The Joys of Outlining

I'm a happy writer today, because last night I got a pretty detailed outline written for book 3 of my HOUR OF MISCHIEF series. Which is good because for awhile I only had a vague idea about what was going to happen. And since outlining has put me in such a good mood. I think I'll write a post about it today!

I think I've written about outlining many times on the blog in various other posts, which might put a few pantsers off. Hey, I respect pantsers. I have NO idea how they can start a story and just write without knowing the ending. This is a foreign concept to me. And honestly, if pantsing works well for you, go for it.

But today I'm going to talk about all the things outlining is good for and why I am such a die hard planner. So, let's jump in!

1) Outlining lays down the track

This is an obvious one. Outlining gives you a path to follow that will take you to where you're going. And for fast drafting especially, I find this useful. If I know where I'm going, I know where to focus in early scenes and it helps me pace my story better from the get go. That way there's a lot less huge structure edits to do after the first draft is done. Because structure edits are hellish. It also helps to see the end goal, It makes me power through the words, even when I'm hitting a block. And speaking of which...

2) Less writer's block

It helps to know what scenes you need to write because then you're not left sitting at your desk wondering 'what am I supposed to do now?' True you might be stuck at your desk one day not wanting to write anything even if you KNOW what's coming, but at least you know what you have to do. You aren't lost in the black pit wondering if there's even a story to tell. I know that feeling. That's why I vowed never to start a story without an outline again.

3) Outlining helps with Story Structure

You've probably heard of a lot of different structures. The three act structure, the heroes journey, there are a lot of ways to pace your novel, but really only a few that work really well. Even if you are a pantser, when it comes to editing, you really need an outline to figure out where your major story events stand. Does your inciting incident come to late? Is there enough build up to the climax? Do you have a lowest point? Does your middle have a lot going on or does it drag? These are all questions that need answering, and whether you choose to do it in the first draft or second is your choice. Though personally, I think its easier to tackle in the first draft.

However you write, outlines will always come back around. And while some may choose not use them, I think they are one of the most valuable tools in a writer's arsenal.

I guess it doesn't hurt that outlining makes me feel really organized and happy. But that's just personal.

Happy Writing!

Giving Plot to the Plotless Part 6: The Journey Goes On

Its only been a little over a year since the initial affair which sparked so many words and characters. It feels like forever ago. Not just fifteen measly months. A writer's world and skill set can change a lot in fifteen months.

This series began as an experiment for me in a lot of ways. An experiment in pantsing rather than plotting. A test to see if I could collaborate with another writer. A challenge to see if I could work backwards from my usual process, shoving material into a structure rather than creating the structure before the material.

In many ways, I got a lot out of this experiment and I continue to do so. I enjoyed the freedom it gives me. I enjoyed the sensation of being bossed around by my characters and watching things I thought were absolute and immovable change before my eyes, heedless of my thoughts. Going with the flow of my creativity and whims to this degree felt really good.

It still does. Because my friend and I still have the freedom to make this series what we want it to be. We can take it new directions. We can write whatever scenes we want even if we don’t plan on including them in the final product.

I guess, more than anything, I took away a sense of the diversity of writing. There is no one way to go about something. Writing can be solitary but it can also be done with company. Writing can be organized or it can be free formed. Writing can remain forever in a secret folder on the computer or it can be finish and sent out into the wide, vast world of publishing. It all depends on what the writer wants. Whether or not they want control or they want to let their characters take them for a ride.
And sometimes, a balance of all these elements isn’t so bad either.

I’d encourage other writers to jump out of their comfort zone in future projects. Experimentation in writing is your friend. If you're predominately a first person POV writer, delve into the 3rd person. If you prefer the comforts of fantasy, experiment with a little straight realism. If you like dark, gritty drama, try your hand out at whimsical comedy. It doesn't have to be GOOD. It can suck and when its done you can lock it in a 'never again' folder.

