Outlines--A Fiction Writing Help

Introduction

For most who begin their writing life, it seems intuitive to sit down and just start typing.  The reality is many hit a wall right off the bat, or they find a dead end a few chapters in, or they find themselves wandering about with a few scenes they really enjoy, filling in the rest with tedious connecting scenes.  It doesn't need to be that way.

Hopefully, as you look at these chapters you will get ideas on a different approach that you can blend into what works well for you.  This book is a "picture book" of the outlines I have made for every one of my stories.  It is not an end-all-be-all on the subject of writing outlines, but it is meant to be a case study of how I attempt the process.  I will share details that I have found, quite accidentally oftentimes, details that have greatly aided the overall storylines.

As for an argument that you don't need an outline, many will cite well known successful authors that did not use one, such as Tolkien.  Yes, I do concede that there are authors out there that do not write their outlines formally.  But I will assert, that even they had an outline, just not on paper.  

So let's look at Tolkien's pattern for writing The Lord of the Rings.  If you read through the volumes The History of Middle Earth, published posthumously by his son, Christopher Tolkien, it is evident the painstaking work Tolkien had to do in order to write The Lord of the Rings.  Over and over again he wrote, trashed, started from the beginning, and rewrote until the story began to form.  It is, seriously, thousands of pages written and discarded with changes in the protagonist, antagonists, story focus, and progression.  (The journey through those pages is a wonderful study on story craft if you have the desire to do so, but it is very very long, with multiple volumes, so I don't blame you if you don't.)  

What can you glean from my wading through those pages... 1. without an outline you can write a very good story, but it may (and arguably should) result in discarded dead ends, restarts, and a lot of wandering before you arrive at a satisfying final product.  2.  You in actuality are forming an outline, although you don't recognize it.  The outline is simply formed in your head, and the writing process helps a good writer (like Tolkien) arrive at that final plan. 

Having said that, I have found the process of writing an outline allows me to more efficiently write the course of the story without spending time filling in the details until after the story is established.  I think of it this way, there are two major elements to a story, the bones (the story elements), and the flesh (the details and descriptions).  By writing a complete story from the beginning, I create the bones and the flesh at the same time, trying to make it polished enough to be a finished product.  If the story meets a dead end, or a scene is unneeded, I end up throwing away the flesh with the bones.  But if you build an outline first, and it proves unsatisfactory, you only throw out the bones.  

One other objection to outlining, I will address here--that it stifles creativity.  I would ask three questions that may clarify the argument.  1.  Do you not create the outline?  2.  Do you not create the details to flesh out the outline?  3.  Can you not change the outline if the development of the story seems to naturally move in another direction?  The creative process is not eliminated by an outline; it continues throughout the writing of the story.   And in allowing you to focus on the structure of the story first and then on the details of the story afterward, it may be argued that it helps give creative focus to what you are working on, rather than diffusing your attention between both elements.

Again, this is just a picture book of my outlines for you to glean from, if not to read, at least to see in their entirety to give you ideas about how you might craft your own.  I may add a few comments here and there, but really this is not a "how to do it" book, but rather a glimpse into my notebook.  For every book I have written, these outlines were completed first before I even typed the first word.  Rest assured, these chapters will be much less wordy than the introduction.  Enjoy.