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

by Dean Wesley Smith

The key to this is that as you stand up from the computer, tell yourself you’ll have it figured out in the morning, or when you wake up.

Sometimes a five- or ten-minute nap will be enough for me to fire onward after being stuck.

It is at that stuck point that you need to really embrace and enjoy the uncertainty. Getting stuck is part of writing into the dark. It is part of the process, a natural part of the process of a creative voice building a story.

Embrace the uncertainty of being stuck, trust your creative voice, give it a few moments’ rest, and then come back and write the next sentence.

But one great side of writing into the dark: Your readers will never know the ending of one of your books.

FIRST…YOU NEED A LOVE OF STORY

You must get back to reading for enjoyment, for the sheer love of a good story told well.

When you can read a book and not see a word of type, then you are ready.

And if you automatically copyedit everything you read, go get help.

SECOND…EARLY PRECONCEPTIONS CLEARED

Focus on only having fun telling a story.

THIRD…YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND YOU WILL WRITE EXTRA

When writing into the dark, the story will often come in parts, and sometimes the parts aren’t in a real order.

A story is as long as a story needs to be. Period.

FOURTH…YOU ARE NOT GOING TO REWRITE THE BOOK

Do not give yourself permission to fix anything later. Do not give yourself permission to write sloppy.

When you are done writing, you release the manuscript to your first reader and proofreader and move on to the next story you want to tell.

for most, this will be the hardest part of writing into the dark.

There is no point at all writing into the dark if you are going to give your critical voice permission to ruin what you did. And that permission will kill all the enthusiasm of the creative side as well. And the entire process will fail. All because you bought into a myth and believe your creative brain just isn’t good enough. Sad, really sad.

Write Scenes That sign was meant to keep me from trying to think about an entire book, or too far ahead in a book. The sign under the first sign is: Trust The Process Can’t believe how many times I repeat that to myself when feeling uncertain. Trust the process. Just trust the damn process.

You must have a character in a setting.

So to get started, stick a character in a setting. Cool character or not. Cool setting or not. Just a character in a setting. Period.

You want your readers deep in your story, with no chance they will leave. That is called depth.

Take a reader quickly down into depth.

Depth is caused by having a character be firmly in a setting with opinions and all five senses and emotions about the setting.

None of this can be from a writer’s perspective. It all must be inside a character’s head.

So I started typing. I had the character enjoying the fantastic beauty of the Oregon Coast and going into a small café in a small Oregon Coast town. Café had great smells, of course. Great tastes, the ocean air, the sounds of the waves, and the warmth of the late summer day. I had all five senses and I layered them in really thick, giving my character’s opinions of the setting with hints of what she was doing there. Character. Setting.

Did I know where the book was heading? Nope, other than I figured at some point they would make it back to Idaho. Did I know the characters? Nope, just learning about them as I typed. Just as a reader would learn about them as the reader reads the book.

Take any character and put the character in a setting. Any character. Any setting. Then climb into the character’s head and park your butt there and don’t allow yourself to type one word that doesn’t come from the character’s opinion or sensory feelings or emotions. Stay parked inside that character’s head. And let the character (and the reader) experience the story.

if you start focusing on the uncertainty too much, you allow the critical voice to come in and stop you cold.

PLOT TIME JUMPS First off, when dealing with time jumps in a plot you don’t know, remember that it is fine to write extra words. You should have no fear of writing extra words. Writing extra words is often part of the process.

Have a belief in the process, and jumping ahead in a story will never be a problem.

BOGGING DOWN Every writer I know bogs down in a story at one point or another. For me, and for most writers, it means we have done one of two things. First, we have written past an ending of a chapter or scene, and the creative voice is just going to make us stop typing. Second, we are on a wrong path with the plot.

The subconscious, when it realizes you have taken a bad path, will just bog you down and stop you from typing. What I do when this happens is simple. I look back at what I have written in the last three or four pages. Writing past an ending on a scene or chapter is usually very, very clear. The ending almost always just pops off the page. So I cut off the extra typing, do the scene or chapter break, and head forward with the characters.

When I am on a wrong path, I go back searching for the b...

When I find the one spot where I could have gone another direction, I cut off the extra words and go off in the new direction. I’ll know I’m going in the right direction because suddenly...

END OF BOOK When you bog down near the end of a book or a story, it often means you have written past your ending. I do that all the time on short stories. I’ll be typing along with the sense that the ending should be coming up soon and then I’ll just bog down. Usually I’ll sit there trying to figure out the end before I have the realization to look back a little bit at what I have already typed. Often, more times than not, the great ending is back a hundred words or so. I wrote it and then just kept typing.

THE ONE-THIRD POINT OF A NOVEL On novels, almost every writer I know hits a stopping point about one third of the way into writing the book. It does not matter if you are writing into the dark or outlining—this one-third point is a deadly spot for all novelists.

“This book is so bad, so much work to finish, what’s the point?” That’s the end of the book. It goes into the unfinished file with a promise to yourself you’ll come back to it, but of course you never do. Critical voice has killed the book dead.

So how do you get through it? There is only one way. Suck it up and write the next sentence. And then the next.

You must learn how to be unstuck in time in your book.

We believe, and are taught by people who don’t know any better, that the writing process is a lineal process from word one to the last word. This false thinking is what leads to the driving need for outlining.

The truth is that the creative process is far, far, far from lineal. In fact, when looked at in a hard light, the creative process is a jumbled mess.

You must fix everything as you go because there will be no second chance, no second draft, no rewrite.

You fix it right at the moment you think of it. You go up out of the lineal line of your book, float over that lineal line like a creative ghost. And then go back in the lineal timeline of your book and fix the problem. Then fix the problem all the way through to where you left off and go from there again.

All problems your creative voice thinks of MUST BE FIXED AT ONCE. You are writing in creative voice. Stay in creative voice and fix the issues the creative voice comes up with instantly.

If her creative voice wants her to write a scene, she writes it. And often she’ll have parts of a book, all written out of order, and when her creative voice tells her, she prints them all out and puts it all together on the floor.

Some writers I know have a scene appear to them, they write it, then loop back and write toward the scene.

There is no rule that says you must write your book like a reader is going to read it. None. Get unstuck in time.

I dig for a little bit, go back, take out the dirt, shape the tunnel a little, dig a little farther, go back, take out the dirt, shape some more, dig some more, and so on.