Yet Another Use for Outlines

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I promise I'm not trying to drag any writers over to the dark side with me. :)  I was quite anti-outline myself at the start of my writing career. I loved making my books up as I went along. Somehow it seemed a lot more creative and fun to me. Sadly, my non-outlining came to an ignominious end when I ran against a major plot hole while under a tight deadline with Penguin-Random House.

Since then, I've learned to spend a couple of weeks outlining books. I even developed my own template to use with my cozies to help keep myself on track. I've reluctantly become converted to an outliner.

I had to share in a quick post that my outline helped me out yet again. Unfortunately, outlines just prove too darn useful.

I've already mentioned that they're good as cheat-sheets when you're speaking to a book club about a book you wrote years ago.

And I just recently acknowledged that they're good for elaborating in a meaningful way when you're needing to add to your word count.

Commenters on the post chimed in that they were useful as synopses and to help realize the essence of the story and  create back cover copy.

And now here's another use for them–discovering both large and small plot and story issues before writing the story.

I probably should have realized outlines would be good for that reason. After all, planning a book in advance to avoid plot holes was the entire reason I started outlining to begin with.  But for some reason, I've thought of outlines mainly as roadmaps . . . giving me direction as I stumbled through my draft.

Now I realize more of the scope of how they can offer me assistance. With my outlines, I can see big problems with my story: perhaps the sleuth nailed a suspect without enough clues or evidence.

But I can also spot smaller problems with the story: two characters with names similar enough to be confusing. Or the fact that there's not enough set-up before a murder.

So I have to reluctantly concede that my outlining continues to be of service to me.  :)

How about you? Are you an outliner/reluctant outliner? What other writing tips do you have to share?

Another Use for Outlines: Eliminating Large and Smaller Plot Issues:
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Photo credit: Ed Yourdon on VisualHunt

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