I'm Big Enough to Admit When I'm Wrong. And Rude Enough to Admit I Thought you were Wrong.

Lots of people I know swear by outlining.  They say that especially for National Novel Writing Month, you have to know exactly what you're going to write before hand, so when you sit down to write, you'll know exactly what you're doing and it will flow like a mighty river of printer ink.

The pieces I have outlined before were all articles in list form ("Seven Ways to Be a Helicopter Parent") or junior high papers where I had to have an intro, three arguments, and a conclusion, and I just slotted arguments into place.  In junior high this was stifling and no one bothered to explain the benefits of presenting a clear argument, what we were actually learning with a five paragraph essay, or why nothing we read ever looked like what we wrote.  So when people talk about outlining fiction, my first thought is that chart of rising and falling action, where you would insert plot point one and plot point two and plot point three, which has the same issues as outlining a persuasive essay. 

I've looked at outlining like it's sucking the magic out of the process.  I've always discovered a story as I write it.  The more time I spend working on it, the more I learn about the characters, the more the world unfolds, the more plot puzzles snap into place.  I've heard writing a novel compared to a romance: there's a get to know you phase and a magical phase and a phase where you hate each other.  At the beginning, you're strangers, so how could I possibly know what I'm going to write enough to outline?


Clearly, I did not understand.  I apologize to all my outlining friends.  You're not as crazy as I always thought you were but never mentioned so we could stay friends.


I learned this week that I can outline the same way I write.  That's to say I can start with the main plot points that I know well, then put them in order and quilt them together, adding smaller events around them, things that need to happen before them, tension that needs to build and release.  If I make the outline detailed enough, I can learn about the characters and the plot as I outline, and then go back and alter things acordingly.  The outline isn't written in stone, and I can cycle through it, adjusting and expanding, adjusting and expanding.

My friends probably already knew this obvious bit of insight, and now think I'm really stupid for not already knowing that.  Kind of the same way I thought they were weird for outlining.  Now we're even.

Water is wet, y'all! 

I now have five iterations of an outline, each more detailed and filled in and flowing than the last.  I have a list of issues that I can already tell are going to be problems, a list of people and things that need names, and a list of research I need to do before I write in any detail.