Rough Copy: #4 - Outlining and Structure vs Writing Blind · 11:46pm Sep 21st, 2013
So, it's NaPoWrMo right now, even though everybody knows that, and since I have a word count to meet, right now, it's about quantity, not quality. Sure, popular culture and every creative instinct you have makes you cringe at that, but I've learned that has its place in writing, too. Rough copies (do I get points for sneaking the blog series title in there?).
But, that's not exactly what this one's about, is it?
I wanted to say (while I still remembered to) how much I NEED and LOVE outlines. So, right now, I have notes and stuff to go off of for what I'm writing, but I hadn't thought I'd get this far within the month, so I don't have an actual outline for what how far I've gotten.
Now, other authors might not need an outline, and that's for you to discover on your own, but for me? Hell! With only a general idea of what's supposed to happen, all I'm doing is meandering around for an unnecessarily long, terribly paced set of conversations, hardly actual story. If I don't know what I'm doing, the characters do the talking for me, most of the time yelling at me to-
The worst part of it for me, is the structurelessness. Yeah, I had to 'Add that to Dictionary.' I'm finding that it's one of the biggest critiques with bad fanfiction in general, that because we're beginners, we still have to learn how to properly set up our shiz. Some professional writers (for example, Stephen King) don't like using outlines of any kind, but for me to remember all the things I want to do in a story, I have to keep track of it.
Oh, and by the way, plotholes? Yeah, those come up EVERYWHERE, and I can't do anything about it until the end of the month. No time for editing. Or, thinking. Uh-huh ... I think you feel my pain.
Again, without some kind of guidance, I'm lost. Maybe that's why this whole post is so all over the place. I miss my outlines <:,C
Happy reading,
Nutters
1366282
That's a pretty solid rule. It's the same principle with me (about knowing where I'm going).
I'm just one of those authors who LOVES outlining. It's before the story is set in stone, where its still only comprised of my own imagination (so it's still kick-ass). I get to play around with the concepts, characters, and plot before they even actually exist (well, with fanfiction, most of the characters already exist in the show, but I think you get what I mean).
For me, outlining includes a little of everything.
I like to have an understanding of who the characters are before I go into war with them, so I might do little bio's or just explain why they have the traits they do, what their motivations are, etc.
Then (or at the same time, each story is different on what I figure out first), I do what I call a 'scene play', for some reason, which is just, like, a list of the scenes and a brief summary of the important things that happen in them. It helps me figure out the logical order of things, you know?
That's for small stories, though, like the ones I'm working on now for my story, Villains. Then again, Villains is a weird case, because all the short stories eventually come to a head, and meet at the end in a big good vs. evil showdown, so for something big like this overall, I have a little binder of all different sorts of notes I've scratched down on what should happen (thematically, conflicts, plot, character arcs, what have you).
I might be guilty of over-planning here and there, but it keeps my head together and I love to do it.
In fact, I spent a full year once just planning a story for another fandom that never got written. That was painful.
I know not to go to that extent ever again, but the next big story that I have floating in the back of my mind right now will have something of an outline, probably closer to Villains than this other one.