My (Current) Approach To Outlining A Novel
For reasons I've can't really get into right now, I find myself having to outline an entirely new novel in 3-4 weeks. Which is tough. And nerve-wracking, and panic-inducing, and all that nice stuff and which... invariably leads to a fair amount of procrastination.
Coincidentally, a few days ago, I was scrolling (procrastinating) through Twitter when I saw Rebecca F. Kuang (bestselling author of "The Poppy War") ask the following question:
Diane Duane, one of Fantasy's most iconic figures shot back:
Not only did she write a whole thread explaining her outlining process, but also decided to put all her thoughts down into a fantastic essay, which I promptly read (and which I recommend everyone reads.)
She writes:
Simply this: you sit down and make a list of the ten things that have to happen in your novel—the character actions or physical events without which your story simply cannot occur. Then, when you’re sure you’ve got pretty much the ten major “event beats” or character issues nailed down, you break each of those ten things into its own section and list the ten things that have to happen surrounding that event or supporting that character action. You take your time over this work, because this is the skeleton of the body of your work to come—the physical / emotional / action structure on which you’re going to build your novel.
So, inspired by Diane Duane's impromptu post, I've decided to walk you through my own outlining process.
But first...
The briefest of thoughts around the Pantser-Outliner dichotomy.
Lot's of people have talked about this topic (see this, this & this, for example), so I'm just going to provide you with a very quick definition:
Pantser = Discovery writer = Gardener
which are the opposite of...
Non-pantser = Outliner = Architect
Or, most eloquently put by the amazing George R. R. Martin:
I think there are two types of writers, the architects, and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.
Now that that's cleared–let's move on...
My (current) approach to Outlining a Novel
Before I begin, let me give credit where credit is due. My current outlining approach is based mostly off of Brandon Sanderson's own method, with a few minor (or maybe not so minor) differences. For those who are curious, here's what Brandon does:
Identify the chore moments, scenes and/or sequences you want in your story.
Line up those elements in relative chronological order.
One by one, go through each moment/scene/sequence and write down what needs to happen in your story for each moment/scene/sequence to be the most satisfying to the reader as possible.
Start crafting chapters by combining elements from the lists you've created.
(That's a very simplified version of Sanderson's method. If you want more information, check out his post on outlining or this youtube lecture.)
Now, that isn't exactly what I do. My process is a bit more exhaustive. But one concept from Sanderson's method really struck me and has become the conceptual basis for how I create stories. At every turn, I ask myself: "How can I make this as satisfying to the reader as possible?" That word: satisfying is everything to me. Why? Because it's both specific and comprehensive. It's flexible. Satisfying can mean heart-breaking, or joyful. It can mean awe-inspiring, or terrifying. Every time I'm stuck, I ask myself: "how can I make this even most satisfying?" and soon enough, ideas start pouring in.
So, without further ado... here's what I do:
Step 0: I'm going to cheat here and point you to another edition of Fiction Notes, wherein I write about how to get your initial ideas into decent enough shape for them to resemble the beginnings of a book...
Step 1: Once I've got a satisfactory amount of notecards (as explained through Step 0), I transcribe them all. I then go through each note/idea and compile a document of 'facts' (and 'possibilities') about my story, as I know it. What I mean to say is that I break down and transfer all my notes and ideas into a bullet-pointed list, in which I write down one 'fact' or 'possibility' per bullet. This can be a scene, or a character quirk, or some world-building tidbit or a whole plot arc I've imagined. The size of the idea itself doesn't matter.
Why one per bullet? Because this allows me to easily track down individual thoughts and ideas and later combine them together.
If I've done any research (which I invariably do, despite how much I hate it), I break down all my research notes into a similar (yet separate) list, keeping with the whole "one fact per bullet" thing.
Step 2: I go through each and every one of those bullet points over and over again––as I do, I add more if any new ideas come to mind, and try to get a feel of the connections between different ideas. I repeat this process until I've identified (or come up with) the main moments/character arcs/plot sequences/thematic arcs I want in my book. This is similar to Diane Duane's 'event beats' as seen in the quote above, just more expansive: Instead of focusing primarily on plot, I try to identify all 'event beats' pertaining to character and theme as well. In an ideal world, more than once the same 'event beat' would serve multiple purposes (character/plot/theme) at once.
