Talking to Myself Blindly in the Dark

 
Anyone who's read any of my blog posts is almost certainly aware that I outline my novels first, then write them.
 
It sounds so simple. So clean. So organized.
 
I outline, then I write.
 
I assure you, though, the process is anything but simple, clean and organized. OK. It's a little organized. And it's not that complicated, I guess. And I do take my shower before I sit down to write. But all of that is beside the point.
 
First:
 
I.        This
II.        Is Not
       A.        How I
               1.        Outline
 
Hell, no.
 
The outline usually begins with me typing something like this in The Journal:
 
"So, yeah, I think I'll write me a new YA book."
 
Seriously. That's the first thing I wrote when I started taking notes for GoSH1 in December 2010. (Yes, I'm chatty with myself in my journal.) And that was all I wrote for 5 days. All I knew then was that I wanted to write a novel for my daughter (who had just turned 9).
 
After that, over the next couple months while I finished the first draft of Gunwitch and did some more indie publishing, I came back to my GoSH1 notes and added ideas and images. I do this in a way that is a lot like talking to myself.
 
For example:
 
"What if the first book really is 3 separate storylines? The girls only see each other in passing, interact only a little bit, until the end, when they see they're all working toward the same end. They don't reveal what they can do until the end. They are trying to keep their abilities secret. They will each fail unless they join together."
 
It's kind of interesting (to me) to go back and see where I started and compare it to the final story. Because that example has almost nothing to do with the final book. There are ideas in my notes that I have forgotten, but that helped me on the way. Some of the ideas might be worth pursuing in a future GoSH book, or maybe in a very different book or series. The same thing happened in the storystorming process for Gunwitch2. My earliest notes have very little in common with the outline I'm using now.
 
In the early part of the process, in a form of brainstorming, I write everything that occurs to me. I'm talking to myself, and at the same time jotting down notes about the glimpses of setting and character that I see. I'm experimenting with story structures and poking around at backstory. Everything is fluid, and I seldom delete anything I've written. If I decide something doesn't work, I just leave it as it lays and move on.
 
This goes on for DAYS.
 
I usually have thousands of words of notes before I take my first stab at a high-level outline (of sorts). By that time, I've made decisions about characters and setting and I've started to get a feel for both. Seeing even an abbreviated outline for the story exposes flaws and holes. So I go through draft after draft of outlines, copy-and-pasting so I don't lose anything, then editing from there.
 
And that goes on for DAYS, as well. Sometimes weeks. You can see an example of this in my notes for the short story, "Secondhand Coffin".
 
Ultimately, I have an outline that I figure is a good enough guide to start writing from.
 
I'm wrong, of course. I'm always wrong. The outline will change as I write, but usually not in large, storybreaking ways. Hell, the outline for my current project is now on Draft #6–and I started writing with Draft #3. Over the weekend, as I started a new chapter, I realized I didn't need that chapter at all. It had become mostly redundant. And what parts of it were still needed could be threaded into the chapter I had just finished.
 
I'm OK with being wrong about my outline, though, because even in its imperfect state it has served its purpose. Which is to help me find something visible and tangible within the empty, amorphous darkness that surrounded me when I started.
 
-David
 
PS I was inspired to write this post after reading Camille LaGuire's latest post. It's sort of my long comment to her post.
 
Related Posts:
I Can Haz Story?Planning (Almost) FinishedA Story Emerges