Outlining: The Best and Hardest Planning Tool

by Savannah J. Foley

~~~

Before you read this article, you should know the definition of an Outline. It’s very similar to a synopsis, but with more structure. A Synopsis is a shortened version of your story, about two pages, that describes all the important plot points and characters. An Outline shares your plot chapter by chapter, and looks like this:

CHAPTER 1

Mary Sue and her boyfriend John Smith are driving home from a party when they get in a car accident. Mary Sue wakes up in the hospital, with no one around and blood lining the walls. As she makes her way back out into the world, she is attacked by a dirty man who won’t stop walking towards her, even when she hits him with a plank of wood. As Mary peers over a hill and witnesses an ambling, undead crowd, she realizes that she is one of the sole survivors of a zombie apocalypse.

CHAPTER 2

Blah blah blah…

~~~

For me, the outlining process started out complicated and ended simple. ANTEBELLUM had been on submissions for a year, and I had edited the next book in the series and sent it to my agent for review, just in case any editors wanted to see it. She wrote back with pages of problems, not necessarily about the manuscript itself, but the entire concept.

Previously, we’d received rejection letters from houses that loved the story, but had to regretfully pass because they couldn’t figure out how to market it. ANTEBELLUM had a hazy audience and genre, stuck between YA and Adult, Fantasy and Dystopian. My agent recommended an outrageous and gutsy idea: Combine all three books in the series into a single, 120k word YA.

When I saw that, I grew excited and afraid. Excited, because I knew it was the right thing to do. Afraid, because it meant giving up my beloved trilogy, several sub-plots and characters, and performing a complete and intensive rewrite. I decided to do it.

But instead of just leaping in and mucking about, I decided to try this ‘outlining’ thing I’d heard so much about. Outlining seemed like a great tool for people like me who enjoy lists and charts. I wanted to be able to physically see my character and plot arcs, and have each chapter planned out before I began writing.

How hard could it be? I wondered. I’ve been living with this series for 6 years. I KNOW this world, and the characters. Outlining would take about a week, if I was only half-paying attention to it. Two months later, I had learned a valuable lesson: Outlining is both incredibly difficult, and incredibly worth it.

I wish I’d researched the process more before I began, because perhaps then I wouldn’t have spent so much time avoiding it and feeling guilty because I was completely stuck. So here’s my story, and my advice to you for the next time you need to outline:

Outlining is not a solitary process.

I completely forgot that I had some wonderful CPs, and tried to go about this outlining business alone. I had to create a completely new plot line, and I was trying to do it while staring at my computer screen in the evening and resisting the urge to just surf the net and forget all my problems.

Finally I complained about my lack of progress to one of my CPs Kat Zhang, and before I knew it we were discussing plot options and developing awesome and dramatic new ideas for events down the road. From then on, when I was stuck, I sought out somebody to chat with, and worked it over until I knew where to go from there. There’s something about the act of talking about it with someone that really makes your brain put out.

Outlining is not a one-activity process.

Even when I had an idea for what a chapter should accomplish (thanks to my brainstorming sessions with friends), I was having a really hard time describing it in such a way that the flow of the scene came across. I wanted my outline to be descriptive of all the major points in the chapter, like the example above, and not a one-sentence ‘Mary Sue realizes she’s now living in the zombie apocalypse.’

But, again, I had that problem where I’d stare at my computer and think, ‘how in the world can I figure out what’s happening in this scene without actually writing it?’ And remember, I had promised that I wouldn’t actually start writing until the outline was finished. Well, apparently that was a bad idea, because as soon as I started writing really, really rough drafts of scenes, I was able to orient myself to the chapter. When actually writing it, I could figure out the flow of conversation, how people would move about the room, and what everyone’s face would look like.

I didn’t write complete chapters, just snippets of speeches and actions. It helped me figure out the flow way better than trying to summarize it from the sterile perspective of an outline.

A completed outline is not set in stone.

I finished the outline and sent it to my agent. A few days later she wrote back to tell me I had done a great job with it, and to go ahead and get writing! Yes!

Then, I realized my first chapter was going to take 9,000 words to tell instead of a more-acceptable 3,000. So I had to split the first chapter into three chapters. But that was okay, because later I found some chapters I had outline were way less than 3,000 words, so I combined them with surrounding chapters. More recently, I realized that it would make more sense in the flow of the story if two outlined chapters were reversed in the order they were to happen.

So it’s not like I had to stick to the outline, or else. A drafted outline is a tool to guide you through the story, not a concrete plan. There are many ways to reach the same destination, after all. An outline just gives you a map.

Right now I’m 25,000 words and 7 chapters (out of 30) into the rewrite. I hope to be done by January 1 so I can go back out on submissions with a new, genre-defined manuscript. And I seriously doubt I could have done it without my outline.

~~~

Savannah J. Foley is the author of the Antebellum (originally known as Woman’s World) series on Fictionpress. She has written five novels, owns her own freelance writing company, and is signed with the Bradford Literary Agency. Antebellum is currently out on submissions. Her website is www.savannahjfoley.com, but she updates more frequently on her livejournal.