CA: Outlines · 4:07pm Aug 19th, 2015
The outline is your story’s skeleton. We call it this because it provides us with the bare bones required to identify the beast we are trying to create. It is the framework you hang the picture you’re painting on. This topic of the outline has been updated for my newly revamped Cumulative Advice blog, because I’ve still been discussing it at length ever since that blog was first published.
The reason we say that the outline is a skeleton is because you're supposed to look at the skeleton and tell what the beast is. It allows you to fill in the gaps in your mind. It allows you to re-arrange the parts without losing much work before you begin, and this is the first thing we learn in our English classes.
Whenever I’m asked to proof-read a story, a topic discussed here, I always ask to see the outline first. Finding a good outline always makes me feel like Dr. Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan dealing with a colleague. A bad outline, or a non-outline such as a bullet point list of events, frequently makes me still feel like I’m having the same conversation with Special Agent Seeley Booth.
Outlines are, like our bones, a fundamental component that we need to hold our story together in any way that resembles what it should look like. We predicate our ideas on them and, all too often, we don’t understand how or why they work. That, dear reader, is the real question. The question the outline is designed to address: “Why?”
The reason why “Why?” is important is itself a different topic discussed here. For now, let’s assume that you, an arguably rational human being, want things to happen for a reason. Sometimes the easiest, and hardest, question to answer is why they happen—what is the reason "why". Cause and Effect tend to be easy to determine if we start at the end and work our way backwards, and hard if we start at the middle and work our way outwards.
This can be difficult for writers because that middle part is the part where most of the story lives. What makes it difficult is when authors think it’s the beginning. In the classic narrative structure—also it’s own topic discussed here—the point that is considered the beginning almost never appears in the story itself. Even in a modern context if it does, then it usually doesn’t appear in the actual beginning of the story. For reference those two points are the Inciting Incident, and the Point of Attack, but for this conversation neither technical term is necessary.
It is sufficient to say that the outline is the road we want our story to travel so we can get from Point A, watever that point may be, to Point B: the final point of the story. There will be many points in between—many lines wherein we ask, and answer questions of ourselves.
Well, that may all be well and good, but what does it mean practically? You ask yourself you handsome/beautiful devil you, before following up with the more important question: How do I make one?
Most people begin writing immediately. They pick up their pencil because they have an idea they want to explore, and don’t put it down again until they’ve explored it. Sometimes it’s a character concept, other times it's the abstraction of some societal nuance.
To create an outline however, you need to pick that idea apart. You need to ask yourself what it’s made out of, and truly disassemble it. This disassembly will give you a more intimate understanding of the idea, as well as what attracted you to explore it in the first place.
My own method for doing this is detailed here, and resembles a mathematical proof (of concept). Do remember that humans are innately curious creatures. We’ll accept that a wizard did it, but we’ll still ask why, and that is the main question you may find yourself asking after you start with the thing. Questions like “Why the thing?”, “Why the thing that’s the reason for the thing?”, and so on.
Remember that the point is to string things together in a logical order. An order that you can look at and say "I can make a story out of this". An order that helps you identify what goes where, and allows you to move things around if necessary (before you write hundreds of thousands of words of prose).
In closing, I'll offer this reminder: If your outline looks anything like this you're gonna have a bad time.
That's because these outlines are typically reserved for "what" and not "why" unless the complexity, and word count, of your story can substantiate such a world wide web of intrigue. Though, I haven't seen a story yet that can, aside from day time soaps that is, and we all know how they're regarded in terms of storytelling.
