Hello writers, I've started working on a project that is more ambitious than my usual so I've been trying to lay out an outline. Trouble is I've never done one of these before and I'm basically going off instinct. Was wondering if anyone that's done this has any advice, what to include, how much detail and that sort of thing. Thanks
I am doing much more detailed planning on this one, because I have actual historical events, that have locations in time and place, and I have characters that have to arrive to interact with them. My wife @K McIntyre is also doing a similar work, hers set in WWII, which of course some very well-defined and well-known battles that her MC has to be present for. What we both did for starts is to create a timeline, years subdivided into months horizontally across the top, and underneath the hard historical events that define the story: Dunkirk, el Alamein, etc in hers, the Roman invasion of Armenia, expansion into Mesopotamia in mine. Vertically down the side, we have our fictional characters, where they are, where they are going, what they are doing, in each of the time blocks. i.e, in the August 113AD time block opposite my fictional character Aulus, I have "leaves Rome with Emperor Trajan for Athens." Which happens to align under the actual historical event "Trajan leaves Rome for Athens to meet with Parthians" in August 113. That meeting took place in October so I have six weeks to two months for them to get there, partly by sea at 200 miles per day, partly by land at 40 miles per day. As to outline, I can add in major plot events. One of my characters will be kidnapped and taken somewhere. One of my other characters, a centurion who happens to be Jewish, will be offered the chance to lead a Jewish army against Rome, and he, too, will be kidnapped when he refuses, and taken to the same place as the other. The two know each other, and so do the rescuers hot on his tail. They will rescue both, and take them to a safe house known to kidnapee #2. So you get the idea. I consider myself a pantser who doesn't need no stinking outline, but this story is getting complicated enough that I need to be more disciplined!
Don't outline!, Organise and plan. Brainstorm ideas, and research facts. Cluster them. When you are done it is easy to sort the piles into a sequence to use. The amount of detail depends on you. Pantsers have zero. Patterson will have 90 pages of info for his book. You will likely be somewhere in between. For me the total architecture of the book is what I need at a minimum. Details can be done later if needed.
If outlining works for you, then have at it! But it's not always necessary. For my stories, I tend to come up with a general idea about characters and setting, and I sometimes also get a basic plot idea at that stage. I am a half-planner, half-improviser. Some big elements of a story will come more naturally than others, and then the improvised parts are what occurs in between those big scenes. Sometimes, what I end up improvising results in me coming up with ideas I never considered, and then affects things that happen for the duration of the story. There's no right or wrong way to go about it, but if you feel you must make an outline for this particular project, then make sure you have a basic plot and cast of characters figured out first. Then try to come up with big, important scenes that will drive that plot to its conclusion, and think along the lines of: "If A happens, then that will lead to B, which then causes C." But if you have to just dive in and write by the seat of your pants when necessary, then that's what you'll have to do. It can be useful to at least keep a Word doc or notepad with basic facts and ideas jotted down to reference as you go. Best of luck!
I have used an outline (it was actually a treatment) on my latest wip and because I was fighting to stay close to the outline, my characters moved in another direction causing me to paint myself in a corner. Ah ha I feel current in my thinking because nothing is my fault. Anyways I would suggest using a synopsis as if you were telling a friend who was interested. Show and tell your MC and introduce conflict. Next expand that conflict as to how your MC and others would handle it. And in the final section you could increase the conflict until your MC is in a 'no hope' situation with a surprise resolution that you had built into the story many chapters earlier, or you could lead the reader down a path of tension and switch to an out of the blue ending.
Not really The spectrum goes from 0% to 100%, and I'd say I'm about an 85%, but you might be a 95% or a 65% or a 50%, maybe even a 35% or a 5%... I start with a bullet-pointed list of basic plot points, then add a bullet-pointed list of basic character ideas, and I flesh out both lists until I feel I have enough to start writing. When I come up with a new idea part-way into the first draft, I generally re-write the outline before trying to re-write the text. You might need a lot more than this, or you might need a lot less
I think outlines are really just whatever works for you. If you like the idea of a detailed outline, then that's what will be of benefit of you. If you can get away with a general overview of each chapter (how my outlines are) then you should do that. There really is no "correct" way, just what helps you. Also, in my opinion, your outline should grow as your WIP does, too. The outline for my book was added to up until the very end, and I suspect that I will be changing it up if I need to change anything after my betas are done reading it.
Thank you all. My goal is to write a set of short stories that follow a group of people across the same, reasonably short, time line. I've never really planned that much before but I want to try and get all the stories to intersect so they can be read as stand alone pieces or telling one big story of life. I guess I'm worried about continuity and keeping everything straight. Apparently I'm not much of a planner so it might be best to write the stories and worry about fixing continuity issues in later drafts.
