Where to Go Next: The Outline

After finishing up the five-part series on where to begin, I thought it would be helpful to talk about where I go next. I’ve been part of many conversations with fellow writers about their processes, and most agree that authors fall into two camps when they are developing their stories: plotters and pantsers. A pantser is a writer who “flies by the seat of their pants” when they’re writing. They have their story idea, and they just go for it, uncovering the story as they write. A plotter is a writer who outlines the story ahead of time and knows the basic story beats they are writing towards.

Neither process is right or wrong, and both have pros and cons. A plotter knows where their story is headed, but sometimes this can shackle the writer to a particular set of actions when the characters really want to do something else. A pantser allows their characters more freedom to roam, but sometimes this can lead to a meandering story with little discernible arc.

As the title of this post indicates, I am a plotter. I write outlines of my books after I’ve written a bit here and there on the original germ of the idea. I do this to make sure I have enough story to make the exploration worthwhile, as well as to guide me towards the natural beats of a story.

My outlining process has evolved over the years. I went back to look at my notes from my very first completed novel, Letters from Ruby (Abingdon, 2013), and what I found made me laugh out loud. The first few items I unearthed were what I expected.

There was the image that sparked the idea for the book:

Marvin’s room on the day he died: the bureau looked like a shelf at the pharmacy. The hospital bed was the only thing in the room that looked out of place. The dying man went with the dusty shag carpet and the wood paneling and the teary-eyed love of his wife holding has hand, lightly like holding a bird’s egg for fear she might break a bone.

The hospital bed would have looked very much in place if it had been in a hospital. Everything looks in place in a hospital room – the shining, metal equipment, the monitors with their numbers and lines, the robotic bed, all in pristine order. In fact, the only thing that looks out of place in a hospital room is the patient because the patient is usually dirty—dirty and broken down.

There was also a paragraph explaining to myself how I was going to tell the story:

Two level story: main story (A) (told in third person limited perspective) of Calvin Harper’s first year as a priest and the relationship that forms between he and Ruby Redding while her husband Whit suffers and dies from cancer; back story and future story (B) (told in first person perspective) in the form of letters from Ruby to Calvin during the year after he has left Victory, WV telling about her life with Whit and about the current goings-on of St. John’s Church. Sometimes the letters will introduce things that will then be expounded upon in the narrative and sometimes the letters will conclude things introduced in the narrative.

And then there was another document called “Outline,” in which I wrote long paragraphs about each of the first five chapters of the book. Then there’s an all-caps line that says

“GAP! MIDDLE OF BOOK”

Then a short bit that I knew went in the middle. And then

“GAP! OTHER MIDDLE OF BOOK”

The outline ended with the last few chapters that I knew would close the story.

So what I did was think long and hard about the beginning and end of the book and just skipped thinking about the middle at all. So, I suppose I began my novel-writing career as a “plantser” (a cross between a plotter and a pantser).

Nowadays, my outlining process is a little more structured, though I try hard not to outline to such a granular degree that I don’t give myself room to explore.

I begin with a basic three-act structure (see this article from MasterClass for more info). In my blank document (or sometimes *gasp* on a real piece of paper) I write “Act 1,” “Act 2,” and “Act 3.” Then I begin adding story elements that I know for sure will happen – usually the very beginning and often the inciting incident that spurs the movement from Act 1 to Act 2. There’s also a good chance I already know some of the climactic elements that will go in Act 3. And if I’m really lucky I will have an idea for the low-point of the story that will go near the end of Act 2.

My first pass over the outline finishes with something like this:

I write in all these elements and then think about the story beats that could stitch them together. Again, I don’t get too granular here, but I at least try to figure out a plausible path that passes through the big tentpost parts of the story. As I discern this path, I fill in more and more details on the outline. Of course, when the actual writing begins, the characters might rebel against the outline, but that is a post for another day.

Outlining helps me understand the general shape of my story. I try to figure out the causes and effects that push the main plot points into each other. I’m not thinking too much about theme or character growth at this point because those elements reveal themselves more in the writing and editing.

I tend to start writing the book before I fully flesh out the outline because I get impatient. But I always revisit the outline document as I write to see if I am still on course or if I need to update the outline to address new story paths.

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If you’d like to read one of my books for which I made a crazy, crazy spreadsheet to align the dates of events in all five stories that make up the novel, then check out The Storm Curtain. For that book, I wrote the entire story for the main character, then the stories for all the secondary characters, AND THEN tried to fit them all together. Phew, that was some heavy lifting. But I think it turned out really well. Give it a read!