Writing into the Dark: How to Write a Novel without an Outline

by Dean Wesley Smith

most of that learning from school will hurt the creative writer.

most outlined novels never get written. I’ll talk about why later in the book.

Great art is rarely, if ever, created from a critical perspective. Art is never done purposely.

Great art comes from the creative side of our brains.

The creative side loves story.

For most writers, the difficulty comes when trying to get past the critical side of our brains and write from the creative side only. Outlining comes from the critical side by the very nature of outlining.

So the critical side of our minds outlines a book, then we wonder why the creative side often doesn’t want to follow the outline. The creative side knows...

The first answer to that question is easy. Writing into the dark imitates the reading process for the writer.

All writers are readers. And as readers, we love it when a writer takes us along for the ride in a good novel.

So when writing into the dark, that same feeling of reading is in the writing process. Our conscious mind is just along for the ride. The creative side is makin...

The key is to make a novel fresh to the reader. If the writer is bored or feeling like the book is “work” to write, you can bet that feeling is coming through the words to the reader.

Here is one more reason for writing into the dark: If you have no idea where the book is going, the reader sure won’t either.

When I have a chapter finished, I jot down who the viewpoint characters are, what they are wearing, what happened in the chapter.

So as I go along, I outline each book as I write it.

I never outline ahead of the writing, but after the writing is done. That keeps the creative side of my b...

And the real reason I do that is to keep track of what I have already done. And what a character is wearing. And so on. It also helps my creative min...

that very process of outlining often kills the very complex structure the writer is hoping to achieve.

the reason I couldn’t remember is that my subconscious, my creative brain, put all that in. My critical, conscious brain had nothing at all to do with it. I had just let my creative brain tell a story. Nothing more.

getting that stupid critical brain out of the way is the key problem.

I realized that people, regular people, wrote all those books. And what all those regular people did was just sit down and tell a story. They were entertainers. That simple.

So I looked at how I felt writing short stories. At that point I just wrote a story and stopped when the story was over. Nothing more fancy. I figured I could do that with a novel as well.

But eventually, if you are going to be around for a long time and writing, you need to feed the reader part of your brain and just write for fun.

The only purpose of the critical voice in creative writing is to stop you.

That’s the secret, and when you finally take that secret in, you will be on the way to really getting to your real writing ability.

The fearless writers contain their critical voices and write what they love, what moves them.

Writing without critical voice turned on, just writing to tell myself a story, is like reading. The process is wonderful and I enjoy the journey.

Truth: When you are writing new words, you are never wasting your time.

Practice.

Truth: The biggest waste of time in writing is rewriting. Period.

If you are afraid to try a new genre, afraid to try a new method of writing, afraid to try to get your work out to markets or show it to your friends, critical voice is in control and winning. Period.

Rule #1: You must write.

Rule #2: You must finish what you write.

Rule #3: You must refrain from rewriting unless to editorial demand.

Rule #4: You must put your work on the market.

Rule #5: You must keep your work on the market until it sells.

Critical voice does wonders when you get rejections from an editor, and can stop you from putting the work back out. And if publishing indie, some imaginary expected sales figure not hit, or some bad review, will cause beginning writers to pull down work.

And because of critical voice, those five simple rules are almost impossible to follow.

From a reader’s perspective, when I get to a spot in a book I know exactly how the book will end, I put the book down.

The writer had placed the plot of the book firmly on a set of rails and the ending was as clear as knowing that the next stop on a train ride was the city ahead. No uncertainty in the plot at all, and as a reader, I could see the ending of the book ahead.

When a reader realizes that they know how the book will end, they stop. It might not be a conscious thought. It might be just putting the book down to go get a cup of tea and never returning to the book.

If you do not have one idea of where the book is going that you are writing, there is no chance in hell your reader will ever know.

Books on rails are books that were outlined. The writer knew exactly where the book was going, what the end was, so the writer’s subconscious put in all the clues to tell the reader where the book was going, and everything in the book, every detail points to the ending like signs with arrows.

Books on rails are seldom origi...

Books outlined by the critical voice just can’t be. The critical voice isn...

But if you want your book to be original and fresh and have no reader really know where it is going, you need to embrace that uncertainty feeling.

Write the next sentence. And then write the next sentence. I am not kidding. It really is that simple.

Just write the next sentence that follows logically through the character from the previous sentence. And repeat until you find the end of the story. With every step of that path, with every sentence, uncertainty will be dogging you. That’s a good thing. But at the same time, don’t let the uncertainty be a fear-excuse to stop you writing.

What happens when you can’t even think of the next word to write, let alone the next sentence?

Sleep on it. But before you call it a night, start off by taking a short break. Sometimes just five minutes will get you back to the next sentence.

Just focus on trying to figure out what the character would do next.