Outlining

Or: How planning your story can save your ass

Outlining, something many writers are familiar with; even if they don't implement it themselves. Of course we'd all like to think that we can start with a blank page and end with a masterpiece...and sure, some writers probably can, but they are the types that have their publishing house wrapped around their finger (or even own it) so this is a thing you need to do.

What's an outline? 

It's any type of document that tracks plots and sub-plots, characters, actions, and how the book is divided. It can be sloppily written on a bar napkin, or meticulously crafted on the computer. It doesn't matter how you do it, just that you do it.  By tracking all of these points (and more) you have the skeleton of your story, which is the ultimate anti-block for writers. Don't know where to go next? Check your outline. Don't know how a character would react? Check your outline. Need to identify and fix plot holes? All of that can be found in the outline.  You can save a lot of time, energy, and emotional stability by having this to fall back on.

Your outline doesn't need to be set in stone...stories are fluid and evolve as they see fit. If you start straying from your outline that's okay; if you decide to add or remove elements of it that's okay too! The outline is just to keep your ideas organized and your writing process on track. It's a valuable tool that will make you glad you did it. I don't think anyone finishes a book and says "Wow, I'm glad I didn't outline it."

How to Outline

Now since this such a personal process (each story and author is unique) so I don't claim this to be the absolute authority on outlining, just something that has worked well for me. Feel free to take, adapt, or ignore any part of this. *Just a disclaimer*

Step 1: Think about your story. Before you even put pen to paper or open a document. Have the story play through your mind. Even if it isn't complete just get an idea of the tale you want to tell. Spend as much or as little time on this as you want. Personally I like to think about my story before bed; to imagine it as a movie while I lay there. Sometimes I get lucky and my dreams are based around it! Walks, eating alone, working out, all of these and more are great places to think. This step is important because once you DO sit down to record it, it'll be much easier than trying to develop the story on the fly.

Step 2: Outline. Grab your computer, notebook, bar napkin or arm and start putting the pieces together. But in this step keep it VERY vague. Something like this:

"The Road Trip"

• Introduce friends
• Setting
• The idea
• The prep
• First day driving
• First night hotel
• Second day driving
• Road-side Attraction
• First fight
• Second night car
• Losing [NAME]
• Searching for [NAME]
• Second Fight
• etc....

Think of this as the barest of bones, this is the spine. It doesn't reveal much about the plot, but does keep the order of events clear. They don't have to be separate chapters, just separate things that need to happen to push the story forward. Try to keep specifics out of it if you can. Things like names, places, times etc. I used [NAME] because in that instance, it IS important to know which one of the characters is missing. But mostly if you can leave it as A CHARACTER DOES... it allows you the freedom to pick and choose who would fit best.

Step 3: Fill it out. You can do this as soon as you complete step 2 or later when you've had time to think about it. Neither way is superior. Now that you have the basis, you take each bullet-point and flesh it out. By having vague starts it keeps you from getting bogged down with details. One of my biggest mistakes in outlining is ignoring the step above and just outlined it as I thought it should go. I spent days working on it, only to find out that I wrote a mini-book; that's not what you are trying to get out of the outline. What you want are little stepping stones to keep you above the water (writers' block) as you go along. You go from one step to the next, simply filling the spaces in between with your fabulous writing. Like this:

"The Road Trip"

• Introduce friends
• Jess
• James
• Rick
• Betsy
• Setting
• Small town outside Cleveland Ohio
• Farmland
• Boring
• The idea
• Summer night
• Betsy's Idea
• Jame's car
• Rick is hesitant
• Jess is excited
• The prep
• Gathering items
• Filling the car
• Deciding driving shifts
• First day driving
• Talks of adventure/things to see
• Singing to the radio
• Describe the car
• Etc.

You'll notice that these are still fairly vague, the next step changes that.

Step 4: Fill in the specifics. What song are they singing to? What kind of car is it? What are the traits of each character? This last one is particularly important to fill out with tons of details...even (and sometimes especially) if you don't include every part of what you come up with. I always like to over-develop them, give them histories and quirks...and then never explain it. It is simply for me to understand them as a character. EXAMPLE: Rick is hesitant, is all that is needed in the story; but it helps to know that Rick's favorite uncle died in a car crash when he was six. The incident caused him to bike everywhere, but he wouldn't want to miss out on an adventure with his friends. The accident doesn't need to be mentioned unless it's a plot point, but it gives the author a clearer vision of how Rick will act when in the car. Does he freak out when a car comes close? Does he avoid taking the wheel? Does he linger at rest stops longer than the others? All of these are things you can play with. So this is the place to get specific, to really plan out how your story is going to go. Like this:

• The prep
• Gathering items
• Food
• Blankets
• cds
• Tools for the car
• $600 (between them)
• Filling the car
• Jess brings too much stuff so they have to cram it in
• Rick notices that the back is weighed down
• They have to leave the tools in order to make everything fit
• Deciding driving shifts
• Jess
• James
• Betsy
• Jess
• Rick
• ETC.

