Apparently I Need Outlines Even to Do Revisions

from the writing desk, may 2024

May 03, 2024

The Grand Canal, Richard Parkes Bonington, 1826/27

“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Greetings all!

Wishing you yet another very happy Friday, somehow the first Friday in May??? The year’s almost halfway gone. Somehow.

And tomorrow is May 4th, so happy Star Wars Day as well. May the Force be with you.

Anyway, we’re here to talk about writing again today, and we’re going to be delving into truly one of my favorite writing topics…

~Outlines~

Do you love them? Do you hate them? I don’t know. Every writer is different in that regard, and while I do recommend anyone who wants to write give them a try because I truly believe they are magical, I’m far from a prescriptivist when it comes to any kind of writing advice. So take this all with a grain of salt.

But I love outlines.

Few things are so helpful to me in writing as outlines are, and I am constantly… not surprised necessarily… but maybe impressed at all the new and different ways I find them useful over the course of the different phases of the writing process.

So why? Why outline?

Well. Writing a novel is a baffling process in which an amorphous blob of really cool ideas in your head needs to be transformed into a tangible story other human beings can follow. This is a very difficult process, and it’s why there are probably more people out there who want to write books than people out there who actually do write books.1

And some writers out there can look at a blank page and immediately begin to turn those ideas into prose and dialogue — yes, knowing they’ll need to be revised later, but even so, they just write.

I struggle with that.

The blank page is overwhelming to me, and I very quickly start to fixate on details of wording and pacing and all of those kinds of things when I write a scene as a scene. Because once I begin to write in a prose format, I want what I write to read somewhat like a scene in a finished book. That’s just not a realistic expectation for the first pass on a story.

That’s where outlines come in.

An outline serves as intermediate step where I roughly put to paper the ideas in my mind before I try to write things out in a way that reads nicely. Partly separating the “figuring out what the story is” phase and the “making it read in a compelling way” phase is just really helpful to me, because I kind of feel like they use different parts of my brain.2

Broadly speaking, I think of outlining almost like a process of translation, first from thought to haphazard words, and then from haphazard words into… words put into an order where you can follow the big picture flow and nothing else. Then and only then do I try to turn those words into prose, something you would actually want to read.

And whether one does this in one step or ten, this translation process is something that all writers do. It’s kind of what writing is, turning ideas into words. And it never ceases to amaze me how little I understand my own ideas until I put them to paper, until they are translated.

I just personally like to do that iteratively and methodically, only adding the pressure of organization and, finally, readability as I go through each step.

For me there are two main steps of outlining The brain dump, and the structured outline.3 Then of course, drafting, in however many rounds it takes, but that’s a different topic entirely.

First up.

The brain dump. My first attempt at translation is a completely free-form, utterly-without-pressure total mess. If I have an idea, I write it, no matter what, sometimes on paper to be photographed and saved to a “Notes” album on my phone and at other times typed into my ever growing “Brain dump” document currently in its third volume since I began keeping these in late 2022. Sometimes these are bits of description, often they are big picture character/plot arc summaries, and most often they are scraps of dialogue between characters for scenes I have yet to write properly. No worries, no organization beyond date of entry. Just pure ideas, to make them tangible (and less likely to be forgotten).

This is the simplest level of outlining. And some people might not even think of it as outlining. I do. Because while we often might think of things like the five act story structure or the snowflake method when we hear the word “outline,”4 I actually don’t use any, for lack of a better term, “official outline technique” when I outline.

Because at this point especially, the appeal of it for me is the freedom. To just dump all the ideas out on the page in a reckless first attempt at translation, that’s where outlining begins! It frees me to write whatever I want to write, instead of being forever focused on “what happens next,” because stories aren’t strictly about what happens next, they’re about their plot and character and world and theme on the whole.

Outlining, in all its phases, helps keep the big picture in mind, and also often gets me more excited to get to the scenes I haven’t written properly yet. I’ve never had the feeling that some writers express about “having written the story already” if they outline and losing motivation because of that. For me, it’s the exact opposite, because I want to turn that scattered mess into something really good.

Anyway. That’s one side of the big picture, one side of outlining. The catch-all idea brain dump.

yes. this is what it feels like. but that’s the fun, really.

Now we’ve gotta add structure. Because, like it or not, all stories have structure. You need to think about structure. It is important, and in my experience a large number of the issues that plague stories that bother me in one way or another are structural issues. This doesn’t mean following a formula necessarily, as there is merit in experimental story structure. It’s just that our ideas need to be organized, they need to be reeled in, they need to be kept track of, and they need to work together to create a coherent whole.

This is where the more traditional outline comes in for me.

I said earlier I don’t use an “official method,” at least to my knowledge. By that I more mean that I don’t think it has a fun name like “snowflake” or “save the cat,”5 not that I’m particularly unique or original in how I do this. Because I’m not.

