Those who outline prefer to have all their ducks in a row before they get started. Those who don’t outline prefer a more flying-by-the-seat-of-one’s-pants approach.
I have belonged to both of these camps. Ironically enough it was Nanowrimo that had me defecting to the other side.
I started squarely and defiantly in the “seat-of-one’s-pants” camp for my first few novels. I preferred to let the story take me where it was going to take me. There’s a lot of freedom in that, because let’s face it, our stories are living entities. Every strike of your keys or swoop of your pen brings these little darlings to life, and they often have minds of their own.
When I try to explain this to a non-writer, I typically get a skeptical side-eye glare, assessing to see if I’m insane. (Hint: I’m a writer… it’s implied.)
“How can your characters surprise you, Ginger? They’re coming from you.”
Well, yes. And no.
Back when I wrote DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS originally, it was as a screenplay, and I had very definite ideas of what I wanted to do with the story. It started as the tale of a lesbian who was a PK (or preacher’s kid,) and, after a disastrous sequence of events, fell in love with the one person in the whole town that she shouldn’t.
That’s the story idea that planted my butt in the chair anyway.
As I bounced this idea off of my husband, Steven, like I am prone to do, he explained that there should be another character in her life, a friend even. He contended that I couldn’t just have her influenced by her horrible, fanatical family.
I agreed, so I took my main character Grace to a liquor store, where she met a guy named Mike.
I should probably insert here that Grace has a lot of problems, one of the biggest of which is that she is a full-fledged addict who self-medicates with drugs and alcohol even though she’s barely nineteen years old.
So of course she’d go to a liquor store, right? That’s a completely organic thing for her to do. *Insert smug writer-type sense of self-importance here.*
All I typed were the words, “Hey, Gracie,” and suddenly Mike didn’t feel so friendly. Since I didn't "meet" this character until he inserted himself in the story, I really didn't know him from Adam. Because he was so new to me and to the story itself, he could do whatever the hell he wanted to do. He was a blank slate. I wanted to create one thing, and all of a sudden my fingers were tapping me in a whole other direction.
I spoke briefly about my first writing assignment. This truly was where I got my first taste of the story guiding the writer. I was given a picture of a house and told to write a story to go along with. Since this was Halloween, I knew that the teacher probably wanted a haunted house story, though the picture in and of itself wasn’t especially scary. It was just a picture of an old house, one that looked like it could have been built in the 1800s or early 1900s.
I had no idea what I was going to write about when I sat in front of that beautiful blank piece of paper to create a story for the first time.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I knew that I wanted the house to be sad. To me, that’s where most hauntings start. I think it would be terribly sad to be bound to an earthbound plane, ignored and invisible to the world around you. How lonely that must be. It's no wonder a ghost would want to reach out, make noise, be seen... be acknowledged.
It just wants what we all want.
So the origin to my story was a sad one. A man loves his beautiful bride so much that he builds her a grand house full of many rooms that they fill with as many children. Instead, they both die childless years and years later, because life has its own plans.
(And yes, I realize that UP got the jump on me on this one. But to be fair, it had been 28 years and I hadn’t done anything with this story, so … it was kinda fair game.)
Making this sad origin scary just didn’t seem right to me after that, but I couldn’t just leave the story like this. It was just too darned sad.
Instead of ending it as a haunted house, I ended the story as a story of hope, by turning the sad, old home into an orphanage into a happy home filled with love for all those kids who had no parents.
(I like to do stuff like that. Recently a reader responded to a promo blog for MASTERS FOR HIRE by saying, "Ginger Voight sure likes to take the norm and toss it on its head." #truestory.)
Of course by the time I was through, I knew I no longer had a Halloween story. There wasn’t anything even remotely scary about it. It was actually kind of uplifting instead. I colored in the picture of the house using happy, bright colors with nary a cobweb in sight.
(Once again, you’re welcome, UP.)
When I turned in the assignment, I was only slightly concerned that I had gone so completely off script with my first story. I am a people pleaser deep down, and I knew I didn’t do what was expected of me. For a chronic Good Girl, whose neurosis to be all things to all people began years before, the idea of invoking my teacher’s wrath, or worse – enduring her disappointment – began to gnaw at me as each day passed and I waited for my grade.
I had confidence that I was a good student, particularly in Language Arts, but the instant I didn’t get my paper back when everyone else did, I fended off an anxiety attack of near epic proportions. Could I have *gulp* failed for the first time ever?
I was a good student. Such a thing was unthinkable.