I could have easily discovered a deep rooted hatred for pantsing with this experiment with my friend. If I had, that would have been fine. But at least I tried. The best writing has always come from trying out an idea that seems ridiculous and will probably never work. Whether it be a genre or a category. Genre fiction wasn't always so respected by the world. And who'd have thought 20 years ago that there would be a huge explosion in Young Adult fiction? Heck, who'd have thought five years ago that New Adult would become such a thing?

Great things come from experimentation and throwing your muse out into the great unknown. At least in my case, I got a lot out of the experiment and I will continue to do so in the weeks, months, maybe years, to come.

Thanks for following me on this little journey and there will be more posts on the way soon!

Giving Plot to the Plotless Part 5: Plot vs. Extra

Last time we discussed love triangles and how they factored into the biggest switch in my friend and I's pet project. Well, now let's talk about fanfiction and its merits. This does have a connection to putting plot to the plotless so bare with me.

There’s a reason fanfiction is such a big deal. Because any good book has a world beneath the words on the page. A realm of characters not yet fully explored. A treasure trove of extra moments to make the reader laugh and cry. Books are like icebergs, only the very tip breaks the surface of a veritable ocean of other stories and characters. For this reason, I will debate the worth of fanfiction all day. Because it can change our perspective on the world we thought we knew and offer more depth to what was already there. Heck, even some of the most beloved stories, movies and musicals of all time are the fanfiction of classics (Wicked, anyone?).

So what does this have to do with giving plot to a pile of plotless scenes. Well, this project of ours had a lot of characters, scenes and alternate plot threads. And one of the challenges we faced when putting this jumble of words into a plot structure was figuring out which scenes to cut and which to keep. Which would be part of the main canon and which would remain little extras that only we knew about. Fanfiction, if you will.

You see, fanfiction often allows complete freedom. Alternate universes, non-canon pairings and pointless fluff are all free game. But with a novel, each scene and character needs to be intentional and important to a book with a distinctive arc. A set beginning, middle and end. Cramming what we had into this kind of mold meant some stuff needed to be cut.

Extra points of view, for instance. In a novel, too many points of view get confusing. It’s hard for the reader to form an emotional connection with one character when they keep on being thrust into the heads of several others. Some people can pull off multiple POVs well (Michael Grant and George R. R Martin come to mind) but most books with more than one POV stick with two or three. Maybe four or five if the author feels bold. So, a lot of scenes where only non-POV characters were present in our books had to be cut.

Back when we weren’t sure of the direction of our story, we also took a lot of experimental routes. These were paths we weren’t exactly sure of, and we wrote them mostly for fun. But when it came to the main plot, other, stronger plot lines had to take precedent. Its another sacrifice, but an easier one to make, especially when our experiments turned out a little goofy. (One of our villains turned good and went on a crusade to save stray cats, if that gives you a clue)

And there are a host of fluffy, fun scenes we wrote for the sole purpose of boredom that have to be cut because they don’t have a huge bearing on the plot. They're only there as a funny moment. Which is fine for fanfiction and fun, but in an actual novel, it slows the pacing to a dead halt.

So many things have to be taken into account in a novel. Pacing, arc, tone, character, structure. A lot of details and they become more apparent when you’re trying to stuff what is already written into the right structure. Its kind of like a puzzle. A fun and challenging puzzle with extra pieces thrown in to make things harder. Once the extra pieces are weeded out, the main puzzle goes together easier. It’s a challenge but its rewarding and fun.

So where does one go after weeding out the weaker scenes and establishing the framework and world for their story? Well, we're still on that journey. We're not at the finishing line yet.

Join me next time for the conclusion of this epic- Part 6: The Journey Goes On

Giving Plot to the Plotless Part 4: The Big Switch

So, let's talk for a minute about love triangles.

I think there’s a reason many people are growing tired with love triangles in literature. I mean, sure, they’re over used and repetitive and often unnecessary, but why are people really tired of them? I think its because they’re boring. In most books with a love triangle, it’s easy to tell who the girl will end up choosing from the very beginning. Usually they stay with the boy they show interest in in the first, say, 30 pages.

The problem is most love triangles don’t present a very compelling dilemma. Either the third wheel is an asshole, or we don’t feel a genuine struggle in the love triangle that gives us any reason to think the main character at the center will change their minds. This is either the Titantic or the Twilight dilemma.