I just write very detailed outlines, chapter by chapter.6

Thinking in terms of chapters is extremely helpful. It’s very straightforward and it manages my book-level pacing well, I think — particularly in that it forces me to address both the a-plot and any subplots with an appropriately balanced degree of focus. I also find it helps me be more intentional with thinking of each chapter as a world in itself with a beginning, middle, and end.

I’ve heard it said that you need to write every chapter knowing that that chapter could be the one that makes or breaks a reader’s investment in your story. No pressure. But I think it’s true. Ensuring that each chapter of your book is compelling internally in addition to the role it plays in your wider story is essential. Do it well, and it could be the one thing that finally connects with someone, or it could be the point at which they get bored and put it down.

So when I outline of course I note what happens in the chapter. I copy and paste brain dump pieces that I still like where they belong. I flesh those out. I fill in gaps, trying to come up with scenarios that will make less-developed sections more interesting — and I sometimes come up with gems there, very unexpectedly. But I also think in terms of objectives. I want to make sure x chapter establishes y point about z character… and I write out tangible possibilities as to how to go about that. I don’t know everything that’s going to happen, but I do typically have an idea of what the establishing shots and end points of many chapters are going to be.

Then I rinse and repeat for every single chapter of the book. Some chapters are far more detailed than others. I just write things out until I feel confident enough to tackle the actual chapter on my actual draft. But I do need to have something for every chapter. Far too often in my draft attempts of yore, I would hit a transition section of the story, a blank space between the interesting things I wanted to write… and I would just freeze.

No more. There are no transition scenes. Every scene has a purpose and a point of intrigue, and I will have something for every part of the story before I write it.

I also really like doing this because it gives me a birds eye view of everything I have going on that’s just quicker to sort through than the draft-in-progress itself or the brain dump. I reference it constantly while I’m writing, and I will make changes to it if I think of something related to a chapter I have yet to draft yet.

I find this especially helpful for a very big story like the one I’m working on. I would get very lost very quickly without it. It helps me identify the sections of the story that are underdeveloped and catch plot holes before I write them, because I’m forced to think of the story as coherent whole. And when I change things, either over the course of outlining or drafting, I get to scrap half-baked notes instead of a scene I took the time to write in full. Glorious.

Because, either way, here’s the secret. You are not beholden to your outline. Just like you are free to change things between drafts three and four, you can change things between your outline and draft one. It’s been said that for writers who don’t outline, a first draft is truly a first draft. But for writers who outline, a first draft is much closer to a second draft. For me, who has both a multi-step outlining process and had several ditched first drafts before the one I currently hold in my hands… and yeah, that’s how it works.

I still change things all the time, both when outlining and while drafting. It’s relatively common for me to sit down and draft a chapter and just think… no [insert name here] would actually do this. Sometimes the change is so big, I need to completely restructure my outline for the remainder of the book.7 What’s nice about the outline, though, is that I always have my anchor points to return to. Having sight of where the story is going is such a comfort when you hit the walls you inevitably will while writing. What you want to do is tangibly before you, and when a new thing comes up while drafting, you can enjoy the detour while also knowing what you want to bridge it back towards.

And that’s just how I like it.

That’s how I wrote a book last year.

But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.

Not by a long shot.

As I mentioned in my last writing update, the primary occupation of my writing life right now is working through revisions on the first complete draft of book one of my fantasy novel series. Very naively, back in December, I thought revisions would mean something more along the lines of line editing. There were one or two bigger things that needed to be fixed, maybe, but it wouldn’t be that big a task, would it?

December Jess was incorrect.

Turning draft one into draft two has proven to be much more involved than that, and that is fine. However, while I had a strong start in January, over the course of February and March, I began to flounder. I was moving, but I was moving rather slowly because I was kind of just making revisions as I read through my draft, letting my revisions be dictated by what I thought needed to be done in the moment.

I was starting to brain dump again on the side as my fixes for future things began to grow in my mind… but it wasn’t enough. I needed the structure. What laid ahead of me in terms of revisions was beginning to overwhelm, and I was losing momentum because of it.

So. Just like with drafting chapters the first time, I needed a plan, and this past month, I made the plan.

She’s beautiful.

are you surprised that I have notion databases after all this talk about planning and outlining? you shouldn’t be.

My birds eye view of all the chapters I have, all the chapters that need to be added or removed to fix some problems, and the level of work involved (plus notes, obviously blurred) for each of those chapters to get them where I want them to be.8

A little different from my usual method of outlining, but it has been so, so helpful. Like you wouldn’t believe. I revised two chapters in five days last week, one essentially from scratch, and I’m on track to do the same thing again this week — it was incredible and I am so, so pleased.

So yeah… apparently I need outlines to revise too.

But, hey, figuring out what you need to write well is a key part of the writing process. This is mine.

What’s Yours?

Are you also a compulsive outliner like me (and if so do you have any other tips that work for you)? Or does the very idea of outlining make you feel sick (and if so, how do you work, I am genuinely curious)? Let me know down in the comments!