Comments on: Outlining and strawberries

By: Michael Kelly

Michael Kelly — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:58:41 +0000

What’s interesting to me about your post, and Terry Brooks’ book as well, is that they both make me think of exploratory testing. As you say, “Experiencing was better than thinking, in the same way that eating a strawberry is better than thinking about eating a strawberry.”

In my writing, I find that outlines help me when I’m writing technical articles, but they hinder me when I’m writing fiction. I’m not sure why. I think it might be word count. If I have 3,000 words, outlines help me figure out what’s in scope and out of scope. If I have as much space as I want, I find they constrain me to much and I ignore them. Now I don’t bother making them for fiction.

By: Dwayne Phillips

Dwayne Phillips — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:58:25 +0000

I outline when I write non-fiction, such as engineering management books. I have writing short story fiction this year. I haven’t been outlining for that. Somehow I consider the short stories “practice” and not “for real” or something like that. I let the words flow.

For bigger projects, like the aforementioned books, I feel a need to know where I am going and where I have been.

By: Dale Emery

Dale Emery — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 01:58:04 +0000

Right, you don’t stall on the writing. And as Terry Brooks says, it frees you to focus on things other than the plot.

Just to be clear, I’m not advising anyone to skip outlining. Lots of folks find it very helpful. In fact, I found it helpful in some ways in November. Knowing the general movement of each scene freed me to think about smaller bits — “beats.” That was helpful. And I might benefit even more from outlining next time I do it.

My one experience with outlining was mixed. More about that later.

By: jenfullmoon

jenfullmoon — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 12:42:58 +0000

I think the point of an outline is that you don’t stall out on the writing. You know what you’re supposed to be doing. Obviously, no outline has screwed me this year!

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 12:27:39 +0000

Hi Dale–this is from Tracie (new person in WordForge.) I too have struggled with the concept of outlining. When I first read that quote by Brooks some time ago, I was frustrated by and envious of him. I’ve written two (or three, depending on your definition) novels and the best thing about writing them is being up at 2:30am, buzzing away at the keyboard and learning the story as you write it. I love it when I’m cruising along, writing a character’s story and I think, “Oh my God, I can’t believe he’s doing that,” or crying over a character’s untimely death that I didn’t know about until she died. Having said all that, I do make a “map” where I write down two or three pages worth of scenes that come to me, but I often veer far enough from what I wrote, that I’ve forgotten it by the “end” of the writing. So far, the best thing for me has been just plugging through the story–and you’re right, when you’re finished, it’s like a really detailed outline (a 50,000 word outline.) It’s nice to hear about somebody else’s experience with this. Thanks for sharing.