Outlining and Other Sins

There's an apocryphal tale out there in the orbit of Baen Books that tells of how a now-famous writer learned to complete his novel ideas from an older, wiser hand. I won't name names because I heard the story third hand, but the lesson is clear for those of us working our way up from the slush piles. The gist of the fable goes like this:

Rising Writer (hereafter referred to as RW): "I have a hard time finishing novels that I start. I keep jumping from idea to idea."

Old Hand (to be known henceforth at OH): "How many starts do you have on your hard drive."

RW: "Around fifty."

OH: "How many complete outlines do you have?"

RW: "Outlines? Oh, I don't use those. I write organically. The story flows from the character interactions."

OH, heavy sigh: "If you want to finish anything you start, do the damned outline."

Since the RW was co-authoring with the OH at the time, he had little choice in the matter and ended up doing his outlines. The rest, shall we say, is more or less history since he actually did start finishing stories and became an OH in his own right.

There's a lot of truth in this. Every writer writes differently, of course, but the longer and more complex the story, the more important it is that you have a suitable roadmap in front of you.

My personal process involves "sketching" out scenes and putting together ideas and characters first and then I go back and write a kind of overview outline that tells me where I'm going and how I intend to get there. To that I add character sheets, societal notes, and geography information in an electronic binder that allows me to keep my descriptions straight as I go along.

If you have an outline, you reduce the likelihood of getting stuck or losing your way. Not that things can't change as characters develop, but if you don't know where you're going, how in the hell are you going to get there? Character interaction alone won't do it because people by their very nature are chaos incarnate.

So, even for a character-driven kind of writer like myself, having some kind of outline counts as a "Really Good Idea".