1. Harms88

    Harms88 New Member

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    Written Outlines vs Letting Story Tell Itself

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by Harms88, Nov 7, 2019.

    Perhaps the one thing that I've had the most dramatically different experience is when I've writing using written outlines opposed to letting the story tell itself.

    Story Tells Itself:

    One thing I noticed about this style of writing is that the story is far more surprising. I'll have a general idea of what will happen but as I don't restrict it, it shoots every direction. Thus how I went from wanting to do a fantasy trilogy to finishing book 4 and realizing I need at least two more books to finish it. Helping me understand GRRM.

    Written Outline:

    In this same fantasy series, I decided to do my fourth book with an outline. Not only a general outline but also chapter outlines.

    I noticed that I got a lot more done at a far faster pace. I also ended up having a far larger book. It was as if with the mental work of plottibg was done on a chapter before hand, it allowed me to spend that energy strictly on developing the scenes.

    One chapter had only five bullet points. I thought it would only take 10 pages. To my shock, it up being near 45 pages of work over a three day period!

    Which is your preferred method of writing? With an outline or letting the story tell itself?
     
  2. cosmic lights

    cosmic lights Contributor Contributor

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    Hello again, not stalking you I promise. No idea why people call me the praying mantis.

    Anyway, it really depends on what I'm writing and how much I know about the topics in my story. I figure out the events of my novel but I tend to free-write my characters as I find they often look nothing like their profile when I'm done. I do figure out some basics for them.

    Goal, motivation, want and need
    who and what is important to them in life
    internal conflicts

    Other than that I just tend to fee-write them but I do sort of mental plan in my head I just never jot it down. Struggling with my plot a bit at the moment so I'm working on that instead of setting.
     
  3. marshipan

    marshipan Contributor Contributor

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    Combination. So far my first/preliminary draft has mostly been a free write. I develop the characters, the world, and the plot. Then about the time it's complete garbage as a first draft, I sit down and outline something more thoroughly. With the preliminary work done I find it easier to construct a real plot. Then I begin writing it again.
     
  4. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    I generally start with a general idea. My first book, The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China, had this for an outline:
    -Romans go to China by sea
    -Bad people try to take ships and gold away from them
    -Arrive in China, intrigues in court, some sort of crisis involving expediency vs. Roman honor
    -Escape overland, bad people trying to kill them

    Each phase had its own crises and resolutions, and pretty much evolved on its own, while the characters began to tell me the story, usually while I was driving to/from work. I was simply taking dictation from them, and writing each chapter was like watching a TV series, having to find out what happened next. As a result, that is the way most readers seem to experience the book. And at 240K words, it still seems to be a fast read

    That said, I am working on the sequel, The Long Road Back to Rome, same ten characters ten years on, scattered from Mongolia to China, the Middle East, and Italy, all being drawn into the maelstrom of the Roman invasion of Mesopotamia, 114-116AD. However, as the Senator is now the senior advisor to Trajan, and three of the characters are commander, prefect and junior centurion respectively in one of the front-line legions, I am tied to a lot of historical events with fixed participants and dates. I also have a list of commanding officers, governors, etc., where known. So I created a timeline of actual dates and events that have to form the bones of my story. For example, in the winter of 114 one of the legions fought on snowshoes, according to historical records, in the Armenian highlands, and obviously this had to be captured in the story. But as I wrote it, I realized that no legion could fight like a legion in 16 feet of snow, snowshoes or not, so I reconstructed kind of a small unit scenario of centuries (companies of 80 men) fighting individually in white coveralls, using dispersed stealthy tactics, kind of a special operations type thing, against equally small formations of Armenian rebels. Since no record of how they fought survived, mine is at least plausible.

    So I have to have an outline of sorts so it matches the historical record, but the individual stories still take on their own life.

    My wife is doing the same thing with her story Jake, about a US doctor in the VA system who joins the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1939 and is assigned to the 51st Highland Division. She has the same historical framework to follow, and commanding officers down to the battalion level. When he returns to UK from Gibraltar after escaping from France in summer '40, he is on the HMS Vidette, D-48 of the 14th Destroyer Flotilla that was stationed there, with the actual commanding officer at the time. But the framework is just the bones of the story, the meat is fictional, and like me, she writes as she goes. He just finished shooting down a Stuka with a rifle, for which he will eventually get a Distinguished Service Order (DSO). Not that he fought as a doctor, but the Stuka had strafed his vehicle killing his driver and patient, and was coming back for another pass. And Jake was a Virginia country boy who had grown up hunting in the Blue Ridge, who had about enough of that foolishness. Got the pilot with a shot through the windscreen as the aircraft was coming in for him, guns blazing. Not a smart thing to do, and an extremely lucky shot, but people do crazy things like that in war and live to tell about it if they are lucky.

    There was an American doctor who did what the fictional Jake did (she found out after she started) about a year behind him that has been written into the story. Jake meets Edward Stone while the latter is in officer training at RAMC in Aldershot, and Jake is now a combat-experienced doctor from the Battle of France talking to the new candidates about his experiences. Stone is assigned to the 50th Northumbrian, and both are at El Alamein when Stone is killed by artillery on November 2, 1942. (he was). This was just before the shoot down and contributed to Jake's anger and I-don't-give-a-damn-anymore attitude.
     
  5. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    I do both for different reasons. My longer, more world-building based stories tend to have outlines. outlines keep me grounded and keeps me from going off track in this massive world i've created.
    For stories that take place in THIS world (non fantasy/SciFi), I let the story tell itself. I have a general direction of where its going, and i'll jot down a few key points i want to hit, but there is no set outline. Just a direction
     

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