Writing an Outline
I love outlining and think that all writers should utilize it. But for some reason, writers that don’t outline don’t do so because they want to be surprised. They think that outline is very rigid and unrelenting. They are wrong.
When I outline, I’m constantly surprised. As I’m currently working on the outline for my next work, FADING, there are only maybe a handful of things I actually know. I know how I want it to begin, and I know how I want it to end. But that entire middle section was a mystery to me. How could I get to one end to another and have it be an enjoyable read? As I work my way through the middle, I’m constantly adding things. Things that add tension and conflict and take the story in a new direction. Minor characters that I needed to fill a role suddenly take on a life of their own and become more impactful.
At this point in my outline, I may have come to realize that FADING may be a full length novel instead of a novella like I had originally planned. It depends on which road I’m going to take. I know that I have a tendency to rush things plot wise. I know if I decompress I could drag my stories out and make my books longer. It may add tension, it may not. Decompressioning FADING with what I plan to do will be more of a world building thing that I think people will like.
When I watch TV, I feel as if shows drag things out because they have to meet a minimum amount of episodes. It always screws up the pacing. I’m reading The Amazing Spider-Man from the beginning and it’s great to read one issue with a complete arc. Those old stories hold up, and I’m into it. There’s gotta be a middle ground, but these days, it’s all about decompression. I just roll my eyes because a lot of stories could be good or great if they tightened things up. Hopefully, I won’t make the same mistake others have made.
So I’m most likely going to decompress FADING longer than I originally thought, and it’s going to go in a direction I didn’t quite plan. I’m not sure how it’ll all plan out but I do know where I want it to go. So even though I have an outline, I’m still getting that joy of discovery.
Marc Johnson