In the Titanic dilemma, the third wheel of the love triangle is a cartoonishly scummy and stuck up upper class citizen who never has any chance of competing with the perfect, charming, struggling artist, Jack. He basically exists as an obstacle rather than a compelling person. Of course Rose isn't going to end up with him. He's a bump in her road to true love (Eventually ending in tragedy, but that's beside the point)

More common as of late though is the Twilight dilemma, where even though we know Jacob is probably a much better choice for Bella, we know she won’t pick him. She has already demonstrated her complete addiction to Edward and his attention by her complete emotional break down during book 2. Maybe this could have been more compelling is she did consider the possibility of being with Jacob but she never really does, except when Edward is out of the picture. Therefore we’re just left wanting the damn triangle to end and for someone to put poor Jacob out of his misery.

It is a rare occurrence when a character starts out with one character, truly caring about them, but ends up with another character by the end because of various circumstances. It is very rare that the reader feels genuine tension over which guy/ girl the main character will choose. I think the most compelling love triangle I ever read was in the Matched Trilogy, by Allie Condie, where I genuinely thought both boys in the love triangle had their worth. I still had a good idea about how it was going to end but it kept my attention.

Love triangles are hard. And we had a love kite on our hands. So, in the original rendition of my friend and I’s book, we originally started with a bit of a Twilight dilemma.

We kept the original pairings together because we had it in our mind that it was necessary and ‘best’ in some way. But in the process their relationships reached a point where they went flat and stopped changing and evolving. The only things evolving were the ‘affair relationships.’ They continued where the other relationships left off and really developed the main characters. All of them. No matter which way I looked at it, the affairs that had happened by chance needed to become the official pairings. And when I realized this I couldn't help but panic.

Oh god… how was I going to tell my friend that we needed to make this HUGE change to the story? This would change so many different scenes and moments. For the better, but it was still a change. And the problem with writing with another person is you BOTH have to be behind whatever direction you choose to take.

Truth be told, I didn't know how she’d take the switch. I thought she might take it badly. I thought she might argue the point. So of course, I do what I do and I wrote a fourteen page analytic argument about why the official pairings had to switch. Fourteen pages. More than 4,000 words if you were wondering. Longer than any research paper I ever had to write.

This is how I deal with arguments.

Funny enough, she took the change well. And she ended up giving a lot of good input on the theories and ideas I had already concocted. After a nearly all night brain storming session, it was official. We were switching the pairings. And the characters were better for it. They had more cohesive arcs ending in a much more satisfying conclusion. And the relationships didn't have quite as many nasty implications as the original ones did. I felt a lot better about the direction we were taking the story.

But while this solved character problems, it didn’t account for how many scenes we had to fit into a book series. Join me in Part 5 for Plot vs. Extras.

Giving Plot to the Plotless Part 3: A Whole New World

If you can forgive my Disney reference in the title, welcome back to Giving Plot to the Plotless, after what seems like forever. I’ve been… busy *Looks around suspiciously* More on why soon. But for now let’s continue with this little venture.

Anyone close to me knows how my creative process works, most probably because I zone out as soon as the process starts. The moment I get a tiny inkling of an idea I find interesting, my brain explodes and goes to work on it. 

And as I sat in my school library one day, thinking about maybe doing homework (as students sometimes do), I came upon one such spark of an idea: What if my friend and I were able to change the world and plot enough to make an entirely new book series based on what we had already written. After all, we’d spent so much time. Thousands upon thousands of words had gone into, essentially, experimental scenes that wouldn’t come to anything. Unless we found a way to make an original story out of it.

My brain took this as a challenge and accepted it readily, immediately going to work, riddling through all the elements that would need to be expanded and changed. Within an hour of sitting in the library, I had concocted a basic world and plot in which to fit our scenes into. It had a lot of holes and was far from complete but it was something.

