I mentioned on Twitter that I was getting ready to outline or break two new novels, and a follower asked if I could describe my process. It ended up being a really looong Tweet thread so I thought I would pull it all together here for folks who might not be on Twitter. I always outlined from the time I first started writing, I think it was a function of having been a lawyer and knowing that a brief has to take a judge or a jury to a certain conclusion so structure is important. I’m also the type of person who likes to have an itinerary when I travel and hotels booked in advance. But it wasn’t until I got my first job in Hollywood that I truly learned how to “break a story”. Ira Behr, Rick Manning and Hans Beimler were my teachers and they were very good ones. So without further ado….
First, I never start anything unless I know the ending. I don’t mean the wrap up, falling action, but the actual exciting climax. The next thing I ask myself is “What is the theme of this book?” What is it I want to impart about the human condition? The human heart in conflict with itself as William Faulkner wrote.
My short hand for this is “Plot is the shit that happens. Theme is why it matters.”
I then look at my cast of characters — protagonist, antagonist, supporting players, love interests etc. I then pick out a different colored pen for each of them. I start thinking about their views on life, the problem that the book will address, their relationships, how they might connect, and I try really hard to put myself in the mindset of my villain and try to cast him/her as the hero, because they are in their own story.
Now I’m ready to start. I have used both white board and cork board with cards. I prefer the cards/cork method. It’s easier to make changes when you just have to pull down or move a card rather than trying to carefully erase on a white board.
I put up headers on my board — Teaser, Act I, Act II, Act III (most of my novels work out as teaser and 3. (Spec scripts are different there I usually go with a teaser and 4 or 5 acts.) I suppose if you were writing a big fantasy tome I’d go with teaser and 5. My books generally run about 100,000 words so they fall out into teaser and three pretty easily.
I then go to the end of act three and I put up that big final scene. After that I head to the teaser, and write down the opening that I hope will convince a reader to buy my book instead of a six pack of beer, (as I believe Robert Heinlein once said).
I then try to figure out what is the final scene of act 1 and the final scene of act 2. Because if you know where you are going it’s much easier to know what scenes you will need to get there.
Then I start to fill in those, what I call, tent pole scenes. They’re the fun ones in between the Kansas/Nebraska scenes (kudos to Walter Jon Williams for coining this phrase) that have to be there but aren’t as interesting or exciting. The Kansas/Nebraska scenes are sort of the mortar if you will between the big flashy scenes, the connective tissue. When I’m writing a screenplay I put up every scene. You really can’t do that with a novel so you pick the big important scenes.
Remember I mentioned the different colored pens, the reason for that is you will have a visual of when you lose track of a character. If their color vanishes off the board it means you need to find something for them to do or it might mean you don’t need that character or they are not the right character to have a major role in this story & there may be some other supporting player who would be more interesting and useful to the arc of the story, and who are just dying to be a leading man or a leading lady.
There are a number of advantages to this method. For one when I go into my office each morning I can look at the outline & I know what scenes I’m writing that day. The other major advantage is I do not write a hundred pages of prose and then discover it was the wrong direction and leads only into a dead end. I have found all those dead ends in the outlining stage so I can avoid them. Another thing I do is jot down bits of dialogue on the cards as they occur to me. Then I don’t forget them, and they help flesh out the bare bones of a scene and remind me of the flavor and the emotion I’m hoping to evoke.
So I hope this was useful to any aspiring writers out there, but ultimately every writer has to figure out what works for them. But I promise you, if you end up in a Hollywood writers room you are going to be doing this… a lot… for hours and if it’s a good group it’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
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