When I finally found the nerve to walk up to the front of the class and ask Mrs. Adams where my paper was, she gestured behind her to the Wall of Honor, where all the truly important things go, where my paper now hung with a giant red “A.”
I. Was. Flabbergasted.
Not only had my teacher liked the fact I went off script, she praised me for it. It wasn’t just a good paper. It was a great one.
After that, I was passionate about letting my stories guide me, confident that they would know oh so much better than I did about what was good, and what was exceptional.
Fast-forward to 2002, when I wrote the screenplay for DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS over the course of a week, churning out 40 pages in one day alone, and I could tell right away that Mike was seriously about to go off script. He felt creepy. And sinister. I could hear this character’s voice in my ear and it instantly gave me a full-bodied shudder.
This wasn’t her friend at all. This was the exact opposite of her friend. I knew within two teeny tiny words. I think my exact reaction to this was, “Ohhhh. So you’re THAT guy.”
I had a plan for Mike, but as it turned out, he had a plan for me, too–one that would change my whole storyline. This one little change, where my Muse nudged me in one direction and not the other, reshaped the plot entirely.
Later, when Grace informed me that she wasn’t really a lesbian at all, who was I to argue? I was essentially sitting in the first row of my mind’s theater, chowing on popcorn, watching my actors do improv, curious to see where, exactly, they were about to take me.
Because I didn’t outline, I was allowed to do this. I had the freedom to do this. And people who have a lot of freedom don’t typically want to surrender it, especially with the tedious work of writing out an outline. No stallion wants to be confined in the starting gate. We want that gate to open so we can gallop wherever our little hearts will take us.
Therefore I rejected the process quite emphatically and piously, even when I painted myself into quite a few corners doing it the other way. Let's face it, when you're all over the map trying to write a concise, cohesive story, there's a lot of mess to clean up after you make it through Draft One. And while writing is rewriting, it's not a fun or easy process to discard those words you practically had to pull out of your butt with needle-nose pliers in the first place.
If you’re not a seasoned storyteller, this is your early training ground, learning, usually, what not to do. Repetition gives birth to efficiency, particularly if you're learning to write professionally and on a deadline.
What any screenwriter builds is essentially a three-act play, where certain things must happen to drive the story forward. There are beats and inciting incidents and all kinds of expectations that need to be met or your screenplay will falter. And many a screenwriter has found themselves stuck in Second Act hell because they hadn’t really properly laid their foundation for their story in Act One.
Whereas Act One sets up your story, introduces you to the characters, their goals and their obstacles, Act Two is an obstacle course that demands your character is pulled along by the momentum of the story towards their inevitable “moment of truth” or “point of no return.” This is what will vault them into Act Three, your resolution, which includes any epic showdown to see whether or not your character will achieve his or her goal. This essentially boils down to answering whatever questions you posed in Act One.
Because Act Two is twice the size of Acts One and Three, it can be a little daunting. This is particularly true for new writers, who aren’t all that comfortable with turning the monsters loose to chase their beloved characters through the hellish maze one needs to survive in order to get to Act Three.
For many non-outliners, Act Two slows them down, and that’s exactly how it worked for me. Getting past page 25 in any script felt a bit like entering The Fire Swamp from “The Princess Bride.” It can be every bit as dark and treacherous.
Still, I successfully wrote three books and four screenplays this way, so I held fast to my “seat-of-my-pants” status, even after I turned one of my novels, PICTURE POSTCARDS, into a screenplay as well, and realized it was a lot easier to craft a screenplay when all the little ducks were in a row.
Then along came Nano 2004, when I had the beyond brilliant idea to turn one of my screenplays into a novel.
It sounds kind of like cheating, but it’s really not. Since screenplays and novels are two completely different animals, there’s a lot of work involved in adapting one medium to the other.
In screenplays, one is discouraged from writing anything unnecessary to move the story forward. You are tasked with only one thing: telling whomever might be reading what they would be seeing on screen. This whacks away at all the flowery prose we often indulge for descriptions. Instead, you’re expected to be a lot more technical.
Your scene setting is reduced to a neatly condensed Scene Heading, and they want you to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid.) You’re supposed to let them know if it’s an interior or exterior shot, where it is, specifically, and what type of day. You can add in special stuff, like if it’s a flashback, dream sequence or montage, but typically all scene headings are bland data, not good writing.
