Outlining, as seen by a pantser

This is my first try at making an outline. Now that I'm 7 pages into it and approaching the climax of the plot, it's not as awful as I feared. In fact it's similar to writing a first draft, just less of it. I have something of an advantage in that I wrote 35 chapters of Draft One so I got to know the main characters pretty well. Without that, I wouldn't know where the plot should go.

There are a couple of hard things about it. First, I'm writing some new plot points so am trying to figure out how the characters act in those situations. That can take a few days of hard thinking. Second, deciding which problems I need to solve before continuing the outline and which ones can wait.

One guiding principle for the second issue is: how hard is it to solve? If I have that "so close I can taste it" feeling, I'll spend a few days on it and usually come up with something that will work. If I've tried coming at it from different angles and do not have the sense that a solution is close, I add a note in parentheses right there in the outline to the effect of, Need a reason for this.

It's happened that not solving something has led me to a brick wall. Running into that while doing the outline is a whole lot better than running into it in the middle of chapter 16 (or chapter 35), believe me.

I still have a lot of respect for writing spontaneously. That's where the emotion comes out. It's not planned for, just like in real life. You get to be the fly on the wall. If I just let my characters talk, they can come out with great lines. One example that comes to mind is in Street Glass. In music, sustain is the length of time you can hear a note after it's played, roughly speaking. Neal and Sandy are talking about relationships and Neal expresses frustration that women don't seem seriously interested in him. Sandy knows Neal is still hung up on a woman from his past and tells him: If you try to prolong the sustain, you'll ruin the song. In other words, don't hold on to relationships that are finished. Neal immediately gets what Sandy means. I love that the comment just popped out. I can't plan that kind of thing in an outline.

So, onward and upward with outline writing! I'm not going to hit 50k this year in NaNo but that's okay as long as I make strong progress. Primary goal is to finish the outline, get it into shape so I can use it to start writing chapters. Secondary goal is to write a few early chapters. I tweet about it as OwlladyWriter, using #NaNoRebel.

Writing is so cool. You learn about yourself as you go. I never thought I could write an outline or that I'd ever want to. Got a new superpower :-D

Update 11/03/12

So here I am again, trying to get back into the regular posting routine. I've been off dealing with

* an elderly pet whose arthritis made life very difficult;
* then I had to get him to the vet's office every day for a week for cold laser therapy, made challenging because I didn't have access to a car;
* then because I was stressed out over my bunny, I had no energy to write and got onto a social gaming site to try to relax;
* then I got addicted to the game;
* then I caught a cold;
* then November and NaNo arrived!

...which has made me ask myself very seriously, so are you a writer or a wannabe?

My bunny has stabilized though he still needs some looking after (thanks to those who've offered prayers & virtual hugs) and I feel like I'm coming out of a dim, chilly cave. Maybe not coming out into bright sunshine exactly--especially since the sun has not been out for literally a week--but out into the world again.

I didn't sign up for NaNo but I know a lot of people use it to kickstart stalled projects, and that seems like a fine idea to me. I did have trouble with a scene in chapter twenty-whatever right before bunny's arthritis acted up, but I've got some ideas for it now and need to plow ahead.

I recently posted another chapter to my private queue at Critique Circle and that feels great. I need to get another chapter to my beta reader who is very patient, as well as pick up where I stopped in chapter twenty-whatever.

During October I hardly wrote anything. That's going to change right now because I've invested too much time, blood and sweat into this novel to give up. Social gaming is fun and I get a kick out of seeing how people respond to each other, but that's not going to help me write this thing.

There's no chart or other way to keep track of progress this month. I think just knowing I lost a month will keep me motivated. Here's to November and NaNo--may those of us who have set a goal reach it! J

Climbing out of my writer's box

Image by ilco/stock.xch

My local writers group is having a public reading in about a month. I think that's a neat idea so I wanted to participate, but got stuck on what to what to read. I don't have much poetry written, and have to be in the mood to write it. Well, to write good poetry, anyway!

I've been very focused on my WIP novel. So focused that I haven't had interest in writing any other story. Well, I did play around with a short story a while back when I was seriously stumped on the novel, but once I got going again, I lost interest in the short.

A phrase used in a post at the online group I belong to, Critique Circle (also fondly known as CC), sparked an idea. It could even be said to fit the approaching Halloween season. It's a totally non-serious story. A witch receives a spell in an email, performs it, gets a different result that she expected, and realizes the spell has a typo: Hence the title, "Spell Check." It has a fairy tale feel.

I don't think I'm very good at humor but I'm giving the story a try. I'm about 3/4 done with it. There should be enough time to post it at CC for crits that will help me fix whatever issues it assuredly has.

This is exciting because honestly, I was worried about my ability to come up with other characters and other stories. When you zero in on one idea for a hair shy of four years, with only one deviation, you begin to wonder exactly what you're capable of.

Image by xenxen/stock.xchng

I may post snippets of the story here on the blog once I'm satisfied with it. If it comes out well enough, I'd like to try my luck in a few contests.

Do you guys normally write in different genres, or do you stick to one? Have you decided to branch out recently? I'd be interested in your forays out of your comfort zone. It's a bit scary out there, but I'm grabbing my security blanket and running straight ahead!

