The Writer’s Toolbox: Outlines
We’ve all been there before. We have a great idea for a story. Brimming with excitement, we set off to work and start writing. But then less than halfway through, our momentum decreases, and we come to a grinding halt, not knowing what else to write anymore.
We burn out, and nine times out of ten, we want to punch a hole through a wall.
This is what happens when we have no plan before writing. In writing, planning is all about outlining. Outlining is a powerful tool for every writer, even for pantsers (I’ll talk about that in a bit).
But first, what’s an outline?
The best way I can explain this is by using architecture.
Before a company puts up a building, they employ the service of an architect. The architect, following the idea of their client, draws or models a detailed representation of the building. Later, during construction, the builders follow the architectural plans.
Using this example, you, the writer, are the client, the architect, and the builder. Before you write anything, be it an article, a thesis, a novel, a short story, or a novella, you need a framework or an outline to give you direction. Per the analogy above, the architectural plan is your outline.
To put it simply, an outline is a general plan of whatever you’re going to write. Before writing this blog post, for example, I made a simple outline that looks like this:
The Writer’s Toolbox: Outlining
- Introduction: The dilemma of not outlining. Lack of direction, overwhelming, quitting.
- What is outlining and how are writers different?
- What’s the way forward? To outline or not to outline?
- Ultimately, whether we are pantsers or plotters, outlines are very important and should not be neglected.
With this, I had a clear direction of what my post would be about. Well, we won’t always follow everything in our outline to the last detail. But it’s still very important to keep us focused and grounded.
Imagine driving to a place you don’t know without a map or GPS. You’re going to get lost, right?
And that was exactly what happened to me when I started writing my first novel.
For the record, I’ve always been one to outline everything I write even before I knew what outlining was. I would draw an outline for my essays back in my high school and university days. Before writing a story, I would flesh out the general idea of the story, the characters, their likes, and so much more. Yet, I still had no sense of direction for my stories and would end up getting lost along the way.
Some years back, I tried to write a novel. About a hundred thousand words later, I still had no idea where I was taking the story, what will happen in the end, and what I could do to raise the stakes. Worst of all, I was still nowhere halfway through the book, even after writing so many words.
Eventually, the story overwhelmed me, and I threw it aside. Now, mind you, I had an outline for my story, so why did I still have no direction?
I would learn this answer in late 2020 when I was going through an awakening of what it meant to be a writer. That’s when I rediscovered outlining. You see, it wasn’t that I didn’t know about outlining, but rather, I was doing it in a way that was not compatible with me.
Plotter or pantser?
All writers are different. Two writers crafting a story based on the same prompt will end up writing two completely different stories. Also, their writing process will vary drastically from each other.
And that applies to outlining.
Some writers outline meticulously, to the very last detail. They often create their outline before they write a word of their story. These writers are called plotters.
If you read a plotter’s outline, you’re likely to know a lot about their story even without reading the first draft. Hell, you’ll know about things that won’t even appear in the story, or might appear in book 5 if it’s a series.
That’s how detailed their outlines are. An example of a plotter was J. R. R. Tolkien.
Then there are those writers who don’t outline as much and simply ‘fly by the seat of their pants.’ They are called pantsers.
A pantser’s outline could simply be a page or two. Or perhaps a couple of sentences. Everything else, they discover along the way as they write. Stephen King is a famous example of this category.
Both of these approaches are valid. What’s important is that you know what works for you and choose accordingly.
That was the mistake I made as a young writer. I used the pantser approach, which failed me miserably. My outlines were not detailed enough to get me focused. Thus, I ended up experiencing writer’s block.
Once I learned that I was actually a plotter, everything changed.
I was able to finish writing a novel for the first time after I had carefully plotted everything. My outline was at least forty pages long, containing everything I needed to know about, from the tiniest detail of all my major characters to the entire geography and culture of my world.
And then, scene by scene, I would outline what was going to happen in the story until the very last scene.
With my complete outline, even before I wrote the first word of my story, I knew exactly how my story would unfold. If I needed more conflict, or I wasn’t satisfied with a certain scene, I adjusted the outline accordingly and moved along.
This was my first taste of real plotting, and let me tell you that it worked fabulously for me. Within three months, I was done with the first draft (about 150,000 words). Of course, I had to do a lot of revision and whatnot.
But my point is that, for the first time in my life, I had actually finished writing a book. And all because of something as simple as an outline… and commitment, of course. Let’s not forget good old commitment.
Outlining changed my life.
For the first time, I didn’t just believe but also knew I could finish writing a book. All I had to do was have a detailed structure of my story before starting. With this method, I have gone on to finish the first draft of two more stories. I have to revise them though. But to me, that’s a lot easier than writing the damn thing from scratch.
So what are you? A plotter or a pantser? It really doesn’t matter which path you take as long as it works for you.
Maybe writing a fifty-page outline is not realistic for you. You probably prefer the beauty of discovering your story while you write. By all means, more power to you. As I said, do what works for you.
So long as you know what you’re writing about, and are focused enough to reach your destination, that’s all that matters. This is what outlines are supposed to do, anyway.
I’ve always bought into the myth of writer’s block. But not anymore. I haven’t suffered from writer’s block since I started plotting my books. I either write or I don’t.
If don’t write, it isn’t because I don’t know what to write, but rather because I don’t want to write. Every single time I sit behind my computer to work on my novel or short story, I know exactly what to write because I have a detailed outline.
Of course, it’s okay to use a hybrid of the two methods. There’s no hard and fast rule about these things. All writers are different. You simply adopt those methods that work best for you.
I hope you have fun outlining your next great novel.
Are you a plotter, or a pantser? Kindly leave your thoughts in the comments.
Also, in case you’re curious about my first novel, it’s called Vanquisher. It’s my first book and full of the mistakes you’d expect from a newbie writer. But don’t hesitate to leave an honest review. It will help me become a better writer, after all.
Thanks for reading.
Originally published at https://torshietorto.com on November 26, 2022.
