by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
It’s recently struck me how much I’ve had to say about outlines lately. I’ve gone from being a pantser, to being a reluctant outliner, to having a grudging respect for a tool I never wanted to use in the first place.
I now follow my outlines fairly closely, although I permit myself any deviations needed to improve the story. But I realized for one of my last books that I’d left myself a few choices in my outline. I wrote “either do this, or do this.” I guess I figured I’d have a better feel for the story once I was writing it and could make a more natural decision later on.
The only problem was that I was following the outline and didn’t realize there was a fork in the road until the fork suddenly appeared. I write my outlines about 3-4 months before I work on the book, so I didn’t have any recollection of the divergent story ideas.
Not only that, but taking one story path over the other meant other changes were needed earlier in the story. It was sort of a domino effect.
The point is, any issues would have been headed off if I’d just reread the outline before I hopped right in. I need to either read the whole document (usually mine run about 30-35 pages) before I start, or I need to review and revise the outline directly after I finish writing it.
A quick tip, but one that might help a few folks out. :)
Are you an outliner? Have any writing tips for outlines or anything else?
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I do not outline, except in my head I have a general idea of where the story is headed. But there are times I have no idea who the killer is until it's time to reveal who the killer is. Right now I am taking a departure from my mysteries and writing a love story. It's not a romance novel as it doesn't follow the rules of the genre. It's just a love story that was originally going to be a novella
But I already have over 48,000 ,words and I am nowhere near done. Other characters keep demanding to be included
So even though I know how the story ends, I think I have to call it just a novel that happens to have a love story as a part of it
. I have the ending in my head, and several other upcoming chapters as well, but that's not really an outline, is it?
It sounds like you have a good grasp of where you want your story to go! So maybe you’re right in between outlining and pantsing? Maybe it’s women’s fiction, in terms of genre? The length would be right.
Hi Elizabeth – 'be prepared' is a good motto for us all – in so many ways in life. We so often don't do our homework before jumping in the deep end – I know I do, and think to myself … gosh I wish I'd had the intelligence to realise I had the answers/ideas lurking from previous work I'd set out. Being prepared – Baden Powell had it right … cheers Hilary
Being prepared has helped me prevent a few scrapes, ha! Thanks for coming by, Hilary!