Ahh, the rush of new ideas. The inspiration flowing through your veins, the thrum of themes, the envisioning of new characters. Heady stuff.
Then comes the moment you must begin to think logically about your grand ideas. You fall from the clouds of inspiration and land on the road of logic. How can I make this work? Writing, it seems to me, is the marriage of excessive imagination and cold hard logic. Spinning dreams, then tacking their feet to the floor. Before I started my current work, my editor told me she wanted me to try outlining the novel. There are a great many complexities in my next book and outlining made sense. Now that I've finished outlining, I can see the merit in outlining for any kind of novel regardless of complexity. It helped me think about character and plot elements ahead of time that, left on my own, writing scenes and narratives, would have taken much longer to think about and develop. At first, I was nervous that outlining would "squelch my muse", cramp my style. But I got over that soon enough. I was the one outlining - so I was calling the shots, and deciding how it would work. I'll be outlining my next novel as well.
For me, each novel I've written (make that one complete one and two partial ones, including my WIP) has begun with an image rather than an outline or a plot. The plot has arisen out of the image. For
Latter-day Cipher, the image was that of a woman lying dead on a forest floor, with the sunlight in sheets on her body and a secret inside her. For a book that's almost complete which is a prequel to
Cipher, the image was a "disaster apron" used to get newborns out of a hospital nursery in an emergency. For my WIP the image is of a lithopedia.
Actually, I've been using and talking about "controlling images" for years in conjunction with writing non-fiction. It is a concept or image that, true to its name, controls the content of the chapter or section (or more rarely) the non-fiction book I'm writing. The structure of the actual written piece is dictated by the strength and nature of the image.
Am I weird? Does anyone else start this way?
Latayne, you're such a global thinker! For me, I get my ideas from...wherever, and I definitely need to nail them down. I'm not proud. I'll expand a concept from a podcast (as for Seeing Things), snatch my friend's royalty (she was the queen of Sleepy Eye,
really), or noodle over my worst fears (all of my books).
And I'm very much an outliner. Here's a picture of my cumbersome method. Every column is a
chapter. Each character has his or her very own color of sticky note (no sharing or I lose the pattern). I write what happens in each scene on a sticky note. As I place the notes, I'm mindful of rising antagonism and tension. The nice thing about the sticky notes is their flexibility. I can shuffle those puppies around until I like what I see. This works well for me because I'm so visual. I've never tried to travel with this method of outlining, for obvious reasons.
I think and stew over a book idea for a long time before I put anything on paper. I keep a notebook with me for ideas for plot points, settings, occupations, symbolism, motivations. I do research until the information starts repeating itself. Then I make a rough, loose outline and flesh it out more and more, each section impacting and expanding the next, until the story is told. At this point, I make Excel spreadsheets like family trees and a timeline, plugging in plot points, births, deaths, dates etc. to make sure that it is all logical. When I'm sure that I have all my facts straight and know where the story is going, I can relax and enjoy the freedom to be creative because I know the bones are solid and strong.
I don't want to give the wrong impression. I may have been one of those kids who always colored inside the lines, but the colors were out-of-the-box. I once made my third grade teacher angry for using vibrant pinks, turquoise and purples on a special fall leaf project that she chose for me to complete. Didn't I know leaves weren't that color, she demanded? Well, apparently not!
I'm getting some great ideas here. I like Patti's post-it board especially, being a visual person, too.
My muse is neurotic, driving me to outline obsessively, and then flying off in new directions, disregarding the spreadsheet I so carefully crafted - on excel, like Debbie. Still, I like having an idea of the big picture, and an outline helps me do that, even if I ignore it.
The advantage is that I can stop writing the outline if I get bogged down, knowing that by the time I get to that part of the book, everything will be different anyway.
But all the while I'm thinking,
there has to be a better way. Maybe I'll get myself a poster board and some sticky notes. What's a flaming creative like me doing with a spreadsheet, anyway?
PS: No Latayne, you're brilliant.
~
Oh, man, it's confession time. I'm only admitting to this because it's how I've done it with each novel I've written, and I couldn't pretend I've done it any other way. So, here goes: I start a novel with a beginning and an end in mind, and only a vague idea of how I'm going to get from the first page to the last. What's more, I work out the plot points as I go along. Spontaneity is the name of the game. Outlining scares me more than writing the novel, and, Patti, much as I love you, your method would cause me to hyperventilate.
When they say there's no right or wrong way to write a novel, this probably isn't what they have in mind. I know, I'll never be asked to teach a workshop.
But there may be hope for me. My WIP is an experiment, because I'm using Jeff Gerke's How to Find Your Story this time around. It's a multi-page worksheet that helps you consider plot points, theme, characterization, and all the things that outlining does for you. But for someone like me, who hates even the thought of outlining, spreadsheeting or synopsizing, it holds my hand through the process, prompting me to nail down details at the outset, with the intent of making the writing more smooth and efficient, and eliminating loose ends, etc. etc. I like the fact that I can be as detailed (or not) as I want to be with each specific point, and I can skip points altogether if I so choose.
Patti's post on Friday really hit home with me. Because I'm fearful every time I start a new book. And I stay afraid until I get to the last page. And until someone reads and validates it. Maybe Jeff's worksheet will eliminate some of the fear -- but I doubt it. But if it makes the story more cohesive from the get-go, which it has, that's a good thing. And anything that makes this process easier, is extremely welcome.
So, authors, which of us do you most relate to? And, readers, have we blown our cover?
