NaNo2010 > Preliminary Outline

by Tami    4 Comments    Posted under: On The Art of Authoring

Outlining

This week we are going to begin outlining.

Don’t worry, this isn’t the scary outline. If any outline can be said to be scary, it’ll come much later.

This week’s outline is a loose preliminary outline. It’s job is to give us a picture of our story as it is RIGHT NOW – both what we’ve got and (perhaps more importantly) what we’re missing.

If your story is progressing at the same rate as Stained, you’re missing a lot. Fear not! We’ll fill in the missing bits before November. But we cannot do so without knowing where we’ve got gaps in our story.

The Exercise

Grab a sheet of scratch paper and start writing. If you think in graphs and arcs and timelines, make your notes that way. If you think in vertical lists, make your notes that way.

Do feel free to jump around. Leave space between actions if you know there’s missing plot there.

Write down every scene you know will happen.

Write down things that happen offstage or before/after the story.

Write them in chronological order. Be vague.

Also, use a pen. Don’t erase things. Scribble. Be messy. Take notes. Cross them out with a single line if you don’t want them any more, but keep a record of the fact that you had plans and thoughts and ideas. You may like them more later, but you’ll have lost them if you allow yourself to erase. Don’t be a wussy. Use a pen.

Example

Here, I’ll share a scan of the timeline I did for Stained. There’s nothing spoilery or secret in there, unless you somehow think I’d write a book where the bad guy DOESN’T get thwarted. (Hint. The bad guy always gets thwarted in my books. I promise a Happily Ever After with every novel. That’s my sacred vow.)

The Scenes

Each of the scenes you have on your timeline should coincide with one or more plots.

Assign them letters and give them a very short identifying phrase. We’ll be evaluating and changing the phrase later, so don’t worry about being terribly accurate now.

For Stained:

• Plot A : Stopping The Revenge Guy
• Subplot B : Shayla’s Growth
• Subplot C : Romancekissyface
• Subplot D : The King’s Growth

The letters are arbitrary rather than indicating importance, except for the fact that Plot A really ought to be the most important plot in the book.

Also of note, Subplot D doesn’t have any core scenes associated with it. I realized it needed to be there as I worked on this next part and added it to the list later in the exercise.

The Spaces Between Scenes

Okay, now go back and look at the spaces between your scenes. Those are the important bits. Those gaping chasms are the major point of this exercise.

Often, when planning a book, it’s easy to see where we are and where we want to get to, but we can’t figure out how to get from here to there. We aren’t going to get tripped up by that problem. We’re going to pay attention to those empty spaces. We’ll confront them, own them, and fill them.

Block off your gaps and in very general terms, describe what needs to happen in them. What events need to happen? What information needs to be revealed? What personality change must a character undergo? What realization must a character come to?

You’ve built a series of islands – now it’s time to construct rope bridges between them.

Rope bridges, not stone pillars with scores of architects and men with jackhammers and jars of paint. We’re still brainstorming here. If you try to paint a complete and polished picture at this stage, you may find yourself very frustrated when you need to change it later.

For Stained:

• Gap A: travel
• Gap B : travel
• Gap C : learn that there is a plot, don’t die, tell stories to the king
• Gap D : discover the bad guy’s identity, discover what the bad guy wants, darkest night (hopeless, capture?)
• Gap E : whups, this is the same gap as D, only I gave it its own letter. Heh.
• Gap F : this might not be a gap – those two final scenes may happen right next to each other.

I didn’t bother to assign a name to the gaps (and yes, there are a lot of them). The gap letters and descriptions will become meaningless as I move forward with my story planning. Instead, I started writing a list of things that I knew happened between the defined plot points. I don’t know what order they happen in or what events or scenes they contain, but I do know some of the broader details.

Two Important Things

We got two important things from this lesson.

1. Thing the first: We have a great preliminary plot list! This is awesomely useful and we WILL be using it many times between now and November. Save it.
2. Thing the second: We can see the spaces between scenes and have at least a vague idea of what needs to happen between them.

You can’t fix anything if you don’t know it’s broken, and it’s easier to fix something if you have a clue of what it’s supposed to do before you get started.

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