Outlining

[scarlettina]

So I'm wondering how people feel about outlining. I started this book by pantsing it (in other words, writing by the seat of my pants), trying to just write it as it came, and what ensued were structural issues, idiot plotting, and uneven characterization. I'm outlining now in a very abbreviated way, a way that Mark Teppo calls the Hardy Boys method: Select a number of chapters (he recommends 26, at 3-5K or so words, a modest, achievable length, at least initially), and then to name each chapter as the chapters in a Hardy Boys book were named, following the three-act structure as you go:
Tom goes fishing with Spotty.
Tom discovers a monster in the lake.
Lake monster eats Spotty.
Tom battles the lake monster.
And so on....

There's more to the technique than that; I'm truncating it here for simplicity's sake, but you get my point. (Teppo's a smart guy; this description doesn't do the technique real justice.) I'm finding this act of simple outlining kind of fascinating because I find myself wanting to do more, add sub-bullets and more detail, but needing to stay succinct so I can see the structure as I go and stay focused on the mission immediately at hand. Structure, somehow, has become very important to me. I suspect that once I have the 30,000-foot view of the story and structure, getting into sublevels will make more sense. Some of this, I suspect, has to do with what jaylake calls span of control, how much I can keep in my head and manage at a time. I wonder if I'm overthinking it. (It wouldn't be the first time. Or maybe this is the first time I'm thinking about this particular thing in this particular way and it feels big.)

So...thoughts? Who's a pantser and why? Who's an outliner and why? Thoughts on outlining generally?

Comments

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on where in the cycle I am - all shorts and 1st book - total pantser. 2nd book is largely pantsing - but i got myself lost in the environment and will have to chop off a good chunk rewrite - so a little outlining. Sounds like Hardy Boys sort of - but for me it's "the following things must happen in the following order. Don't forget these bits and you must address these bits before finishing." Mind you, the 2nd book is a sequel of sorts (serial urban mystery - same main characters, different story) - so there are things that have to be remembered, which is I think where the pantsing went wrong in book 2.

I REALLY prefer pantsing. Outlining feels too much like writing the story 2x. I'm still looking for a way to pants without losing the bits I need to keep on my plate. I may go for a "recipe" approach - listing the things I need to hold on to without any real outlining.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

I tend to get ideas in a jumbled rush (sometimes they even come to me in a dream--really!) and start typing up notes right away. Sometimes I plunge right in with an opening scene that comes to me. But in order to get beyond that rudimentary stuff, I have to have more structure.

The only way I've managed to finish the three novels I've written so far was to write extensive notes on world, character, history/backstory (even going back hundreds of years), and then break up the story into a chapter-by-chapter outline. I don't always stick to that, and it's rarely more than a sentence or two, but it gives me at least a road map of where I'm going. It also helps if I get bored with the bit I'm working on and want to go do something else--I know what I'm doing in a later chapter, so I write that instead.

[ex-triciasu.livejournal.com]

I do both. I will pants until I'm lost, then back off and sketch an outline, then go in again, then re-outline when the first outline doesn't work. Rinse, repeat, with lots and lots of confusion along the way :-)

Sometimes I start with an idea rather than an image or scene, in which case I begin at outline stage, which is always nice. But something major will invariably change once I've got writing, so it's back to stepping back, then diving in, then stepping back multiple times.

I have tried sticking with one or the other approach and that never works, so I do it this way because I have no real choice.

I have a friend who is an amazing writer, a great plotter, and she writes entirely by pants. Complete mystery to me :-)

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Most of my problems get solved by more plannng, at one level or another. Some problems get caused by too much planning: an outline that keeps branching out into subplots and sequels and prequels, instead of zooming in to actual usable scenes. But the solution to that, is usually to do more planning about the core scenes: timetable, which events need to be onstage, who all is present, PV character for each, main point or punchline, etc.

