Outline Disaster

 

I’ve always wanted to outline a novel. I have books that present outlining systems for writers. These books attract me like bug-lights attract bugs. Unfortunately, my fate ends up being like those poor bugs flying toward the light and their doom.

I think the reason I’m attracted to an in-depth outlining system is they promise a straightforward way to produce a great novel. These books break the entire writing process down into a neat and easy process. They also try to debunk the myths that outlining your story ahead of time will kill your creativity for the project. Maybe for some writer’s this is true. But as I’m finding out, not all of us.

I did rough outlines for the last three stories I published. When I say rough, I mean a short sketch fit into a brief structure. And those stories have far exceeded my expectations, meaning more than one person actually read them. So I thought, alright, I must be an outliner after all.

So I dove into one of these books on outlining. I came up with an idea, and decided I’m going to see this process through to the end.

Everything began well enough. I made brief character sketches, brief plot outlines, and so on. Things grew the more I worked on it, and then it was time to work on the real meat of the outline. By that time I felt like I was trying to climb up a mountain in three feet of mud.

I lost interest in outlining, and worse, I was losing interest in my story. A story I really liked. But, and this is the big BUT, I felt like the spark had gone out of my idea. The spark I had for the story was flying towards the light with the bugs.

I looked at other methods of outlining, thinking maybe a different system would be better. After much frustration, I finally diagnosed my issue with all of this - I wasn’t having any fun.

Folks, let me tell you, long ago I made a vow to myself. I worked in the same profession for many, many years, while it had good and bad days like everything else, in the end it was a job with a lot of hard work and soul sucking drudgery. When I started getting published and actually making a few cents at this, (this was before my self-publishing adventure I’m on now) I vowed not to let this become like the day job. This wouldn’t be soul sucking drudgery.

So now I had to figure out what to do with this story. I still liked it. I didn’t want to stop working on it. So I sat down and listed all the different aspects of the writing process I liked and had fun with.

I think it might have been a turning point for me.

It showed me I don’t want to shoehorn stories into some nice and neat outline system, complete with nice and neat story templates. I do, however, like coming up with character backstories, and I’m okay with a brief summary outline of what I think the story is going to be. But that is where my pre-writing fun ended. Everything else I found fun about writing pertained to the writing itself: drafting, editing, even rewriting and revision has become more enjoyable for me.

After all of that, I brainstormed ideas for other stories. One idea really grabbed me. So instead of doing a ton of pre-writing, I started writing the story. I felt like I was making progress. After I did a few thousand words, I took another stab at the story I’d been outlining. I wrote the opening chapter, but I could tell the magic and fire wasn’t there. So I switched back to the other story, having great fun of creating. Then, I wrote the next part of the outlined story.

That's when it happened. The spark veered away from the light and came back to the story. I’m making progress. But what’s important is I’m having fun again.

I put the books on outlining away. Does this mean I won’t try this again? Ha! I doubt it. But this experience has taught me many things, so the time lost on getting my next story out wasn’t entirely a waste. This is the reason I didn’t get a story out last month like I wanted to. 

I’m back in my writing groove and making steady progress daily.

A side note: In case you’re wondering why I didn’t mention the title of the book I was using, it’s because I don’t want to give the book a bad rap. I’m sure that it works for other people and I’m not one to put down another person’s process that works not only for them, but for countless others.