Lesson 8: Outlines · 11:59pm Jan 23rd, 2022
This lesson is going to be a little different as it’ll consist of more technical examples or demonstrations rather than the usual explanations. We will begin with a general overview and some statements on goals and focus, but for the most part, this lesson is going to focus on tools you can use for outlining.
Discovery Writers vs Outliners
There are two extremes for how writers get through their stories, discovery writing and outlining. Discovery writing is the process of simply “feeling out” a story by writing paragraph by paragraph, coming up with the story as you go. Outlining is the exact opposite, working and reworking the major plot points before the first word even gets written down.
But that does not mean these extremes are your only options. I myself fall somewhere in the middle, with a lean towards discovery writing. The weakness of pure discovery writing is that you will generally lack word efficiency. You can end up spending too much time on a description or drag out a scene a little longer than it needs to be while shortening other segments of the story that shouldn’t be short. This is because we tend to lose perspective as discovery writers, especially when we go close to its extreme.
And in many cases, for discovery writing, your first draft is really going to be more like your outline, and your second draft is going to be the true first draft.
For die-hard outliners, the problem comes with figuring out whether a story element is going to work out the way you want it to. With a bird’s eye view, it’s easy to see where you’re going but hard to know whether our plot points and twists are going to work out the way you want them to. And so you keep reworking the outline and never get to writing your actual story.
So if you feel like you are leaning one way or the other, but you’re always getting stuck somewhere, the best thing to do is to stop thinking “this is my writing style” or “this is just how I write.” Discovery writing and outlining are tools, not methodologies, and even when professional authors claim to lean one way or the other, the truth of it is that they’re probably pretty good at doing both, they just have the experience to know which way they want to lean.
A Goal and Subject Oriented Mindset
Before we get on with the actual tools and techniques, I wanted to describe how I approach every new story I write, irrespective of its length. I find it’s always easiest to outline when I am honed in the goals of my story. This ties back to Lesson 5 on plots, where I explained the advantages of knowing how the plot ends in order to structure its beginning and middle.
Being aware of your goals and themes will usually do more than just keep you from adding unnecessary diversions. It will also figure out beforehand whether or not a story element “works.” If you add something that just doesn’t fit the overall goals and subject of your story, that’s where you need to inspect your outline and work out whether it’s worth it to keep it in.
MICE Outlines
“MICE,” described by Orson Scott Card in his book “Characters and Viewpoint” are four basic factors that can give writers a framework for what needs to be done. These factors and milieu, idea, character, and event.
We can think of them as types of plots or subplots, each with a different focus.
- Milieu: Plots focused on the setting and world, such as escaping a maze or finding a way to Mordor. These plots end when the characters get to where they want to go or leave the place they’re stuck in. You as the writer need to stop them from achieving that goal and force your characters to work for it instead.
- Idea: This could also be “I for Intrigue/inquiry” because it involves your characters and plot revolving around the discovery of information. Heavily featured in mystery stories, you can also find this subplot in adventure stories that have some kind of secret information that the characters have to uncover. The goal is getting information, as a writer to extend the conflict by blocking your characters from the clues they need, slowly drip-feeding them until the final revelation.
- Character: Character-driven plots are in nearly every kind of story because good stories have characters we care about. In these plots, the character is in some way dissatisfied with their role in life and wants to change it. The character finds a new role, gains an appreciation for their old role, or despairs. What you need to do to make the plot move along is to cause struggle and strife as they are changing, either as a way to force them to change, or a way to challenge their efforts.
- Event: An event plot at the surface just sounds like “something happens.” But the core of the conflict is that an external force (remember, e for external) is removing the status quo, and the goal of the plot and characters will usually be to restore that status quo, or bring the story to a new one. Your job is to throw obstacles into the works and prevent the story from reaching a state of rest.
Nesting MICE Elements
The advantage of these mice elements is that we now have the ability to nest our plots. This is exactly the same as nesting loops in almost any coding language. Nesting plots helps up identify how our story is going to be resolved in a satisfying way and with the proper pace or series of events.
Like a Russian nesting doll, both ends of the doll has to fit inside the larger one before the larger one can be closed. Using some pseudocode for our MICE, we can see what that would look like: <m><i><c><e></e></c></i></m>
With this example, the story would have the heroes entering an unknown place, then being confronted with some unknown information or question. A prominent character then gets a crisis of confidence, followed by a big problem that upsets the status quo. First, that event problem has to be fixed before the character has time to rediscover themselves and continue on to find the answers they were looking for. Once all that is done, the characters can leave this unfamiliar space and return home.
