Outlining and the Benefits of Telling It To Screw Itself

So one of the things that's been happening recently in the #RetakeMassEffect movement is the discussion of artistic integrity and whether or not video games are art and blah blah blah, which I might write a blog post on one day.

But today is not this day.

Today's post, after a couple of days of angsting over being unable to work on this paper due to lack of interest and being frustrated with some things in general, is about writing. Specifically, the art of "making it up as you go along" in writing, compared to "outlining everything in minute detail."


This has been a big thing with the recent ME3 drama: the fact that we're all pretty sure (if not positive, I don't recall anything official being said about it) that Bioware's writers were making the trilogy up as they went along.

So what's the better way to write? Basically, you have two different camps: the "Oh I Can't Function Without An Outline" camp and the "Outlines Bog Me Down and Cramp my Creative Style!" camp.

While I'm definitely the latter, a lot of people swear by outlining. How To Write A Book Now basically tells you to outline EVERYTHING - character archetypes, character development, plot events both major and minor, etc. Footsteps to a Novel is the exact same way. Both of these don't even touch on what is sometimes referred to as "organic" novel writing. This Book, which I both own and recommend highly for a beginning writer, also has an entire chapter on outlining . . . with one small section in there on "freeform outlining," which is labeled as leading to more revisions.

So what about this "freeform outlining?" Well, there's really no guides out there on how to do it. Basically you sit down with a notebook or a computer and a few notes, possibly character descriptions or outlines, and you start writing.

This is literally the outline to the first, finished book of my fantasy trilogy.

Because I started writing when I was seven (yes, about the time I figured out what writing was), I've never been much of an outliner. I've always been of the I'm-Sitting-Down-And-Writing-This-Out variety. The fantasy novel pictured above, where the chapter titles are all dates now, didn't even have a standard month system until its rewrite (pictured above). 

A little bit of outlining is necessary, of course, as I found out with For Truth Only (hereafter FTO). As the first novel I wrote while I was in 8-10th grades, it was surprisingly internally consistent and had a standard language, character pattern, character growth, and lore system. However, it also was just sort of ... not that great. So the first novel had already been rewritten heavily once and didn't require an outline. The second one, which is only a little done, looks more like this. 

This is the outline to the second book of the trilogy, which is . . . a lot more outlined.

Note that the chapter folders to the side, which are each supposed to be labeled with the title, don't all have chapter titles. I haven't even figured out when each chapter starts, because there's no point. It'll happen, or it won't happen, and I'll figure it out as I go. However, I know what I want to happen in each one because I have those ideas, but even those small paragraphs are less descriptive than they should be. 

I'm using a lot of personal examples primarily because I have them, and authors don't usually discuss what they use or the benefits of either because, frankly, non-authors don't particularly care about the mechanisms they use to get the end product. But I think it's an interesting thing to debate, because a lot of people are either of the "you sit down and write it" stance, or the "you have to meticulously outline it" stance, and people new to writing don't know which way to go. 

Why outlining isn't always a good idea. Also, you shouldn't outline with friends.

Outlining will obviously cover your mistakes, making internal consistency and coherency more likely. Now, you don't have to function within the outline -- indeed, where I do bother to outline, the outline tends to change and get moved around. A lot. Don't even ask what happened during NaNo with Splintered Legend, my space-opera trilogy. Its outline is still crying in a corner. And outlining can be useful, if you aren't sure where go go afterwards. 

You don't know how many times these four chapters had documents switched around and moved to entirely different chapters.

In the end, it doesn't exactly matter which thing you chose. It's just really, really important to know these few things:

IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE YOU START WRITING

1. The Beginning.

As we joke in choirs all the time, there's two things people remember: the beginning, and the end. It's important to sink your audience with a good starting line. Everyone, even if they haven't read the books, knows about "Call me Ishmael," or "It was a dark and stormy night." A good hook gets people interested. It's also tough. For example, this

Firstly, we all die. There is no happy ending. There is just this: we all die.

is the current hook to my Doctor Who/Mass Effect 3 crossover. I consider it one of the best ones I've ever written. It gets you immediately hooked into the story and sayssomethingabouttheendofthegame *cough*. Now, what I think is one of my weakest hooks, the current first line of Splintered Legend.

By definition, bars and their cousins — taverns, dives, abbak-duras, etc — tend to be places one does not go to alone, even on the isolated world of Ildir, and especially when the visitor is young, female, and relatively attractive. This, of course, did not deter the lone woman entering the dilapidated watering hole on the spaceport’s main road.

It's . . . okay, I suppose. It could be better. I was also in a hurry writing it (NaNoWriMo, 'nuff said) with plans to go back and fix it later, and just haven't. 

The important bit is that you need to know and have a solid beginning to your story (while my first lines and hooks might not be that great, my first chapters are always solid, no matter what) because that's the important bit. You need to introduce characters, settings, and the plot, or else people will get bored. 

2. The End

Before you start writing, there are two things you absolutely need to know: how it begins, and how it ends. Otherwise, you shouldn't. start. writing. 

The ending is important. It should be foreshadowed, a logical conclusion, and well done. If you end the story on an awesome note, then you'll have people who read it, enjoy it, and buy more of your stuff. 

This is about how I outline. I know what happens in the beginning of the story, what happens in the end, and a couple of things along the way. For example, let's look at my Mass Effect AU story, Chiaroscuro. 

What I knew in the beginning: Kaidan was told to get on the Normandy and run intelligence on Shepard's operations. 

How I knew I wanted it to end: Before the beginning of ME3, which, after Arrival, became just before Shepard was recalled to Earth, with the relationship between Shepard and Kaidan repaired. 

What I wanted to happen in the middle: Kaidan getting punched by a krogan. Also, maybe hooking Jack and Joker up for the lolz.

Yeah, that was about it. 

Now, on the other hand: my Psych/Criminal Minds crossover, Murder by Death was Better as a Movie has hit a roadblock. Why? Guess what I didn't know when I started writing it. Yep, how it's going to end. That's why it's been on hiatus for nearly a year. I'm not 100 percent sure which way to go with it.

I'm obviously not talking about my non-fandom works because, well, I'd like to publish them one day. But for each one -- both of them trilogies -- I know exactly how I want the trilogy and each book to end, period. Down to who's alive, who's dead, who's married, who's got severe emotional problems, who's showing up like big damn heroes at the end -- and especially the last one, because I have to keep that particular case from becoming a deus ex machina, because deus ex machinas are bad.

Note: If a fan makes this about your ending, it isn't a good ending.

Editor's Note: A lot of people survived the Hindenburg crash, so it's not in that poor of taste.

The point is that, no matter how you go about it, you need to know how to begin your story and how to end. It might get rough around the middle as you run out of steam or don't know how to proceed, but you can always skip past that part and come back to it later (unless you're anal retentive like me and NEED to write in a linear style). 

So what I'll leave you with is a shameless plug to buy something: Click here for Scrivener, my favorite writing software in the world. Scrivener is useful because you can shift folders and text documents around at will so they fit together better -- things I do quite often. I don't write anything that's longer than 10,000 words or one section in Word anymore . . . because even my papers for school are a heck of a lot easier to write in Scrivener. I wish I'd had available for my St. Mary's Project (it just NOW came out on Windows). 

All 106 pages in Microsoft Word. No research in the same window, no notes, no anything. 

I . . . I don't know how I did it now.

And that's about it for today's blog. Speaking of papers, I need to get back to that. It's due in a very short period of time after all, and it's taken me a half-hour longer to write this than I thought it would.

Oh, graduate school.