I just need to do research for this scene, that's all! ;D

Here I am writing a rock novel and there's no overt mention of sex until chapter 23! The saying is "sex and drugs and rock & roll" so will people be disappointed with only two out of three?

Photo by Ambrozjo/ stock.xchng

Seriously, I didn't write my first sex scene until chapter 23. It just didn't fit. But now one of my two protagonists has alone time with the woman he eventually falls head over heels for, and she becomes a minor character, so it definitely was appropriate.

But I'll confess it was difficult to do because I felt like such a voyeur! It's good to know your characters and all, but aren't there some things we don't really need to know? Maybe. I couldn't think of the scene as a learning moment because, well, there isn't much new info to be uncovered. Both people concerned have agreed that they're doing it because they're lonely and they're attracted to each other.

I've avoided sex scenes in the past because I figured most people know the basics and unless the story is a romance, it wouldn't add anything important. However, a couple years ago, a writing instructor said that he felt sex scenes absolutely add something important, if they're appropriate to the story.

I've been thinking over what he said. Once I reached the point in my story where these two characters come together, I realized that I've spent 20 chapters getting readers emotionally involved with this guy, and now I can't get away with skimming over something so emotionally charged.

But it's a short section, once they get to the bedroom. It's not an erotic romance so I don't feel I need to add many details. It needs more than the usual first-draft tweaking because I felt kind of creepy writing it so it's bound to have a goofy feel. Still, once I got to the end, I understood that it provides a mid-stream minor catharsis for readers. They see he's a nice guy who's been painfully dumped (twice that they know of) and they want him to be happy. It's kind of a calm before the storm, once the story continues.

Photo by thesaint / stock.xchng

So that means that once my other protag gets propositioned by the woman he eventually falls for, I have to show (some of) that too. How interesting, I just realized that both of my guys are not initiating, at least for these particular scenes. Maybe that says something about my psyche, but we probably don't want to go there :D

I'd be really interested in hearing how it went the first time you added a sex scene in a WIP. Were you looking forward to it, did you have it planned out, what did you feel it added to the story?

update

They say the devil finds work for idle hands and there's enough trouble in the world, so I'm keeping busy. Since deciding to write out my novel up to "the end" before trying to cut stuff, I've had no lack of people to run chapters past. This is a very good thing!

(photo by Roni Loren/
Flickr WANA Commons)

My local writers' group meets weekly so I try to have a chapter ready for every Wednesday. My private queue at Critique Circle (CC) has chapters up for critiquing until I delete them, so there's less of a rush to get stuff posted there but keeping that up is ongoing as well. And I have one beta reader who I work with through email (quality over quantity: Teresa is really helpful!).

The nice (albeit sometimes confusing) thing about this is that editing for my local group and editing for my queue at CC overlaps, so that (for example) I get comments on Chapter 3 from my CC critters and I can tweak that before submitting it to my local group. My beta reader tends to get stuff last which means she gets things after I've gotten comments from two groups and have tweaked accordingly.

I'm also revamping my ponderous outline, begun when I was well into draft 1, as I tweak the chapters in draft 3.

And of course I post here every week, as well as posting here for Six Sentence Sunday. I have to say, I've found the format for Six Sunday really, really helpful. If you can only have six sentences in your story excerpt, they better be interesting ones! I love looking at a bunch of dialogue or a couple paragraphs and trying to figure out what it is I want to get across, and fit it into that restriction.

I'm going to bring it up to my local group and suggest that everybody take part of a scene from their own work and reduce it to a meaningful six sentences. With a bit of adjusting I think the technique could result in a great way to produce writing stripped of non-essentials. The adjusting comes in because you need to have a plot as well as a story, and those are not the same thing.

How about you? How are you keeping busy as another change of the season approaches?

That's a hot potato!

Sheesh, I just don't believe in coincidence. Someone in my local writers' group commented that in one of my chapters, it would add some realism and spice to a scene if I had a character not just mention that Gloria Estefan was on the radio, but use a specific lyric.

Yeah, I thought, that's a good point. Readers could see that and instantly connect with that moment by hearing the song in their heads. But I'd already read contradictory information about whether writers (especially unknown ones) could do that. The next day, one of the members emailed me a link to a wikipedia article on "fair use."

Ha ha. It's not that simple anymore, folks. The subject came up almost on the same day at Critique Circle where someone posted a link to a British article describing how the writer had to pay big out-of-pocket money to use lyrics in his story, or get slapped with a lawsuit.

There were more links to more articles. Critique Circle's blog talked about it and provided the link to the Public Domain Information Project. Now, I trust what that website says. The music industry, from what I've read in a variety of places, is very, very sensitive about the slightest possibility of theft, and its lawyers are willing and eager to sue. The lawsuit doesn't have to have merit to damage a writer's reputation.

Someone in my local writers' group suggested that if I use an intentionally misquoted lyric, I can't be sued because I'm not using the actual lyric. I love that these guys are trying to help me out, but that just isn't a chance I want to take.

Have you seen Roni Loren's blog post on how she got sued over using images she thought were free? People do get sued over things they had no idea were illegal.

So the only lyrics you'll see in my WIP are the ones I write myself. Anyway, I'm thinking that the absence of other people's lyrics near mine will make mine stand out in a great way :)

Happy writing, peeps. Stay safe: legally as well as physically.