Zarah Detand's Blog: Zarah's Soap Box - Posts Tagged "questions-and-answers"
Writing Questions: Outline
“Hey! Could you give some outline tips? Like what a story's outline should look like?”
(Shayla)
Writing questions! I love chatting about the writing process, and while I don’t claim to be an authority in any way, I did learn some things the hard way. I hope. (And I have much more to learn. Always. Yay!)
Either way: outlines.
There’s not a solution that fits everyone, and it will partially depend on the length of your story. The shorter your story, the easier your outline, basically. But let’s go with a novel-length work. Here, it will depend on whether you’re an architect or a gardener -- as George R R Martin puts it:
“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.” (See here.)
Both approaches are equally valid, as is any mixture of the two. It’s up to you to figure out what feels better and makes you happier when writing!
Here’s my personal experience: when I write longer stories, I’m more of an architect than a gardener. For a short thing, I can easily start somewhere and see how it unfolds; for novel-length, I need a detailed map. I need to know where I’m going, all the stops and detours (just small detours, mind, because I don’t want to venture too far off-route), which means that I plan it kind of like one would plan a month-long road trip:
*I think about the people who are on that trip and their specific needs (as in, I detail my characters’ backgrounds, where they come from and where they want to go, how the journey might change them, their little quirks that might impact the trip);
*I do my research (if I venture into a foreign country, I better know its rules -- which also applies to setting a story in a world you’re not familiar with, e.g. in a police station);
*I look at the places and events that I want to see (in the story context: the kind of conversations that need to happen, the interaction between my characters which I need to move them from one status to the next);
*I decide on which route to take;
*I decide on a pace, how fast or slow I want to go, where I want to linger and where I want to speed through because it’s not worth an overnight stay;
*And I try to do all that with the final destination in mind. Because yes, it’s the journey that matters, but I want to arrive in a beautiful place where I can sit down for a little while, look around and think, ‘Well, that was a trip worth taking.’
So that’s the planning I do in advance.
Then I start writing, and my plans for the trip evolve as I write -- because one of the places along the route didn’t fulfill my expectations, or I notice a new town that I desperately want to see, or another seems not worth visiting after all; because a conversation didn’t turn out the way I planned once my characters took over. If this happens (and it does), I take a deep breath and adjust my plans. Most of the time, it doesn’t mean I have to replan my entire trip; it just means I need to tweak it a little. Sometimes I need to go back, revisit a place I already passed and adjust my perspective of it so it fits my new plan.
If you’re more of a gardener, I think you can skip most of the planning I laid out -- except for three things: your characters and their background; research about your setting / universe; your final destination. So in that sense, it’s easier. But there’s a good chance that you’ll have to do a lot more revising once you arrive, possibly go back in your little road diary and change entire sections completely.
It’s really up to you. There’s no right and wrong way to do it -- just a way that suits you best.
(Happy to hear other people's thoughts on this, either here or one Facebook.)
Writing questions! I love chatting about the writing process, and while I don’t claim to be an authority in any way, I did learn some things the hard way. I hope. (And I have much more to learn. Always. Yay!)
Either way: outlines.
There’s not a solution that fits everyone, and it will partially depend on the length of your story. The shorter your story, the easier your outline, basically. But let’s go with a novel-length work. Here, it will depend on whether you’re an architect or a gardener -- as George R R Martin puts it:
“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.” (See here.)
Both approaches are equally valid, as is any mixture of the two. It’s up to you to figure out what feels better and makes you happier when writing!
Here’s my personal experience: when I write longer stories, I’m more of an architect than a gardener. For a short thing, I can easily start somewhere and see how it unfolds; for novel-length, I need a detailed map. I need to know where I’m going, all the stops and detours (just small detours, mind, because I don’t want to venture too far off-route), which means that I plan it kind of like one would plan a month-long road trip:
*I think about the people who are on that trip and their specific needs (as in, I detail my characters’ backgrounds, where they come from and where they want to go, how the journey might change them, their little quirks that might impact the trip);
*I do my research (if I venture into a foreign country, I better know its rules -- which also applies to setting a story in a world you’re not familiar with, e.g. in a police station);
*I look at the places and events that I want to see (in the story context: the kind of conversations that need to happen, the interaction between my characters which I need to move them from one status to the next);
*I decide on which route to take;
*I decide on a pace, how fast or slow I want to go, where I want to linger and where I want to speed through because it’s not worth an overnight stay;
*And I try to do all that with the final destination in mind. Because yes, it’s the journey that matters, but I want to arrive in a beautiful place where I can sit down for a little while, look around and think, ‘Well, that was a trip worth taking.’
So that’s the planning I do in advance.
Then I start writing, and my plans for the trip evolve as I write -- because one of the places along the route didn’t fulfill my expectations, or I notice a new town that I desperately want to see, or another seems not worth visiting after all; because a conversation didn’t turn out the way I planned once my characters took over. If this happens (and it does), I take a deep breath and adjust my plans. Most of the time, it doesn’t mean I have to replan my entire trip; it just means I need to tweak it a little. Sometimes I need to go back, revisit a place I already passed and adjust my perspective of it so it fits my new plan.
If you’re more of a gardener, I think you can skip most of the planning I laid out -- except for three things: your characters and their background; research about your setting / universe; your final destination. So in that sense, it’s easier. But there’s a good chance that you’ll have to do a lot more revising once you arrive, possibly go back in your little road diary and change entire sections completely.
It’s really up to you. There’s no right and wrong way to do it -- just a way that suits you best.
(Happy to hear other people's thoughts on this, either here or one Facebook.)