The end result looks something like this:
Plot List:
Part I
Event Beat 1
Mini-Climax 1
Part II
Event Beat 2
Mini-Climax 2
Part III
Event Beat 3
Mini-Climax 3
Part IV
Event Beat 4
Big Climax
Conclusion Event
(Note: I don't always break stories into 'parts', but I often find the exercise useful)
I then create a similar list, but only focusing on Character beats, one for each major character. And the same for thematic beats, one for each major theme I'm considering.
This process takes a very long time. I try to really think through my decisions, and I keep everything subject to change at a moment's notice. Nothing I write at this stage (or at any stage) is meant to be set in stone. An outline, after all, is a living thing.
After repeating this process is over, I'm usually left with 5-10 different lists of major (plot/character/theme) beats. And now...
Step 3: I go through all my 'facts' and 'possibilities', all my ideas, as detailed during Step 1 of this process. I study them carefully and start assigning them to each major beat on each list of major beats. I start trying to figure out how everything fits. I add things and delete things. I find holes and plug them, or come up with new event beats or character arcs or thematic arcs and create new lists. I try to be as specific as possible, all the while asking myself: "how can I make this as satisfying as possible to the reader?"
Step 4: I repeat steps 1 – 3 over and over again. But here's the catch: I do it out of order, randomly. I don't work first on character, and then on plot, and then on theme. I let each aspect of the novel inform the others. I let new ideas emerge, and chop off old ones. I add more and more detail. I try to make everything as interconnected as I possibly can.
Step 5: It is now time to create the capital O "Outline". I use the Plot List as my guide and start combining everything. This, again, takes a lot of time. A LOT of time. But... if I'm lucky and I've done my work well... Chapters start to emerge. Pieces of dialogue. Descriptions of places, and complete sequences.
If everything I've done until now was the work of an architect, this is where my gardening takes place. I let things be chaotic––I embrace the mess that comes with combining 5–10 seemingly separate bulleted lists (each several pages long) into one BIG OUTLINE.
Step 6: And now I have an ugly mess in my hands. That first big outline is barely comprehensible. But... I know that, in that mess, is everything I need to write the novel. So... I start cleaning things up. I retype the whole thing, pruning and shaping––eliminating duplicates, adding new ideas, details, dialogue snippets, etc.
And I do it again, and again until I can no longer tell the difference between ideas that were meant to serve the plot and ideas that were meant to serve characters or themes. I aim (an idealistic aim because the target is so complex I invariably fall short) for a completely interconnected outline.
Here's an image that illustrates extremely well what I mean by this:
(A cross-reference visualization of the bible.– I am by no means saying that I actually achieve anything this complex. This is just the way I picture the idealistic aim of this process.)
At one point or another, this document stops being an outline and starts looking a lot like a very rough first draft of a novel. That's when I know the outline is done and it is time to move onto the 'writing' part of the process.
A Final Thought – On Outlines & First Drafts
Asides from the fact that it is easier to correct mistakes or deviations in the outline stage than during the first draft stage, I think the true power of outline lies in how freeing they are. Diane Duane put it much better than I ever could:
Rather than being restrictive, being scene-by-scene detailed at this stage of the work is incredibly freeing. Having this solid scaffolding to build on lets you turn your full attention to character business and interaction… because you already know who’s got to go where and what they’ve got to do. You can now wallow in Drama and Spectacle and All The Feels, and not have to waste time sweating the workaday details of the who-goes-where-and-what-happens choreography.
You have, in essence, drawn your road map. Now you journey.
And, a call-back to the introduction of this edition... In that same Twitter thread between Diane Duane and Rebecca Kuang, when asked about 'how much detail' she wanted, Rebecca answered:
If I had to answer I would say that at least the way I outline a novel, the question is mute. Why? Because it implies that there is a hard line dividing an "abstract outline" and the first draft of a book. And I try (and often fail) not to draw that distinction at all. In fact, I'm not really a fan of the word 'outline.'
Last week I wrote about how writing is a non-linear process. And I've been trying to embrace that, fully, in my writing process. Instead of writing the first draft from scratch, or using the outline as a "guide", I've decided to throw the distinction between the two (and maybe even between architects and gardeners) out the window.
Instead, I like to think of this big document as the very first draft of the novel–the roughest draft possible, no doubt, but a draft nonetheless.
Of course, this is just a thought–a philosophical position I’m trying out right now. I might very well go back to drawing that line between outlines and first drafts soon enough…
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