.
- Revising brings the process full circle by once again imposing left-brain rationality onto the creativity of the first draft. Where the right brain has charged ahead in all its sloppy, colorful wonder, the left brain now follows behind, mopping up the excess and straightening ideas so they achieve their maximum power through clarity and cause and effect.
Misconception #4: Outlining Your Novel Takes Too Much Time
One of Polly Pantser’s arguments against outlines is that they take “weeks, or even months” to write—and that’s absolutely true. On average, each of my outlines takes me three months from start to finish. Three months is a long time—but not so long as you’ll spend on the heavy-duty rewrites required to turn a rambling first draft into a tight, cohesive, salable novel.
Consider again my experience with my fantasy Dreamlander. Before writing my outline, I spent eight months writing fifty pages. That page count totals out at just over six pages a month. That’s a page and a half a week and less than a third of a page a day.
That’s pitiful.
It was also torturous. And, if that weren’t bad enough, I eventually had to go back and spend an additional three months rewriting those fifty pages to bring them up to speed with the outline’s improved and streamlined version of the story. I ended up spending nearly a year on a process that would probably have required only a few months had I taken the time to outline in the beginning.
Outlining requires an outlay of patience. We have to be willing to put off the actual writing in order to get our ducks in a row. But this preparation pays for itself in innumerable ways. A mountain climber would never consider tackling Mt. Everest without investing serious preparation time in planning his route, organizing his group, collecting and double-checking his gear, and training his body. Authors who dash off to write a 100,000-word novel are just as likely as hasty climbers to get themselves in trouble in the long run. Preparation takes time and effort, but it’s always worth it in the end.