I excitedly relayed everything I had come up with to my friend. We started getting together on weekends for massive brainstorm sessions to piece our cobbled together scenes into a cohesive world. And it was fun. Challenging but fun. It felt like dumping a 1000 piece puzzle of characters, plot points and relationships onto a pile on the floor and scrambling to put them all together to see the whole picture.

We got really into the world building aspect of our project. And let's be honest, it was fun. 

There are so many aspects to consider when shaping a world: history, culture, religion, dress, gender roles, geography, politics, leisure, and societal systems just to name a few. Where are the most important landmarks and locations? Do certain members of society have an advantage over others? Is this a corrupt society and why has it become that way? What are the visual aesthetics of the world? What historical events still hold the most significance over the present day? Why do people believe what they believe? 

This is just brushing the surface of world building, which I will probably do a post about on a later date. But you can see how involved we got in the world building process and how many details there were to consider, especially considering the number of scenes and characters we'd already established. After all, before one can fit something plotless into a plot, they have to fit it into a world. Without a living, breathing world, the characters and plot have no credibility. 

But it wasn't a one way street. We didn’t simply fit scenes into the world. The world created new scenes as it developed. With the change in venue, we ended up introducing whole new characters and concepts we hadn’t thought about before. Though we had about 300,000 words already written. We churned out another 200,000 words in new plot lines and extras written with our new characters. We rewrote old scenes in a new light. Took new pathways to expand ideas. And we started fleshing out the characters.

Of course, you always run into problems trying to make a world and new plot around already established characters. And the problems we experienced were of the relationship variety. Despite the affair our main characters had, the original pairings were still intact. A and T still ended up together in the end. So, did M and L. But as we continued to flesh out our new plot and world a little seed of doubt grew in the back of my mind. An analytic seed, fertilized by my years of reading and writing. And when allowed to grow long enough this seed resulted in one of the biggest changes to our magnum opus.

More on that in Part 4: The Big Switch

Giving Plot to the Plotless (Part 2: The Love Kite)

Hey everyone! Its been awhile hasn't it? Finals sure do make updating difficult and the holidays are surprisingly busy so I haven't gotten time in awhile. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But, without further ado: Part 2 of Giving Plot to the Plotless!

Alright, so if you've been following the last posts, you know that character A and R decided to have an affair behind my friend and I's backs. And when we tried to restrain them, they basically gave us the literary middle finger and took over our typing fingers, forcing us to write more scenes.
But of course they were not only screwing us over but also their original literary partners. We'll call them characters L and T. What were we going to do with them? I mean they had to find out right?

No, of course not. We were just going to keep it a complete secret from them and--

Just kidding, they found out pretty quickly. In fact, L and T only ever met because the original affair happen. And that eventually resulted in them getting together as revenge.

And then they kept getting together. Just as A and R kept getting together.

Inadvertently, with our anger with A and R, we made an entirely new affair that lasted a lot longer than it should have. You've heard of love triangles? Well, this was a love kite. All the characters were torn between two different people.

And I was freaking out a bit. I mean, what the heck were we doing? Neither of us liked writing romance that much. It's not our genre. But the couples were just so FUN to mess with. How would they react in this situation? Let's try it. What if we put them here with these characters? No harm in that.

And the scenes between the rebellious, unofficial, totally-not-an-actual-thing couples continued. They continued to develop and expand and before long we had a LOT of scenes written. Three months after we first started we had almost 200,000 words worth of material. All completely plotless of course.

That's not to say that only A, R, L, and T were the focus of these scenes. We started tossing in more of our characters and experimenting with how they would react to certain situations. We explored a lot of our characters insecurities and fears and discovered some new ones.

Before we knew it we had a network of characters on our hands. It kind of seemed like the building blocks for a plot. Possibly a new book that was a completely original thing. All we had to do was change a few names at that point because our characters really had developed into completely new entities. R, L and T were especially different than who they were at the start.

So, one day, in the library, I pulled open my laptop and started brainstorming a new world for our characters to fit into. And that, of course, is where the real challenge began.

Join me next time for Part 3: A Whole New World...hopefully it will not be as delayed as part 2. *Hangs head in shame* The holidays really do make things busy don't they?

Til next time!

