4 Things This Pantser Has Learned About Outlining

I've said it more than once before on this blog of mine; I'm a pure-blooded Pantser when it comes to my writing.

Most times I might have a vague beginning, an approximate end and a sort of squishy-malleable bit that constitutes the middle in my head when I sit down to start writing something new. Sometimes it's no more than a "What if this was going on, and then that were to happen? That might be cool..."  But in either case, the process is largely an unmapped journey for me - jump in that car. put the pedal to the floor and see what there is to see, baby!

And while that usually works out just fine for me with short stories and song lyrics, for writing novels... not so much. Not at all, in fact. Truth is, for something as big and many-headed as a novel, you need to have an outline to work to (unless you're Stephen King, but that's only because he is an anomaly in the fabric of storywriting-space and has more than earned his free pass on that one.) Outlines are your road map. Outlines - way more than Google could ever be - are your friend.

But can a Pantser outline? Doesn't that go Against Nature? I used to think so. The very idea of sitting down in front of a blank page and laying down a numbered list of plot points before I ever got to writing a word of the actual story was enough to make my brain blue-screen. But that was before I finally wrote a complete first draft of a novel (Redemption.) And as I ploughed through Draft Two the jury delivered its verdict: if I didn't want this thing to tangle itself into an unholy mess, I needed to outline it before I jumped any deeper in. And I'd better learn how to do that, whether I liked it or not.

It's been a bumpy road, but I've learned a lot of stuff in the process. And since I know I'm not the only Pantser out there, I thought I'd share what I've learned. So here we go...

1 - Even the purest-blooded Pantser can outline.

It's true! There a gazillion ways to outline, and they're all different. Some of them barely feel like outlining at all. The one that works best for me is the Index Card Method, since it feels exactly like pantsing, except... well it's pantsing in advance, if you like. You fill out one index card per story event as it comes to you and then stuff it in an envelope or something for safekeeping. You can do this over as long a period as you like; one or two massive brainstorming sessions for the whole story, or in spare moments of inspiration as they come to you over a period of days, weeks or even months. You can even do it for a future project while you're working on your current one, with minimal disruption to either.

The great thing about this method for a Pantser is that nothing feels 'locked down' - you can shuffle the order of the cards, add more in or take some out without the whole structure collapsing. So if you really do believe you're allergic to outlining, I suggest you give this one a go. It might just be the cure.

2 - You don't have to outline right from the very start.

Sometimes your brain is just so full of story you want to pour it all over the page like a Jackson Pollock painting, or your head will just, like, explode, man. You can see the whole thing, playing like a movie in your mind - the set, the costumes, the characters...

And when that happens, the very last thing you want is some mental schoolmarm-type yelling "STOP! NO! Thou must OUTLINE thy creative outpourings first!" You can practically feel the vacuum from the fun being sucked right out of the process. You don't have time for that shizzle - if you don't release your creative waterfall right now, it might drain away to nothing before you can capture it in all its story goodness. Well the good news is... you don't have to.

Ninety-nine-percent of the time, first drafts suck anyway. So really, it doesn't matter if it sucks because you went in there with no map, no compass and no Kendall Mint Cake or because the gear you did have (i.e. the Outline) didn't help you one bit. Unless you tell people, no-one's gonna know - and even less will care, probably. So if you prefer the barf-it-up-and-see method for first drafting, have at it and leave the outlining stage for... well, when you've got something to outline - i.e. a completed first, second or beyond draft.. 'Cos that's just how most Pantser's brains work anyway.

3 - Sometimes you think you've outlined when you actually haven't.

This is certainly what I thought when I started work on the second draft of Redemption. "Well duh, yeah! Here's my outline, look at it; I've got a perfect little summary of every single scene I've written, including where and when each scene happens and what characters are in them, and they're all in the right order... that's me good to go..."

Mmmmyeah, that's not an outline. Not really. It's no more an outline than trying to figure out how to make a cake by reading the list of ingredients, i.e. it might tell you what's in it, but it doesn't tell you what to do with the stuff - or even if you need all of it in there or maybe need to add in some stuff that isn't and should be... 

I'm not saying it's not useful. In fact, I'd say it's essential - for helping you to create the real, actual outline.  Because only by looking at the complete but summarised form of what you've already done, using the cold and distant overview of Story God (bwah ha haaa) can you make hard-nosed decisions about what needs to be cut, what's still missing and which order everything needs to go in to make sense. And you'd be amazed how much things can change in that process. For example, I've removed an entire secondary POV from Redemption Draft 3, because it was only when I read my Draft 2 'outline' as a complete document that I realised the character's take on events wasn't needed - in fact, far from being a form of foreshadowing, most of the time his input only sucked the drama out of them. (He's still in the story, but he doesn't get a turn on the mike any more - sorry Dr Harvey, but that's showbiz for ya...) 

