Outlining

I've come at the whole NaNo thing in a very new way this year.

Up until now, I've been a firm believer in the seat-of-your-pants method of novel-writing. Sure, outlines are great for some people, but... aren't they boring? I couldn't imagine knowing everything that was going to happen before I even wrote it-- seemed like it would kill my novel.

So I eschewed them. In the past, I've done most of my writing in this way:

1. Start typing.

2. Keep typing until the plot arrives at something that could be an ending.

3. Stop.

4. Let season, and edit when time permits.

5. Finished!

Great. Really. Except that, somehow, Part 1 was about as far as I usually got. Every notebook and computer I've ever owned is literally littered with failures-- fascinating scraps of novels gone wrong.

But then last year-- miracle of miracles-- I actually finished an 80+-thousand word first draft of a novel called Snowberry, during and immediately after National Novel Writing Month. I didn't really start with a plan. I took the first sentence that popped into my head when I sat down to write ("Winter begins on Halloween") and spun it into a first scene. That scene featured two main characters, and I kept typing about them until I hit what seemed to be the end of their first adventure. That done, I put the story aside and waited for it to "cool." A little while later, I went back to edit it.

Failed.

Tried again...

...and failed again.

At first I thought that the problem was with me. Maybe I wasn't putting enough effort into rehabilitating the story. I thought that if I just buckled down and did the work, I would come up with a product I could really respect. I just had to do it.

It took about three tries for me to realize that the story itself was deeply flawed. It had no driving purpose and no internal structure. The plot was weird and meandering: the heroine went places, met people, went other places, did things... Finally, she vaguely saved the world, but I couldn't have explained how to save my life. Trying to "edit" a story like this was like trying to untie a Gordian knot.

When October came around, I decided to put Snowberry on the shelf and try something else for a while. This time I was going to plan. I had a story idea: the expansion of an odd little short story from a year ago. I had a method. I'd always scorned outlines, thinking that they killed spontaneity, but this year I decided to give prewriting a try.


I'd been using a lot of Who/What/When/Where/Why questions in my class discussions, and I thought I could use them in my novel planning as well. I'd already begun to make "multisensory" description notes in earlier projects. I really liked that strategy, and decided to reincorporate it here. Combining those two strategies, I came up with the following prewriting method, which so far has been serving me just fine.

(description in large part cross-posted from the NaNo forums)

1. Condense what you know of the plot into three very general sentences. My final version read: "A young woman is sent as part of a new, experimental diplomatic mission to the Goblin Kingdom. She begins to be seduced by their decadent, selfish ways. When she has almost reached the point of no return, she is summoned back to help defeat the goblins." This plot description will probably change as you write more of your story.

2. Expand each sentence to answer the questions Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Write down as many details as you know, and make note of anything that pops into your head as you write. Don't worry about consciously making things up-- everything should come to you naturally. These answers will probably expand into paragraphs, and maybe even into whole pages.

3. Make a list of all the characters you've mentioned so far. (A dozen or so popped into my head while I was "answering questions.") Descriptive titles are fine if you don't have names for them yet.

4. Make a numbered list of "events"-- things that you already know will happen in your story. Don't try to fill in the gaps between them-- everything will come to you eventually. Most of my notes ended up being paragraph-long scene descriptions, but a single sentence for each is also fine.

5. Return to your list of characters. Make a character profile for EVERYONE on the list. The way I do it is with "multisensory" descriptions-- tastes, smells, textures and sounds that you associate with your characters, and then finally appearance. This has been a GREAT way of eliciting details I wouldn't otherwise have thought of. As before, make note of everything that comes to mind while you're writing-- even if it doesn't seem related!

6. Make a full list of your planned scenes in their proper order. If you've written long descriptions, the first line or so should be fine.

7. Start writing. Before each new scene, stop and write up a description of the setting-- you can do them all before you start writing, but I got tired of waiting to start the story!

8. Continue until finished. Readjust characters and scene list as necessary. Celebrate victory.

I wrote all my notes in a series of colorful notebooks, but you can write yours anywhere, of course. Mine are full of long tangents and stream-of-consciousness musings, and everything's out of order and difficult to track (one of these days I'm going to get some Post-It tabs and mark all of the important places). I ended up starting NaNo a few days late because of all the prep I was doing, but I quickly made up the difference. (I'm a little behind now, for unrelated reasons, but have high hopes of catching up soon.) I've got a full set of characters, a more-or-less complete scene-by-scene outline, and more time to write than I've ever given myself before. Knock on wood, but signs are good.