Outlining and Process - or - the Really Boring Part of Writing
One of the most common things I hear when I'm at conventions or doing signings from fellow authors or would-be authors is this: "I have so many ideas, but I just can't finish anything."
Every author has a slightly different process. And to my knowledge, there's always one or two pieces of that process that are just agonizingly distasteful to that author.
Outlining and transition sequences fits that bill for me.
For me, writing is a very organic process. I sit, and I open my head, and characters, scenes, dialogues pour out. It's fun, and often surprising, and many times characters take turns and make decisions that I could not possibly have foreseen. It's this, I think, that creates real magic sometimes, little nuggets of gold within the book's framework mountain.
To that end, I pooh-poohed outlines for years. "What's the point?" I would ask myself, "if events won't follow even the barest outline in my head?" This attitude is why it took me more than ten years of writing to finish my first novel. (Well, that, and lacking the circumstances or willpower to force myself to write even when the magic isn't happening).
See, an organic story is a beautiful thing. It's my favorite thing in the world, and the feeling of a really good chapter is easily equal to the feeling of accomplishment when I finish a large, long art project. However, with an art piece, I start with a storyboard page to determine composition. Then, I pencil in the scene and fix any compositional mistakes I might have made. Then, if it's a comic board for instance, I'll start with microinks, and work my way up to outlining the negative spaces I like and adding the detail. Then, it gets scanned, lettered, and colored. A watercolor piece follows a similar preparation process - composition, pencil, light paints, then details and darks.
If I try to cut corners on that process, things don't feel right in the end. There's plenty of room for artistic expression and letting the paint speak, but if the foundations aren't solid, the end result will not please me.
It took me years to understand that writing follows the same process.
The reason I couldn't finish anything is that I would set down a ton of detail, a beautiful paragraph here, a chapter I really liked, and then try to work backwards to force those pieces into a coherent storyline with the necessary devices (three acts, bounceback, exposition) to make it readable. It's an almost impossible task, reverse engineering a good book from scraps of cloth and texture.
So, unfortunately, I've had to adjust my process to fit reality. I can't just start painting an eye without understanding the musculature around it, without knowing which direction the skull is facing, without seeing where the light is shining. It doesn't work. Similarly, I can't finish a novel to my liking without first crafting a skeleton, an outline. And as much as I may hate it (I do), it helps, it really does. I don't force the story to conform to the outline, but at least I know where I need to eventually end up, and a rough path the characters are going to take to get there.
This was a very long way of saying the outline for Gina Harwood Book Three (currently untitled) is complete. I don't title until I'm finished. And I'm so happy that it is, because now I get to get to the fun stuff - opening my skull and letting the characters flow where they will.
There's only one week until the release of Descending, book two of the Gina Harwood series. I'm having a book tour - the first I've ever done - through http://www.iobooktours.com/ . If you have a blog and would like to be part of the tour, please contact them and get yourself added to the Descending list! It will be available on 2/28 in both Paperback and Kindle editions via Amazon. Have no fear, I will be posting the links everywhere!
It's an exciting month for me, made more exciting by the fact that I have the really boring part of writing out of the way (for now. The next really boring part is editing, but that's a distance away yet). Happy reading, everyone!
Every author has a slightly different process. And to my knowledge, there's always one or two pieces of that process that are just agonizingly distasteful to that author.
Outlining and transition sequences fits that bill for me.
For me, writing is a very organic process. I sit, and I open my head, and characters, scenes, dialogues pour out. It's fun, and often surprising, and many times characters take turns and make decisions that I could not possibly have foreseen. It's this, I think, that creates real magic sometimes, little nuggets of gold within the book's framework mountain.
To that end, I pooh-poohed outlines for years. "What's the point?" I would ask myself, "if events won't follow even the barest outline in my head?" This attitude is why it took me more than ten years of writing to finish my first novel. (Well, that, and lacking the circumstances or willpower to force myself to write even when the magic isn't happening).
See, an organic story is a beautiful thing. It's my favorite thing in the world, and the feeling of a really good chapter is easily equal to the feeling of accomplishment when I finish a large, long art project. However, with an art piece, I start with a storyboard page to determine composition. Then, I pencil in the scene and fix any compositional mistakes I might have made. Then, if it's a comic board for instance, I'll start with microinks, and work my way up to outlining the negative spaces I like and adding the detail. Then, it gets scanned, lettered, and colored. A watercolor piece follows a similar preparation process - composition, pencil, light paints, then details and darks.
If I try to cut corners on that process, things don't feel right in the end. There's plenty of room for artistic expression and letting the paint speak, but if the foundations aren't solid, the end result will not please me.
It took me years to understand that writing follows the same process.
The reason I couldn't finish anything is that I would set down a ton of detail, a beautiful paragraph here, a chapter I really liked, and then try to work backwards to force those pieces into a coherent storyline with the necessary devices (three acts, bounceback, exposition) to make it readable. It's an almost impossible task, reverse engineering a good book from scraps of cloth and texture.
So, unfortunately, I've had to adjust my process to fit reality. I can't just start painting an eye without understanding the musculature around it, without knowing which direction the skull is facing, without seeing where the light is shining. It doesn't work. Similarly, I can't finish a novel to my liking without first crafting a skeleton, an outline. And as much as I may hate it (I do), it helps, it really does. I don't force the story to conform to the outline, but at least I know where I need to eventually end up, and a rough path the characters are going to take to get there.
This was a very long way of saying the outline for Gina Harwood Book Three (currently untitled) is complete. I don't title until I'm finished. And I'm so happy that it is, because now I get to get to the fun stuff - opening my skull and letting the characters flow where they will.
There's only one week until the release of Descending, book two of the Gina Harwood series. I'm having a book tour - the first I've ever done - through http://www.iobooktours.com/ . If you have a blog and would like to be part of the tour, please contact them and get yourself added to the Descending list! It will be available on 2/28 in both Paperback and Kindle editions via Amazon. Have no fear, I will be posting the links everywhere!
It's an exciting month for me, made more exciting by the fact that I have the really boring part of writing out of the way (for now. The next really boring part is editing, but that's a distance away yet). Happy reading, everyone!
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