Then when I'm actually on the ground, so to speak, it all looks different than it did from the air; usually shorter and often better.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling about planning turning into endless subplots and back-story. Although it's nice to avoid plot inconsistencies that result from too little planning (or ending up with 11000 words when aiming for a 6000 word limit), one has to strike a balance and not over-plan.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I can't outline. If I do it I get bored writing it. It's an individual thing, I know wonderful writers who do it.

[lagilman]

I outline to a detailed but not specific way, running out the proposed action without worrying about how many chapters there are (because word count is approximate until actually in production).

And then, once I start to write, and the story takes on its own life, I let go of the outline except as a periodic "did I forget any plot threads" reminder.

Rather than pantsing or planning, I call this architectural gardening: you put the plants in the right place, and then only have to prune them back once they start to do their own thing.

[skidspoppe.livejournal.com]

I have a friend out here who hasn't written anything in fifteen years or so. We've been talking about writing and in the last two weeks, he's started outlining, something new for him, and it's working like gang busters. He's using a software called Storybook and it's making him excited about writing again. I tend to approach it more like suricattus but I'm not one to look to for advice :)

[skidspoppe.livejournal.com]

Ps: can you point me to where I might read more about the "hardy boys" method (an if you linked to it in the OP, my apologies, on the smartphone and the link doesn't go through)

[torreybird.livejournal.com]

I've got an outline as my belt & suspenders, letting the details be all in my pants. Every once in a while, I can tell that the pants won't be up to the next part without some more detail, setting (ick!), or background that at least *I* understand--so I write notes.

Rigid adherence to any process doctrine kills my creativity. Hard boundaries, sure--even strict forms. But *process* need to be held gently, permissively, indulgently. Ymmv. :-)

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

I've done the extreme outline, and the extreme seat of my pants, and I've found that the end result doesn't turn out too much differently for me XD That is, there is always need for major revisions and plot idiocy happens once I'm in the thick of it.

I've started "plantsing": know my ending (or at least, what I think my ending is; my endings change a lot). Maybe have the last couple of scenes noted toward that ending. Jot general notes about the story. Plot the first few scenes in a sentence or two. Write them. Then plot out the next few. Occasionally review what I have, and steer the story a bit.

Does it get me a "better" rough draft? I'm not convinced it does, but I've come to peace that my rough drafts are my rough drafts, no matter how much I try to prep for them, so I'll do my rough draft in the method I enjoy the most (right now, "plantsing"), and roll with it.

[e-bourne.livejournal.com]

My preference is pantsing (I feel a little dirty writing that). I have outlined one short story and it bored me to tears. I couldn't finish it. I've outlined a novel, and I'm bored with it. Can't freaking touch it. However, I have been known to "tentpole," which is like outlining but not quite. Basically, writing down the main things that MUST happen. She gets on a spaceship. An asteroid crashes into the spaceship. Spaceship lands on planet. She becomes queen of the aliens.

How the heck do I get to those points? I have no freaking clue. Which keeps it interesting.

Also? My first drafts are really long, monstrous, bloated, Jabba-the-hut outlines. The writing is pure shit. There isn't much setting, and sometimes I have no idea who the characters really are. Somewhere in the middle it gets figured out. Hopefully.

What I love about pantsing is the sense that ANYTHING can happen. It is, in some ways, the best part of it. An alien spaceship could capture my heroine. A dog could turn into a cat. It's pure play, like finger painting. I love finger painting.

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

I've tried different things. Pantsing comes more naturally to me, and is more fun, so it's what I did first. I tried outlining a novel once, but it was a disaster -- so lifeless I can't even remember what happens in it. I think that's because I hadn't grokked the WHY of outlines.

But while working on the latest project, I stumbled across Blake Snyder's Save the Cat books -- which are about screenplay writing -- but I think his "beat sheet" method of building a screenplay helped me immensely to understand what an outline is FOR. I thought of it as a very mechanical thing that you do to keep a plot in order. But now I understand it as something you use to make sure that you are hitting the right emotional beats for the story you're really telling.