And once you've made all those decisions... that's your outline. Don't worry if it looks different from the one you had before - in the early drafting stages, it should. Because even if it means you've got a metric ton of rewriting ahead of you, that's progress. You're another ledge closer to the top of the mountain, intrepid story-sherpa.

4 - There are many resources out there that can help with Story Structure. But not all of them are good for Pantsers.

I know this because I've read a metric lorryload of them over the past few years. There are good ones, great ones and bloody terrific ones, and there also 'meh' ones, bad ones and truly terrible ones. But... there are also 'right' ones and 'wrong' ones. Books that aren't bad in any way - but will nonetheless not help certain types of writers in the least - and may, in fact, actually hinder them.

A great book for Pantsers is the wonderfully-titled 'Take Off Your Pants!' by Libbie Hawker. It teaches a lot about story structure without locking you down into a blow-by-blow blueprint that Thou Must Stuff Thy Story Into, like trying to squish an entire pig through a sausage machine. Pretty much any of Chuck Wendig's writing how-to books are also a great investment, and while it goes quite deep into the psychology of the human mind and storytelling, The Story Book by David Baboulene contains a load of useful stuff about the essence of creating good, well-paced plots. I generally read bite-size chunks of books like these in the morning, over breakfast, just before I start my daily writing session, and not only did I feel like I learned a lot from these books, I would actually get up from them inspired to go write, right now..!

However, on the flip side... other things inspired the opposite mindset in my Pantser brain - as in, left me feeling like a total doofus who was just kidding herself she had the intelligence to write anything anyone would ever want to read, ever. I mention them here not to be snarky, but so that if any of you have, are, or will be trying any of the following you won't feel bad if they don't help you either - it's no reflection on you or your intelligence, they're just not geared to the Pantser, that's all:

The Snowflake Method - I'm sure it works wonderfully for plotters... but to me it just felt like that thing where you're trying to untangle a ball of wool and somehow every loop you try and untangle just puts two more new knots in it that weren't there before. When I was a software technician I used a similar process to the Snowflake Method - they called it 'Top-Level Design' but it was the same principle - and I found it helped me a lot with computer programming. I don't write stories like I write computer programs though (and that's probably a good thing, because most of the computer code I wrote was pretty darn boring.)

Mind Mapping - this one surprised me. I mean, all those free-wheelin' bubbles with lines coming off them, and bubbles connecting to other bubbles sounds like the way a Pantser's mind works, right? Turns out, no. From my experience, I think it's actually just a Plotter's way of trying to be freeform. I made some mind maps - and hell, they looked pretty darned good too. But they didn't tell me a single thing I didn't know on a gut instinct already - about my characters, the plot, themes, anything. I don't need to see what's already stored in my head drawn out in bubbles and lines in front of me, any more than I need a set of instructions to make myself a cup of tea.

Anything with a rigid 'story structure template' to follow - and there are some titanium-knickered examples out there, believe me. The worst example I saw not only had a detailed, non-negotiable schedule of events that absolutely must happen for your story to be considered worthy of reading, it even dictated the time in percentage of the book's whole for each of those events to happen - and gave you a handy formula for calculating those percentages in your own book, including necessary adjustments if you had a Prologue...

Yeah, that one felt like it actually ripped my IQ out of my brain and beat me around the head with it crying "Fool! Call yourself a writer? YOU ARE NOT WORTHY!"

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Even if you're the Pantsiest Pantser in Pantsville, outlining is a useful skill to have in your toolbox. It's kind of like learning CPR; even if you never use it on an actual person in the real world, you carry this nice little feeling of security around with you forever afterwards, knowing that you could do it if you ever had to step up to that plate.

What's your take on outlining? Love it or hate it? Any tips and experiences to share? Feel free to drop a line in the Comments below.

Outlining is My Elephant in the Room

While still beavering away at current w-i-p 'The Renegades' - with a determination so grim I am now 100-per-cent positive I'm actually gonna finish this thing (it might take me until I'm old and grey, but dammit I am gonna finish it...) - my brain, for some reason, decided to do a time-jump into the future. And as a result, presented me with a whole new set of things to worry about. Cheers for that, Brain!

The Renegades is actually planned as Book One in a trilogy. I've learned so many things about how to write a novel from writing this one, that I'm anticipating the process for writing books two and three to be a little quicker than the snail's pace I'm currently achieving. Once I get to the stage where I'm ready to start submitting Book One to agents and publishers, I'm obviously going to have to already be working on Books Two and Three if I don't want to look like an all-mouth-and-no-trousers kind of writer. Which means I need to be at least thinking about the storyline for Book Two...  oooh, right about now.