A story that feels poorly paced and drawn-out will usually be because problems are kind of just cropping up and closing randomly without adhering to this general rule, and that outline might look something like this: <m><i><c><e></i></m></e></c>
In this example, imagine that after the event problem is introduced, the characters figure out the big mystery and just leave the place without restoring the status quo or confronting their personal problems. It would feel as if there’s an ending in the middle of the story.
But that’s just an abstract example. I’m going to use the MLP Gen 5 movie to show how this plays out in an actual story.
The introduction sets up things that will play into the plot, but aren’t structurally a part of the loops we’re going to make. Sunny is an enthusiast for peace and unity who stands out from the xenophobic crowd but is still tolerated as long as she doesn’t cause too much trouble. That’s the status quo, and it’s completely lost with the opening event.
<e> Izzy Moonbow arrives in Maretime Bay, sending the city into a xenophobic panic.
Now Sunny can no longer be tolerated, not without violating her firmly-held beliefs. She wants everyone to be friends, but of course, the writers throw an obstacle into it in the form of a mob that wants to drive them out. But just before that happens, we get a question.
<i> What happened to magic?
This gets a lampshade put on it, but the viewer has it in the back of their mind that part of the upcoming quest will involve figuring out the secret of why unicorns have no magic.
<m> Arrive at Zephyr Heights
The next stage is the milieu plot, of entering and trying to navigate a new and unfamiliar space to both Sunny and Izzy. Because this is nested within the <i> plot, our characters navigate this new location with the goal of answering their inquiry, only to be partially answered in the form of the first crystal piece, and the misdirection that there are only 2 pieces.
</m> Leave Zephyr Heights
<m> Arrive at Bridlewood Forest
Similar to before, the characters are navigating an unfamiliar space (except for Izzy) and continuing to provide answers to the <i> plot when the two crystal pieces do not work, thereby prolonging the inquiry because the characters still don’t truly know why magic is gone.
</m> Leave Bridlewood Forest
</i> Discovering the final piece and uniting the three pony races to make them work
</e> Maretime Bay is no longer xenophobic.
Reaching the end of the movie, I hope it’s obvious that it wouldn’t make sense if the <i> plot nested inside the <e> plot closed after </e>. If the event problem is fixed first and a new status quo is created before the inquiry gets resolved, then the need to answer that question is gone, and the main conflict would have resolved itself before satisfying the audience with an answer.
You can go as far into the details as you want with your elements, nesting loops inside loops and creating a deeply layered or overlapping story. But when you have multiple subplots that are opening and closing at different points in the story, it will get incredibly convoluted if you are not keeping track of where/when they need to be closed.
Of course, we all know there are such things as cliffhangers and plot twists that go outside the bounds of this nesting technique, but as a writer you should not be going to those extremes as your first example. We need to first know and understand the rules and psychology of satisfying stories, and then make little deviations as our experience dictates.
Yes, but/No, and
The one thing that MICE outlines lack is a way to show the narrative progressing. Each element is an opening or closing of a plot, and nested plots can only show us turning points or moments of transition from one plot to another. When we get into the step-by-step process of a scene, how do we keep that outline engaging?
Let’s look at the Zephyr Heights subplot.
Do Sunny and Izzy find the pegasi? Yes!
- But they get arrested and can’t get their questions answered.
Do they get released by Zipp? Yes.
- But it’s not official and they have to sneak around to get their answers.
Do they learn about pegasi magic from Zipp? No.
- And it turns out no one has magic at all.
Do they get a clue as to why no one has magic? Yes.
- But they need the crown of the pegasus queen to do anything about it.
Do they manage to steal the crown? No
- And now the pegasi want to arrest Zipp and Pipp.
Do they escape the city? Yes!
- But they’re still short of another crystal piece.
“Yes, but,” and “No, and,” are ways of creating tension by a series of setbacks, taking one step forward and one step back, occasionally allowing two steps forward so the story can progress. It’s generally much more compelling than asking “Do they get the crown?” and then answering with “Yes, and they got away without a scratch!” There’s just not as much conflict when the consequences are all trending in one direction.
Flowcharts
I think flowcharts are common enough that I don’t need to explain what they look like or the basics of how they work. We have some boxes with texts and descriptions, and then we draw a line to the next thing, and the next thing.
Instead, I’m going to talk about the unique advantages of flowcharts. And you can certainly use your flowcharting method alongside MICE elements, so this tool does not have to be treated like its own separate method.
Flowcharts are excellent for managing parallel storylines that converge on each other, or storylines with many branching points. They can visually represent how far apart locations and events are from each other in terms of the narrative. They can both free up our minds to explore our stories as much as we want, but also act as a measurement of when we are branching too far from our goals.
The Warded Man is an incredibly neat story that tells the lives of 3 main characters who eventually meet up by the third act. In a flowchart, slowly connecting these three threads is much easier and allows the writer to see if they are spending too much time drawing out any one thread.
