On Fiction: Outlining Part One
August 20th 2009 22:18
I've decided to write a series of posts about outlining. There will be five posts in this series, each one focusing on a different type of outlining. The first post will focus on my style of outline and the following ones will be reviews of different forms of outlining available online.
Not every type of outline works for every writer. Personally my outline is very basic, showing the biggest scenes that need to happen and what order they need to happen in. Some writers on the Nanowrimo forums (Kateness, who wrote 800K last year, being one of these) write outlines that can be up to 10, 000 words in and of themselves.
I do a lot, and I mean a lot, of worldbuilding in most cases. With the book I'm working on right now, Eternia Falling, I realize that before I can really edit it-and it's probably going to be a complete rewrite-I need to do a lot of worldbuilding around her time period. While I know what happened with her life and have a very general idea of culture at that time period, there's a lot that's missing that I need to work on.
Jihad probably has around 20, 000 words worth of worldbuilding done on it. All on paper at the moment, except for the myths.
But for actual plot outlines, I don't do a lot. They're very brief, usually around a hundred or two hundred words.
I take a sheet of printer paper (unlined) and draw a border. Within this border, I write the title of whatever novel I'm working on at the time. Then I make a brief outline, with dot-jot notes for every major event.
Sometimes minor events that need to happen to set up a major event will be sub-jots, looking kind of like this:
*Major Event: Merrique, Eternia's betrothed-to-be, arrives in the capitol on a dragon
**Minor event leading up to major event: Eternia's mother takes the dragon and rides it to her family's dragon caves, where the dragon will be well looked after.
*Major event led to by minor event: Eternia's mother has a miscarriage from the flight.
That's not an exact replica, but it's close enough. I decide in what order each character needs to be introduced, and if they need to be there for any major scenes I introduce them shortly before that or bring them back into the spotlight before the major scene they're needed for.
My personal outlining isn't very detailed because I find two things about extremely detailed outlines. The first is that I never end up following them and then have wasted all that work outlining-because in a lot of cases my book is better for the differences-and the second is that I feel suffocated by the detailed outline, and like I don't have as much freedom with the writing.
How do you outline?
Not every type of outline works for every writer. Personally my outline is very basic, showing the biggest scenes that need to happen and what order they need to happen in. Some writers on the Nanowrimo forums (Kateness, who wrote 800K last year, being one of these) write outlines that can be up to 10, 000 words in and of themselves.
I do a lot, and I mean a lot, of worldbuilding in most cases. With the book I'm working on right now, Eternia Falling, I realize that before I can really edit it-and it's probably going to be a complete rewrite-I need to do a lot of worldbuilding around her time period. While I know what happened with her life and have a very general idea of culture at that time period, there's a lot that's missing that I need to work on.
Jihad probably has around 20, 000 words worth of worldbuilding done on it. All on paper at the moment, except for the myths.
But for actual plot outlines, I don't do a lot. They're very brief, usually around a hundred or two hundred words.
I take a sheet of printer paper (unlined) and draw a border. Within this border, I write the title of whatever novel I'm working on at the time. Then I make a brief outline, with dot-jot notes for every major event.
Sometimes minor events that need to happen to set up a major event will be sub-jots, looking kind of like this:
*Major Event: Merrique, Eternia's betrothed-to-be, arrives in the capitol on a dragon
**Minor event leading up to major event: Eternia's mother takes the dragon and rides it to her family's dragon caves, where the dragon will be well looked after.
*Major event led to by minor event: Eternia's mother has a miscarriage from the flight.
That's not an exact replica, but it's close enough. I decide in what order each character needs to be introduced, and if they need to be there for any major scenes I introduce them shortly before that or bring them back into the spotlight before the major scene they're needed for.
My personal outlining isn't very detailed because I find two things about extremely detailed outlines. The first is that I never end up following them and then have wasted all that work outlining-because in a lot of cases my book is better for the differences-and the second is that I feel suffocated by the detailed outline, and like I don't have as much freedom with the writing.
How do you outline?
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