~Aimee

Giving Plot to the Plotless (Part 1: The Affair)

So, as we have discussed in the intro to this venture, my friend and I only meant to write one scene between these characters, just out of curiosity. We'll call them R and A, for the purposes of this post. Character R and A had established lives at the time of this scene because they belonged to our separate stories. In fact, they both already had love interests. They were in pairing we were quite proud of actually. We fully shipped the pairings we had created. And love triangles weren't our thing.

Before I began writing this, I'd never had the problem of having characters 'go rogue' so to speak. They sometimes developed in ways that surprised me but I always had a good idea who they were from the start. People often talk about their characters taking the reigns from them and driving them in another direction. I always thought this was a funny, exaggeration of sorts.

It is not.

In the midst of writing our sixth scene between these characters, they were having a rather emotional discussion after A had been disturbed by a nightmare. We wrote the scene as usual and finished it. But then my friend and I facebooked each other at about the same time: I feel like a kiss should have been there.

Our characters were bizarrely attracted to each other. Even though they were in happy relationships. We questioned this phenomenon for a moment and then decided to go for it. It wasn't like it was going to go anywhere.

A few scenes later our characters, A and R, were officially in an affair. Behind our backs. We just kept on writing scenes with them and they kept wanting romantic moments. Did we give them permission to do that? NO! In fact a few scenes earlier, before the first kiss, we talked about how they would NEVER be in any sort of romantic relationship. They were perfectly happy where they were. We're in total control of our characters anyway.

Right?

No, apparently not. A and R decided to go rogue. And it was this first kiss between them, this "Literary Affair" that lead to about 2,000 pages worth of material. From two writers who don't write romance. And all because, each time we got an idea, we let our characters take the reigns. And we got a lovely mass of words because of it.

We also didn't get very much homework or sleep done, but that's beside the point.

Tune in next time for Part 2: The Love Kite

Giving Plot to the Plotless (Introduction: The Experiment)

When it comes to starting a book, there are two kinds of writers: Pantsers and Plotters. We've heard this many times before, and by now most of us know where we stand on the spectrum. We either start writing and fly by the seat of our pants, letting our writing lead us where we may, or we sit down and outline our book from start to finish before we type the first word. Or, sometimes, a mix of both.

For awhile, I thought I was a pantser because, hey, I never wrote down outlines. I thought about the story in my head for a few days, then started writing. But as I matured as a writer, I realized I'd always been an plotter at heart. I was just too stubborn to put the outline down on paper.

In fact, its kind of impossible for me to be a pantser. When an idea hits me--a really good, I-need-to-write-this-down-now, kind of idea-- it often explodes. Within a few days of daydreaming I have the beginning, middle and end basically plotted out in my head and character arcs and relationships nailed down. I just need to fill in a few gaps and pieces before I'm ready to roll. My ideas mature very quickly and its hard for me to step into a story having no idea where its going to go.

And then, last year, something happened. Almost a year ago today in fact. I met my friend. We'll call her 'T' for short. T and I were talking about two of our characters in one of our writing conversations. She was recounting her main character's past and I kept on chiming in saying 'oh yeah, my character had something similar happen to him'. Eventually this expanded. Our characters would get along, we decided. In fact, it would be very interesting to write a conversation with them. Just one conversation to see what happened.

They had a conversation. Then we decided to write another scene. Then another. And yet another. Slowly, other characters started getting involved as we experimented relationships. New plot threads came in. And we just kept going, and going, and going. As of now, we have written about 2,000 pages of material.

Yikes right?

It gets even better. Now we're trying to distill all of this original material into a series of books with a plot. And it isn't easy. But it is one of the most fun and strange experiences I have ever had writing.

This is an interesting journey I've embarked on, and a long one. But I think its worth writing about because it has been a really unique experience for me. I'm an plotter who's been taken by her characters and dragged by the seat of her pants through hundreds of thousands of words of scenes in just a year.

The journey is still going, but let's see how far we've come, while discussing writing tips, outlining and plotting. It might have some good lessons for NaNoWriMo in there, as well. ;)

Stay tuned for Part 1: The Affair.