Here’s an example:
INT. VOIGHT HOUSEHOLD/MASTER BEDROOM – DAY
The purpose of this scene heading is to tell the filmmakers we’re starting a new scene, and where that happens to take place. That’s it. You are able to describe the scene somewhat in the “action” part of the script, broken up with actual dialogue, but you are discouraged from using much space to do this. You only have 100 pages, remember. And readers want to move as quickly as possible down the page. This discourages the use of “too much black,” which bogs down the read.
Unless your description is pertinent to the scene, it’s wasting space to get overly fixated on it.
It’s also not your job.
Screenplays are collaborative. You hand over a basic skeleton that others are then free to fill in, people like directors and set designers and costumers and makeup artists and even the actors themselves will take the basic guide you’ve given them and flesh it out into something bigger.
Whereas I can set the scene for a book by typing:
It was a cool morning, with a slight nip in the air, forcing Ginger’s feet under the covers as she balances the computer across her lap. Despite the chill in the room, a fan runs just a few feet away. There is always a fan running whenever Ginger turns her bedroom into her office, where she can write in peace. She finds the white noise soothing. Its major purpose, however, is buffering and muting any noises from other parts of the house. These noises, the sounds of her beloved family just precious feet from her closed door, are both reassuring and distracting. They yank her out of her creative zone, like being ripped out of a super suit. One minute, she’s GINGER: WRITER EXTRAORDINAIRE, fighting for truth and justice with the rat-a-tat-tat of her keyboard. The next? She’s an ordinary human. Plain ol Ginger. The wife and mother who worries about groceries and bills and what her family might need from her that day.
As such, she has filled her personal space with those things she loves, those things that further shape her eclectic personality, things in purple and black, with a nod to the 60s with lava lamps and peace signs. Things to make her happy. Things to make her comfortable. Things to motivate her and kick start her muse. An exercise bike sits nearby, calling to her, but she shakes her head. There’s time for that. Later. Much later. She has a deadline to meet.
Such a passage would frustrate a reader of screenplays, who just wants to know exactly what they can see on screen, not a whole lot of flowery description. I can define the character going in and out of their heads in a book.
Since there’s no way for the audience to know what’s going on in a character’s head, you can only describe what people can see.
For a screenplay, the above would look a little like this:
INT: VOIGHT HOUSEHOLD/MASTER BEDROOM – DAY
GINGER VOIGHT (40s, plain) tucks her feet under her comforter as a fan hums nearby. She tugs the colorful bedding up a little closer over rumpled pajamas, using the sheets smattered with peace signs to cover the goose bumps on her bare skin.
She reaches for the half-full bottle of Diet Coke sitting on her nightstand. With a swig she attempts to chase away the bags that gather under her eyes before turning her attention to the keyboard sitting on her lap.
She types something, then uses the delete key in equal measure, with a lot more force.
STEVEN VOIGHT (40s, handsome, but wary,) opens the door slowly. Ginger glares his direction.
GINGER What?
STEVEN I was going to go get breakfast. Need anything?
GINGER I’m fine.
STEVEN You can’t live on Diet Coke alone, hon.
GINGER I said I’m fine!
STEVEN (to himself) Run away... run away...
Once he closes the door behind him, Ginger turns her attention back to her computer. With a snarl, she pounds the delete key five more times.
The cursor blinks on a blank page.
As you can see, I convey the same information in a brand new way, focusing on what can be seen by the audience in the theater. I don’t need to set the stage fully. It’s up to a set designer to do that. I don’t have to worry about minor details. I only need to worry about what defines the character, sets the scene, or moves the story forward.
Therefore converting a screenplay to a novel is basically fleshing out the bits I would have outsourced to other collaborators, even the actors themselves. Everything changes because the perception has changed, which affects everything down to the dialog. I can add stuff. I can direct my characters on the page (a big No No if you're a screenwriter.) I don’t have to worry about concentrating only what people “see.” Granted, “Show Don’t Tell” remains as true as ever no matter what medium you happen to write, though it’s really become the writer version of Randy Jackson’s “It was a little pitchy, dawg,” pat criticism that isn’t particularly constructive.
We’ll probably get to that later, too.
Regardless, you have a lot of room to explore things you didn’t have the space or luxury to explore before. In my novelized version, I included a brand new character, which led to another subplot that still came as a surprise to me, even though I had about the best outline ever thanks to a completed screenplay.
Which brings us back on point. Because I had already done all the prep work to craft the story, there was nothing left to do but write the book. As a result, I finished that first draft of MY IMMORTAL within five weeks, which was a new record for me. I didn’t meander around in Act Two, lost in a confusing labyrinth, without the benefit of any Jim Henson creatures to help me find my way out again.