Because if an agent or publisher should like The Renegades enough to actually want to do something with it (other than bin it or burn it on a ritual pyre of Novels That Should Never See The Light Of Day, obviously) I can't wiffle about taking an eternity to write the two follow-ups. I need to work smarter - and that means having proper outlines in place from the start. All the most respected authors say you must have an outline for your novel (the only exception I can think of  is Stephen King, but then he's a writing superhero from the planet Writeon. I, on the other hand, am me.) So I realised I was going to have to get serious about the process too.

I did the research. I read books about outlining your novel; detailed books that turned it almost into a science. They were a revelation, suggesting techniques and procedures I'd never even dreamed of before. "A-haaa" I thought. "So that's how the professionals do it - jeez, no wonder my writing process has been so disorganised all this time!" I absorbed all the things about Plot Points; Key Points, Mid Points, Pinch Points... I dunno, Decimal Points as well probably. I made up special sheets with all the correct headings on them, in order to construct the most mathematically-perfect outline from beginning to end. And then I sat down in front of them, notebook and a gazillion different coloured pens at the ready (you need them to categorise your thoughts between character, action, setting, dialogue etc., apparently) and got ready to kick the plot-shaped ass of The Renegades Book Two...

...And monumentally failed to get anything useful done.

Problem is, the kind of Plot Outlining these books are championing, by their very nature, require your brain to think in a very structured, procedural way. Clearly they've never met my brain, which doesn't do that.

(If yours does, I can highly recommend Rock Your Plot: A Simple Guide to Plotting Your Novel, Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys For Writing an Outstanding Story and The Busy Writer's One-Hour Plot. I'm sure they'll work like a dream for those of you whose brains are compatible. I did learn incredibly useful things about story structure, pacing and arcs from them.)

If the process of plotting a story for a novel could be compared to a car journey, this is how my brain works. It has a big picture of the landscape it's going to be travelling through - but it's more like a Google Earth photo rather than an actual road map with highways and placenames marked on it. It sure as heck doesn't have a satnav/GPS. It doesn't set out with a clear idea of where it wants to end up or look at the map to work out the towns and cities it needs to go through to get there. Instead it sets out with no clear idea about a final destination, but notices there's a big blue bit that might be a lake over in that part of the Google photo, and a yellowy patch that might be a desert or a beach or something... so maybe heading north-east-ish might be a good start. And, rather than reading the map to look up the names of places of interest in advance, it just pootles on its merry way using only the Google photo as a guide, seeing where the road takes it and making a note of anything that looks cool as it drives through, with a view to plotting it on the journey it'll take the next time through (i.e. in my case, Draft Two.)

And that's it. An approach about as structured as a Jackson Pollock painting, if I'm honest. And definitely not suited to the kind of meticulous plot-point-by-plot-point-breakdown trumpeted in the books I read. If the methods prescribed in 'the books' truly is the only way to outline a novel in advance of writing that first draft, I'm going to fail every single time. I'd even put money on it.

And then I revisited the Index Cards System of outlining a novel.

I'd read about it before, but didn't think much of it because, at the time I read it and the way it was presented, it looked to me like it was just a variation on the methods described in the books I've just read; deciding on your diversions and pit stops was a bit more flexible, but for it to work you'd still need to know in advance where your story started from, which direction you were going to travel in and where you planned to end up.

But then I read about how the author Michael Crichton uses the index card method to outline his stories. Rather than try to break down the skeleton of a story that already half-exists, into index cards that he can then swap around to 'fit' that structure, he instead spends a good few weeks carrying blank index cards around with him wherever he goes. If he gets a great idea for the story in the course of his day - whether it's for a snippet of dialogue that reveals a character's motivation, an unexpected twist, or even just a fantastic moment that just has to happen at some point in the tale - he scribbles it down onto a blank card... and then stuffs it in an envelope. And leaves it there, to marinate.

Over time, he scribbles on more cards and puts them in the envelope, until it's bulging with cards full of these little 'magic moments.' Only then does he tip them out and look at them all - and that's the moment he starts to move them around into something resembling a story outline.

For him, the plotting process is not looking at a road map, tracing a route from a to b to c and then writing an  index card for every place of interest that route takes him through. For him, it's more like finding all the pieces he needs to complete a jigsaw; he has to gather millions of them from everywhere and anywhere first, and then lay them all out in front of him to decide which of them belong in the jigsaw and where they should go.

And that, I've come to realise, is how my brain works too. I already have ideas for killer scenes and plot twists for Book Two - I just don't know where the heck they should occur in the story. So I'm going to give Michael Crichton's method a whirl; at the very least it's something I can do while I'm still writing Book One. In the past couple of days I've already added a small handful of cards, so it seems to be going well so far.

I'll let you know how it goes.