So here’s the deal. As you may have heard in I Should Be Writing #119, I’ve gotten a number of questions about outlining. I have decided to investigate other outlining methods than the snowball method- ALL FOR YOU. So shoot me your outline ideas/methods, or links to methods, and I’ll try them out. I have three personal projects this year, so I’ll try three different outlining methods and see if I can get some good outcome from them, reporting back to you.
So we have snowflake, what other outlining tools are there? I’ll be looking for some, but if you know any please let me know, send links!
Writing prompt for June 15: MacGuffin: a CD case with the wrong CD in it.
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This is definitely a timely topic. I’m using Mike Stackpole’s “21 Days to a Novel” to help me outline my story.
Also..I’ve lived your writing prompt. Bought my daughter the Gorillaz CD from Best Buy. The CD inside had the Gorillaz label, but the music was actually of Frank Sinatra Christmas songs.
Here are a couple of my favourites. I especially like Holly Lisle’s notecarding method. I love crawling around the floor rearranging notecards to get a plot whipped into shape.
http://www.sff.net/people/alicia/artout.htm
http://hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/notecard_plotting.html
There’s also Lazette Gifford’s Phase method, which I personally don’t click with, but I know people who swear by it.
http://www.fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue%2015/phase.htm
My own has ended up a bit of a combination of various ones. I should write it up as an article sometime.
(Sorry, posted this under the wrong topic. Reposted here).
I’ve tried a variety of different outlining methods. In the end, it’s a matter of finding the one that works for you.
1) No outlining at all. Complete freewriting. Really, you’re still outlining, but in effect the first draft is the outline and then you need to go through and do a lot of editing to bring everything into line. Some people get bored outlining or won’t finish the story if there is no major sense of discovery along the way.
2) Flow charts. I used this for one (unpublished) novel (actually, all my novels are unpublished. I’ve a few short story credits, nothing else). What I did was work out a flow chart for a chapter, using characters, actions consequences and plot points with arrows linking everything, starting with what is ‘upstream’ and working towards the ‘downstream’ consequences. Then, I wrote the chapter, then worked out a flow chart for the next chapter and so on, step by step. Worked ok for me. I now prefer to know where I’m going more than one chapter at a time.
3) Philip Pullman method: Write out a bunch of cool ideas, scenes, plot points on post-it notes. Then rearrange the post-it notes until they make sense, then write book. Works ok. Wasn’t so good for me, but I can see how it’d be very useful if it suits your style.
4) J K Rowling Method: Use a page (or sometimes more) per chapter. Write the names of characters who will appear in the chapter down the left hand side. Rule horizontal lines to separate the characters, then vertical lines (if you want them) to create boxes so that each character has a few boxes next to him/her. Now write the important points that you *want the reader to understand about the character* during this chapter. This can generate a very character-driven narrative (which worked well for J.K. Rowling). I’ve tried it, didn’t find that it worked extremely well for me, but it was interesting and worth playing with (I saw J.K. Rowling explain this method in an interview, holding up a sheet of marked up paper as an example).
5) What I think of as a ‘Gaiman method’, because of his outline of Anansi Boys that is included in one of the editions of the book. I don’t know which one offhand… trade paperback? Anyway, this is what I tend to use these days more than the other methods, it’s also the more straightforward and isn’t really the ‘Gaiman method’ as much as it’s the ‘lot’s of authors use this method’. Basically, just write out the story in a sort of simplified fairy-story style. “There’s a man named Jack. He lives with his mother but they’re both pretty poor”. Add in questions and thoughts. “Maybe Jack loves climbing trees and is the best tree climber around? They could have a neighbour who is a witch? Think about this. Maybe he saw a giant when he was a kid. Sometimes he sees things in the clouds? These things should be inexplicable and weird, try to spook the reader here. Anyway, one day Jack’s mother tells him to take their cow to town.” Write out the entire story from beginning to end in this way. Then go back over it and scribble in notes, or rewrite it or whatever you need to do to it in order to make it into a document that you can follow.
Using this method a short story should only occupy a paragraph, maybe a page, and a novel shouldn’t occupy more than 4-6 pages of handwritten notes (The Anansi Boys outline in one page).
A variation on the last method is to use bullet points instead of running all your sentences together. Some people then work through and expand the bullet points into paragraphs, then into whole chapters.
Hope that helps.
Chris