5 ms·
I’m a working novelist (I put out about two books a year, I’m a WSJ best-seller, Edgar nominee, blah blah blah) and the number one mistake I made in the past is
by amayne 7y ago
I’m a working novelist (I put out about two books a year, I’m a WSJ best-seller, Edgar nominee, blah blah blah) and the number one mistake I made in the past is the same as when I would sit down in front of a code editor or Photoshop and not have a plan. While we can all “seat of the pants” things to some degree, without a detailed plan your chances of getting derailed increase exponentially.
I’ve written best-sellers in week (for real) - not because I have any special skill (I’m not a particularly fast typist) but because I write very detailed outlines that break things down enough that I never stare at a blank screen yet always have enough room to have fun improvising.
Outlining for me is asking a series of nested questions about “What” and “Why” and always knowing where I need to go next.
- bubblewrap 7y agoJust curious, how long does the outlining take? I've read a similar notion before (Doctorow claiming to write a book in a year by writing 20 minutes per day - but he also has a plan what to write beforehand). I am curious if outlining doesn't really count as work in the minds of many writers?
- amayne 7y agoI spend anywhere from a few days to a few weeks working on an outline. This is while doing other things.
- 1337biz 7y agoHow do you writer outlines. Is there a process. Or are you just jumping from idea to idea? Is there any good guide on how to come up with them?
- amayne 7y agoFirst I write a couple sentence mission statement about what the book is about, the character’s journey, the resolution, etc. This is my way of keeping track if the book is on course or not. Does every chapter serve that mission? I then start with notecards and begin with the big questions: What’s the major conflict of the book? What are my main character’s conflicts? What are the conflicts of each act? I then break these down into chapters. Every chapter has a smaller conflict and resolution. On the chapter break downs I ask what the character is trying to accomplish. Does it work out? How does the outcome change the story? When I do my chapter-by-chapter breakdown the characters are driving the story - this is what makes it fun for me to write. Instead of me pushing a character from point A to B, it feels like the characters are driving the plot. Using this approach I almost always redo the last 30% of the outline when I get to it because the characters have made smarter choices than I the writer had planned. I’m very into writing from a Theory of Mind approach. Let me reiterate that while this approach works great for me, it may not work for everyone. Some people love to write without outlines because they just want to jam on the keyboard. That’s just as valid as any other approach - although I’d like to point out that just because a pro writer says they don’t outline doesn’t mean they don’t have an innate sense of structure in their head. We often don’t know what we know.
- 1337biz 7y agoThanks a lot, appreciate the insights. I always find the productivity part part the most challenging of it all. That's why I am sold on the structure approach and not waiting for the kiss of the muse.
- amayne 7y agoI've done a few Periscope streams on my Twitter feed about this. You can check them out at @AndrewMayne.
- bloak 7y agoIt's worth mentioning, perhaps, that a lot of writers don't have a plan/outline: Stephen King, for example, who has described in great detail how he works in "On writing": he starts with a situation and develops it as he writes. In fact, in most cases where I've read about how a writer works there is no plan/outline. However, it was mentioned in court proceedings that Dan Brown had an outline for "The Da Vinci Code", so I don't have sufficient evidence to conclude which approach is most popular. Perhaps it's just those writers who like to write about writing that prefer not to have a plan.
- amayne 7y ago“On Writing” is a wonderful book. If you’re Stephen King, plot and structure run through your veins. If you’re a mortal like the rest of us and “seat of the pants” isn’t working...then outline. Outlining also saves you from having to randomly kill off half your characters in the middle of the book because there’s no way to wind down all their storylines... I’ll also add that anecdotally, my writer friends who outline go through far fewer revisions than those that don’t. If your process works, don’t mess with it.