I'm Back!

I’m back! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  As you probably know (or don’t, whatever the case may be), I’ve been hard at work on my novel As Fate Would Have it.  I’ve made some interesting progress this past month and hope to share what I’ve done before the end of this month.

            Some things I’ve learned on my journey are that prep time for a novel takes time—lots of it.  This is especially true if you like to outline some key components before you start putting your ideas to paper.  In Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success by K.M. Weiland, I’ve learned that outlining should be looked at as a road map, one that guides you through the nuances of your plot, characters, setting and other key elements of your story.  However, just because it’s a road map doesn’t mean that you should follow it to the letter.  You can deviate, take detours and explore interesting places along the way so long as you reach the end goal of your scene and ultimately the end of your manuscript.

            I’ve found that this is a healthy way to look at outlining and somewhat trumps the idea that outlining can potentially ruin the creative process.  In actuality, outlining should be seen as a method of getting to the creative process by allowing you to research and brainstorm key components that may take up much of your writing time.  By this I mean, why write a whole chapter in which you have no idea where it’s going and have no conception of the characters, their motivations and so forth? It’s much easier to go in with an idea of these things so you spend less time in block mode and more time putting your creativity to paper.  

            Outlining should be used to organize your thoughts, conduct research and to garner a deeper understanding of the inner workings of your story idea.  I’ve attempted writing without an outline and it proved to be an inordinate waste of my time.  Sure I wanted to get my words down on paper, but I went in knowing very little of what was going to happen and simply made things up as I went along.  In those cases, I barely made it past chapter one.  For me, outlining is my way of making sense of my story idea and developing it so that I can apply my knowledge and research to the creative product.  In the long run, it shaves off a lot of time spent understanding your story idea, which should be reserved for writing.

How do you feel about outlining?  In what ways do you feel your writing process makes use of this tool?