How I Write: To Outline, or Not to Outline

Or, how I let the characters tell me their story.

I am not a newbie to the writing game.  Though I have never published a novel before, I have published multiple essays, poems, and short stories in a very different genre. During a very different life.

But writing a novel is a far cry from sitting down to write an essay or begin a short story.  Writing a book is a commitment.

I have been working on this book since last spring.  Writing it, that is. It’s been percolating in my head for many years. I am on my fourth full draft, having done a ‘fast draft’ of the first 80% in about six weeks last spring.

I started with a very vague outline and as I wrote, plot points and new twists began to emerge. I would write a scene, and my characters would go completely off-script and give me new things to ponder. I gave them free reign. I let them tell me their story.

This is not to say that I did not scold them from time to time, or even put them in time out occasionally. There were many things I wanted to happen in the story that now seem silly.

Because as I wrote, I got to know my characters.

There were many times I would have preferred to be the kind of writer who makes a detailed outline and sticks to it. It would have made things much simpler, and perhaps I would even be done right now if I were. 

But I am not that kind of writer.

Allowing my imagination to run away with my characters developed a love story I did not think to tell. It gave me a friendship I once thought to be peripheral, but now know is deep and abiding. And it gave me a family structure that seemed like a broken-down shack, but I now know is a brick Tudor, strong and firm in its foundation.

Once I finished my second draft, I pulled out my copy of Save The Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody and started matching up her plot structure to what I had. I had to cut a few things, add a few things, but all in all, I ended up with something that fit the structure from the book. I used it in my third draft and am using it now in my fourth. It’s been enlightening, to be sure.

I have started a notebook for the second book in the series.  In it, I keep things that I know need to happen, and threads of story arcs not yet completed.  Once this draft is finished, and my book is in the hands of my developmental editors in full, I’ll start another vague outline for the second book.

This seems to be my preferred process.  And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Write it all down.

Let the characters tell you their stories.