Mark Teppo's Hardy Boys method sounds like it does a similar thing.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

I've seen the Save the Cat books, and wondered whether they're worth reading, would be worth reading if it weren't for the fact that when one is reading one isn't writing, or not worth it at all. "Hitting the right emotional" beats sounds like a good target for an outline. Once that is done, one can just seat-of-the-pants it to fill in the things in between.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

I am at the point now where pantsing is an exercise in misery. I flounder around and get lost, whether it's a short story or a longer piece. I can sometimes get away with pantsing a short piece but it risks running longer as cool subplots poke their noses into the tale.

That said, my outlines can be mildly rudimentary--a few notes on paper with a major arc briefly sketched (this for a short story) or very detailed--chapter by chapter, with major arcs and subpoints, for a novel. I have to do this for a novel any more, just because I'm doing a lot of different things, and I'm finding it harder to keep a story and its organization in my head. With the Netwalk Sequence, outlining is becoming crucial because it's a multi-book sequence and, while each story is a complete arc in itself, advancing the sequence arc means I need to keep track of details. Complicated...but good learning practice.

[wolflahti.livejournal.com]

You can't really outline until you know what you are writing, and I rarely know what I'm writing until I'm writing it. And I mean I really don't know. Not character, not plot, not even genre or whether it will end up as a short-short or a multi-volume novel.

I may be an extreme case (or maybe not), but I cannot begin to predict what is going to fall off my fingers. But once a tiny seed is planted, the thing will grow with total abandon.

I once sat down and found myself writing "This is folly." Answering the questions of who said that and why, when, and where, and following the trail implicit in a genre that would feature the word "folly" led me to create a rich and varied fantasy world. Twenty-thousand words later, I realized I was writing my first novel.

[davidlevine]

I've done it both ways. For many years I was a serious outliner and figured I would never be a pantser, but I've gotten to the point that I can pants (is that a verb?) a short story under some circumstances, and my novel work has also gotten pantsier (is that an adjective?) over the years. Whether or not I started with an outline, I will often stop at the halfway or 3/4 point and outline or re-outline the end based on what I've learned about the story to that point.

Sometimes my outlines take the form of bullet lists, other times prose paragraphs. Once, for a novel with a complicated interleaving structure, I used a spreadsheet.

One thing I have learned is that after completing a novel draft, the act of writing the synopsis shows me where the novel's structural weaknesses lie. I now try to do this as early in the process as possible.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

My current writing project (started around the time of Noir City, and put on hold as in-laws and SIFF approached) is my first attempt at outlining in decades. I find that I dislike outlining as much as I did in high school – and frequently drop into scene details when I'm supposedly writing an outline – but it looks like I am likely to get a better-structured story as a result.

Since I'm writing in formula genre (neo-noir), hitting the formula is important, so the outline makes more sense. (It would be even more true if I were writing in a more tightly-defined genre, such as romantic comedy.) The project started out with an specific plot detail puzzle: how to arrange a ransom delivery that wouldn't fail if the police simply watched the drop location until the criminals picked up the ransom. But to make that idea into a story, I need to figure out all the other details: villainous criminal characters, a sympathetic criminal character, the hostage character, and what goes wrong with the perfect criminal plot (since, in noir, something always goes wrong).

So, seat-of-the-pants is a lot easier to write, but having started writing a story with an outline, I see the benefits when a structure is imposed by the genre.

Genre formula observation:
Even if one is going to break some of the conventions of a genre, one has to start by following enough of them that it's an interesting twist when one diverges from the formula.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

That's how my projects start too: some detail that's so cool that I want to build a story around it, which may mean building a world around it. We're in good company, as that's how Narnia came about: an image of a faun carrying an umbrella -- but where and why? Like Lewis, I get several scattered cool images and need to figure out the world they're in and a plot to connect them.