Similarly, in a journey story like the Hobbit, a flowchart can prevent the writer from venturing too far from the endpoint. In our own heads and in our worldbuilding, we like to think that it's cool to go deep into the details of something in the distance as we’re a tour guide taking our readers around our world. But in reality, if that thread goes nowhere and only exists as a detour from the main plotline, readers are not going to feel the same way.
So, with a flowchart, as we approach converging points, or move away from branching points, the further our threads move away from the main goal of the story, the greater the need to take a look at what you’re actually doing and whether it’s worth it.
The Transaction Point
This is a tool of my own creation, but I’m sure its principle is not new to any experienced writer, and it ties back into my lesson on narrative capital and “purchasing” a new status quo for your story. In your outline, the Transaction Point can be as simple as a single keystroke. Just a line to demarcate where you’re going to make a big shift. In our first MICE example, adding a Transaction Point would look like this: <m><i><c><e>||</e></c></i></m>
The double lines in the middle is just a symbol to remind me that I am switching over to a new status quo, and that something must be given up to earn it. In a flow chart, this can be just before a branching/converging point, where you are altering the state of your story by finally splitting or merging the storylines.
For the Gen 5 movie example, the Transaction Point would be just after the crystals fail to bring back magic and Sunny chooses to go home. The story is trading in the hope it had built up across its two milieu plots in order to buy a moment of despair that sends the heroes back, where they can close off the major <e> and <i> plots.
Literal Paper
Modern writers might not remember this, but there was a time when people wrote things on physical paper with their hands. I am a huge paper and pencil outliner, and I believe it’s just the perfect tool because we can choose whatever format we want or need to create our outline. I can pop a flowchart in the middle of my MICE, create two MICE nests and have parallel stories, and then flip to a new page to scribble down a tangential idea whenever it comes to my mind.
Paper and pencil outlining is the most free expression of creativity you can do.
Homework
Assigned Reading: Details on MICE Elements & Yes/No
MICE:
- Yes/No: https://blog.karenwoodward.org/2012/10/making-scene-using-conflicts-and.html
Mary Robinette Kowal’s lecture on short stories and MICE
Thank you for taking the time and effort to product this.
5630590
Of course! It's my pleasure.
5630666
I'm attempting to use the nestling of MICE into a flowchart outline, any advice or tips?
5630719
When I started using MICE, I got too deep into the details. My advice would be to use no more than 4 MICE elements, you can one of each or 4 of the same, but try not to start with more than that. This forces you to consider what the major set-ups are going to be and what their resolutions would look like.
One of my personal weaknesses is figuring out me <e> plots because "event" plots just sound like something that happens, which could be anything. But event plots are really a loss of a status quo due to external forces, so when you're considering what the </e> resolution looks like, you should keep in mind what the event problem is changing and what would a "restored" or "fixed" condition feel like for the characters.
As for flowcharts, also don't make them too long, and don't be afraid to skip over the little details to work out for later. You should be more detailed than a pure MICE outline, but you're listing every scene or action. Rather, identify when you're introducing a significant setting detail, a character, or a problem, maybe also how the problem gets solved as you reach the end.
But don't write something like
That's going to be tedious and you're pretty much just writing your first draft already. The point of an outline is that you should have reached the end of your story by the end of the day (assuming you start in the morning). You can refine your outline if needed, but reaching the end helps you know what set-ups you're missing, and the faster you figure that out, the sooner you can improve the story.
5630746
Thank you.
One point of clarification:
If a character in a romance has an inner turmoil of feelings towards another character. Is this classified as character or event?
Argument for character: I feel that this one is pretty self explanatory; the character is obviously going to struggle and evolve.
Argument for event: events I know are classified as external and attempts to maintain or subdue the status quo. If a character has feelings are they really within that characters control? I’d argue that we don’t choose who we fall in love with. As for the status quo point, I feel that holds too. The character can maintain the status quo by not expressing, or attempt to change it by expressing their feelings.
Or does it really not matter which MICE category it falls under?
Thanks for taking the time to clarify.
5630790
It matters only for how you're going to solve the conflict. A character plot means the character is dissatisfied with themselves or their role in society, and is resolved by them doing something that changes how they view themselves or changes their role to one that they want.
Event plots mean that the solution is going to deal with changing something else. The character has to do stuff, but by the time the event is resolved they haven't changed that much as a person.
Finally some MICE that won't chew my wires, or try to take over the world.
I'm going to check this out because it might be useful later.
I tend to keep all of the details in my head, and write them into a doc.
This also means that if I don't know what to do, I have to sit down, and plan it out in my head first.
Heard that Orson Scott Card wrote outlines so detailed that it didn't take him too long to write the story afterwards.
Kudos on the blog post.