Personally, I think the very word outline, with its “bad school day” connotations, scares off some developing novelists because of the marble rigidity it implies. I’d love it if some other terms came into use: itinerary, road map, guide. Any suggestions?
Call it what you will, acquiring skills to exert at least some narrative control over the unruliness of raw creativity is vital for a novelist.
I’ve posted about my own struggle to put that together. Here’s a brief description of the method I came up with. It didn’t come easy, but it came. And I’ve never looked back. Back in the day, it never occurred to me to give it a name, but lately, for the sake of convenience, I’ve started calling it the Three Rivers Method. You’ll see why:
Quick Start
Begin with the simplest of outlines, one page, no more elaborate than a grocery list.
Freewrite as you go
I’ve posted extensively about this amazing tool – the “Freewriting” tab at the top of the page is a convenient link those posts – but in a nutshell, freewriting allows you to plan organically, with material fresh from the unconscious. A couple of freewriting variations use the Q & A. I call them “interrogations.” I go into my Columbo mode and start using them immediately, because the briefer the outline, the more questions are instantly raised:
Why did Vanessa do this or that? What made Carl so angry – or depressed, or embarrassed? How does Jennifer feel about being in love with a married man? How does Tony’s wife feel when his criminal past is suddenly revealed? What does she do? And so on.
I’m fishing for answers – that’s how you build the factual and emotional inner logic of characters and story. But each answer spawns new questions. Freewriting facilitates this crucial back-and-forth.
Write Draft from Day 1
From the start, I’m turning out raw draft. It’s a mistake not to – to hold off on “the actual writing” until you’ve figured everything out. The writing itself is too much a key part of the discovery process. How do I really know my character, for instance, if I haven’t let them talk?
The Three Rivers Method is bone simple: all it does is up three streams, or rivers,” of activity for getting a novel underway and keeping it going:
- Writing the story
- Planning the story
- Writing about the story
There it is: three parallel streams of story development, each one feeding on – and nourishing – the others. Whenever one runs dry, I switch to one of the others.
I’ll say again, this is not a complicated method, nor is it demanding. Once you get the idea, it’s not hard to stick to it – but you must. And that was always the hard part for me: I never responded well to anybody telling me I “must” do anything – even when the word was coming from no one else but me.
But let’s get positive: I can say that in my experience, if I stick to my method, I can’t help but move forward productively. My characters and plot can’t help but grow in the best ways.
Coming: how others do it. A few more approaches to outlining.
That reminds me to add a necessary disclaimer: No method will work for everyone. A writer’s process must fit his or her own personality, in its infinite variability. When a method runs you into a wall, try something else, and keep trying until you find the method that works for you.