This was what ultimately converted me to Team Outliner. Not only was it efficient, but it was also liberating. Because I knew what I had to write every day, I could concentrate on all the other stuff, the stuff I didn’t know yet, the stuff that the characters had not yet revealed to me, and let that creative juice flow.
I became an Outliner/Pantser Hybrid.
As such, it hasn’t taken me longer than about four months to write a first draft of a novel since 2004, and that was only because the books in question were darker and/or more emotionally draining. I still have the same benefit of creative discovery I always did, because the thing I learned about outlines is that they are living, breathing entities, just like the characters themselves. They can change and adapt. None of the outlines I’ve written have ever made it exactly to the page, even those that were written as screenplays first. Once the story starts in motion, it will spark to life, creating opportunities to build from all the details you fill in as you write. These are the things you could never predict by crafting an outline, which is why that's not what your outline is for.
An outline simply gives you an overall idea where you’re going. It can be as detailed or cryptic as it needs to be, just to keep the process moving. I prefer to complete an outline all in one sitting, which can be a daunting task in and of itself. I have to run the entire story through my head, putting it together like a puzzle so that I can get from Point A to Point B. For novels, I do this chapter by chapter, with some hints to how the dialog will go, sometimes, if the dialog comes to me, I note it right in the outline.
Here’s an example from FIERCE.
For screenplays, I organize it by act breaks, using page numbers as my guideline. Though the typical wisdom is a three-act structure, I go a step further and break it down into four acts, roughly 25 pages each. Act One: Setup, pages 1-25. Act Two: Conflict leading to midpoint act break, pages 25-50. Act Three: Conflict leading to point of no return/moment of truth, pages 51-75. Act Three: Climax and Resolution, pages 76-100.
Here’s an outline to my most recent screenplay, A LOVELY HAUNTING.
The approaches are different because the means of telling the story are different. But in each scenario, I play the movie (and yes, both mediums I use mental movies) completely out in my head before I ever write one word. This gives me definitive writing goals, broken down in manageable pieces, that make the process of writing a book a lot less daunting.
Like the old saying goes, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
The other benefit of laying out your whole story in front of you is that it allows you to pinpoint wherever there are any plot holes or kinks to fix–or abandon entirely. And like I said, this will change as you write, when you trade what you thought might work to what truly does, and you’ll never really know which is which until you’re pantsing your way through your manuscript,outline or no. An outline gives you a harness to wear, so you don’t fall from your precarious perch on the trapeze, but you still have to perform the stunts.
All an outline really does is ensure that you don’t plummet to a painful death, crushed under the weight of Act Two Maladies you would have seen coming had you peeked ahead. Instead of walking up a darkened staircase where you anticipate where your foot will fall guided by instinct alone, an outline simply gives you a flashlight, so you can see where you're going, even if it's only the next step. This means you can outline as you go as well. There are no hard and fast rules, just whatever works for you as an individual. There is no need for extreme points of view either direction. As long as your method gets you were you need to go, you're good.
So... yes. I get that there are two definitive camps of writers, neither side really enticed to bend towards the other. Every time I bring up outlining to a Pantser, I met with the same vehement resistance I used to use when I was a Pantser myself. I'm not trying to wreck your groove, really. This is just me saying I’ve done both, I’ve seen the value of both.
And I'll tell you this: the more skilled you become completing your projects, the less you need that flashlight. Like I said before, writing a lot means you are learning a lot, and you become a lot more adept in knowing what works and what doesn't before you even put it on the page. Which means that outlines can and do work like training wheels. My last three books were barely outlined at all, I didn't have time to prepare for Devlin Masters. He demanded my immediate, and full, attention from the get-go.
But if you’re a new writer on some crazy-ass deadline, like writing a book from scratch in 30 days, I strongly recommend going into it with an outline of some sort. Spend the entire month of October on it if you have to. Take copious notes. Use index cards for days.
By giving yourself a road map of where to go, I truly believe you will maximize your chances of getting there on time, on schedule and barely bruised at all.
Started First Draft: November 5, 2015 9:35am PST
Paused First Draft: November 5, 2015 10:53am PST
***STEVEN BREAK***
Resumed First Draft: November 5, 2015 11:21am PST
Completed First draft: November 5, 2015 12:11pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 3,495
Completed revisions: November 5, 2015 1:34pm PST
Updated WC: 3,966/17,441
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