Particularly pay attention to that last one...Anytime you are dealing with a series (like what comes first, and then what follows) it is important to plan out. In this scenario if you just do Jess-James-Jess-James than it becomes unrealistic. Both of them need to sleep and they all decided to take turns, it wouldn't make sense for them to ignore that. Coupled with this is if your story is dependent on the time/dates/amount of money/etc.  One time I accidentally made a two hour day, and another time one of my characters actually got MORE money after visiting a diner. These are important things to remember. But most most MOST important, identify character deaths (if you have them) because all literary deaths need to MEAN something. If they die off for no reason, then the reader will feel cheated. And lastly mark any parts of foreshadowing. In the example above I say they have to leave the tools in order to make space...hypothetically this would be what would cause trouble down the line.  It's important to include this if I planned on making that happen.

Step 5: Identify any sub-plots or major themes. It doesn't matter how you choose to do this; with bolding, with hashtags, or simply writing SUB-PLOT somewhere in it. All it is meant to do is to remind you that while you have the main story going on, not to forget the little parts. If there's romance, identify scenes that support it. If there's conflict, track whose fighting and why. If you don't have any sub-plots, this would be a good time to start adding things...sub-plots make for a more full story. This is also the place to divide the pieces into chapters. You don't necessarily have to write them down, but as you look through you'll see obvious places to put the breaks in.

Step 6: Lastly, review. See if there are any unnecessary scenes or characters that you can remove or make relevant. Check for (and fix) plot holes. Make sure that you haven't missed anything, and more importantly- that you still like the story. It's totally okay if you finish it up and then decide not to write it. You may want to pick it up later or never look at it again; either way you got good practice in. Not every story that goes through our heads need to be a book, but as a writer it is very pleasing to get that tale out of our minds. Reviewing can save you a lot of trouble because it's so much easier to fix it in THIS stage than having to do rewrites.

All of this shouldn't actually take that long, once you get to the specifics (Step 4) it's pretty much done, after that all you're doing is reviewing. Depending on the length and complexity of the story you can have it cranked out in a few hours or a day. More if you decide to think about it and come back. But like I said before, don't get hung up on trying to make your outline perfect...that's what the book is for.

What is the best way to outline?

So I mentioned that anything can really work, but for this method I STRONGLY encourage doing it on your computer. Writing on paper (or your arm!) can get messy and cluttered quickly, with a word processor you can easily delete or fit things in between lines. Plus using the bullet-point feature can keep the separate steps easily identifiable.

My favorite tool for outlines is WorkFlowy. Now I'm going to try to explain this without doing a commercial (they aren't paying me after all!) This works online as well as a program for computers, tablets, and phones; and is updated across all of them, meaning you can pick it up wherever. It even works if you aren't connected to the internet (it just doesn't sync until you do) which is helpful for keeping busy on a subway, in the wilderness, or even that stupid f*ing spot in your room where you get NO signal! Another great feature which seperates it from the others is that it has fully-functioning hashtags, which enable you to mark certain pieces and look at them all together. One example would be to mark a side character's name, and then you can see every time they make an appearance. Another helpful usage would be to use them to define sub-plots, which would give you a clear mini-outline of how that part goes.

It is a bullet pointing program at it's heart. You can use it like any other, but where this differs is that you can step down to infinity. You can select a point and have that be the starting point, hiding everything that isn't included. I often have each story on it's a separate point.  Starting with the Genre, and then have each book I work on separated. Like this:

Writing>Fantasy>Witches of Crestwood>Book 4> Plot> Climax> The Fight> Raven gets prepared> She pulls her wand out as she taunts her opponent

This would be just one string in the series, but rather than having it open all the way from Writing I can shift it to what I want to work on. If I'm working on the plot, I click that and it focuses on solely what's included. Maybe I just want to focus on the fight, or even as specific as Raven gets prepared. I can isolate it from everything else to minimize distractions and improve visibility. Because nothing is more annoying to me than having to do bullet points 7 blocks in and having the program show it like a tiny newspaper article. Gross.

So for reading this far (thank you!) I have a little gift for y'all. You can go to Workflowy.com to sign up for free (250 bullets) OR you can click this link for a referral from yours truly and get 500 bullets! I'll be honest, it also gives ME an extra 250 which is always helpful, but not necessary if you'd prefer not to. Just wanted to be real.

So that's it! 

Outlining can seriously save your ass during the writing process and you'd be doing yourself a disservice to ignore it. If this was helpful, or if you think I missed something important; leave me a comment. And if you enjoyed this, please share it!

-Belle

Oh and since Jenna Moreci is incredibly helpful, here is her video regarding outlines! It's different than this in the fact it's much more hands on, so if you learn better with your hands, totally check this out!