Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014
Outlining your work
Drafting and structuring
Drafting, researching, and editing
Even today I don’t like writing outlines because I feel that they stifle my creativity with their Roman numerals, chapter titles, and the like. Not only have I never tried to summarize scenes in my books, but I’ve found that deciphering what should be detailed and what could be omitted was almost as difficult as creating the dreaded synopsis.
DEFINITION
A synopsis is a brief condensation, outline, or summary of the main points of an article, book, or plan.
Yet with direction—with the upcoming events in your work detailed in an outline or synopsis—you’ll find you have the ability to conceive of and write the scenes that had previously eluded you. This can work wonders, particularly for a work you have nearly completed.
I typically go at my books with only a few ideas in mind and very little else; the traditional outline stumps me. How can I decide what needs to go into which chapter if the story is still largely a mystery even to me? Every outline attempt of mine was convoluted and difficult to follow. So I gave up.
For the purposes of this chapter, I polled other writers and published authors for what they do. One author explained that before she begins to write, she creates a synopsis and uses it as both an outline and a tool to sell the unwritten book to her publisher.
Yet how can you combine the two into a format you can follow? How can you brainstorm all the “what ifs” and avoid the constant rearranging and renumbering of chapters?
By combining the two—a traditional outline and a synopsis—you can detail a narrative with very little structure but maintain a workable format. What I’m describing, in essence, is a scene outline. Without Roman numerals or chapter headings, you have the freedom to maneuver plot points and swap scenes. New ideas are easy to add without confusing the format. This technique gives you the freedom to write an entire novel, or another lengthy work, in a few short pages.
Like most writers, I picture a rough narrative in my head. Sometimes I know the whole story; at other times, I only know the low and high points. Brainstorming is an integral part of shaping a work. For any writer who’s fallen in love with the inherent creativity in freewriting, this is the perfect outlining technique.
IDEAS AND INSPIRATION
Aspiring writers sometimes forget they are the masters of their universe. Creative outlines are written for your eyes only. The sheer flexibility of this technique lets you go back and insert as much as you’d like, wherever you’d like. The purpose is to breathe life into your outstanding inspiration. Don’t edit, don’t to stop to research. Use asterisks to make it easy to find areas that require more research later on.
Getting down to particulars, here are some steps that should lead to a promising creative outline:
1. Begin by describing any information that occurs before the opening scene. Use quick, memory-cementing sentences.
2. Write the opening scene the same way, with quick, strident, labeled sentences.
3. Freewrite the rest, conducting research when necessary.
The beauty of such an outline is the ability to be totally creative without stopping to find facts, except when you want to. When you begin the actual work, you’ll find that your creativity is stimulated by the research and the development of your characters.
Feel free to play with the structure, rearranging or adding ideas as they occur to you. Making changes is much easier when you’re dealing with paragraphs instead of whole chapters or scenes. With very little adjustments to make, adding the results of your brainstorming—even during the actual writing phase—is less daunting and easier to assimilate into the original outline. As you progress through your writing career, the actual outline you make will likely become sketchier and less detailed, but for aspiring writers, this can greatly increase your focus and keep your work in progress on course.
In my experience, too many otherwise-excellent stories are lost in the confusion between where the beginning, middle, and ending scenes should lead the characters and how the plot should develop. With a map to follow, you’ll increase your chances of completing those first works.
Another benefit of creative outlining is that once you’re familiar with this technique, it will become easier to create, even before it’s needed. If you use the outline feature in your word processing software, you usually have options that give you greater freedom to implement the creative outlining technique. When inspiration hits, write the creative outline and save it for your next project. Over the course of a year, you will have developed several such outlines.
Creative outlining provides the benefits of an outline but lets you maintain a higher level of creativity. As master of your writing universe, you can decide to add as much or as little as you need. This simple tool will prompt you during those dark moments when your organization falters and help keep your narrative on course. Have fun playing with “what if,” and follow your instincts.