No matter who you are, if you are writing any lengthy literary work, you must outline.
It doesn’t matter if the natural laws that govern the world suddenly vanish or if every government simultaneously collapses and anarchy reigns or if the ocean turns red and the sun doesn’t rise the next morning— no matter what, you are outlining before you take on a 90K word story.
Though there’s a lot of different writing advice online, a lot of that advice is fluff— meaning that it’s nice but not necessary. But outlines are different. Outlines aren’t the cherry on top, they’re the glass cup that’s holding the ice-cream. Above everything, the most important thing you can do to create a cohesive story is to outline beforehand.
Why Outlining?
There is one reason: outlines provide structure.
No one really knows what they’re doing on their first draft, but an outline can mean the difference between a hot, fixable mess with direction and a pile of rotting fruit that has begun to grow sentiment mold in an abandoned corner of your room that you want to pick up but can’t because the fuzzy white spots on the fruit keep getting larger and you’re convinced that if you get within a six feet radius you’ll die.
I understand. I’ve been the person nurturing the mold pile, growing it, opening the window and airing the room out so I could deny to myself that it didn’t stink, when in fact I was just making my problems grow until I had written 30K for something that wasn’t going to pan out. Twice. Three times, because I’m a fool.
But I learned! Eventually!
Here’s a screenshot of how much I wrote without an outline, and how much I later had to scrap.
This is ten chapters that I cut from my WIP Yeet Me to The Sun (title is tentative). Understand it was with no small amount of remorse that I cut out gems such as the Cup Noodle Confrontation scene.
I blame this on my lack of an outline. Don’t get me wrong— I had done plenty of thinking beforehand. I had character names, an elaborate backstory, a somewhat developed world and I even had low-quality character designs drawn out. But most importantly, there was an aesthetic I had to follow, a vague feeling that I would certainly be able to put down on paper that would follow logically.
And there was a feeling conveyed. And that feeling brought out some pretty nice writing! The problem was it was a feeling and writing with no direction.
At chapter ten, I looked back and realized I didn’t know where I was going. I couldn’t continue after that chapter because I had no clue as to what I was doing. There was a lot of fun in those chapters, sure, but I wasn’t laying the groundwork for anything to come, and I wasn’t building on anything.
I wasn’t writing with a purpose. The mold on my rotting fruit was condensing into mush.
Now, look at this.
That is a page from my very beautiful 18 page outline. It doesn’t have every detail jotted down, and it doesn’t need to. It’s messy, it has memes, and really only a few overarching bullet points to follow, but it works.
Needless to say, I got a little bit further past chapter ten.
The thing is, with an outline, you have a vague sense of where you are and where you want to go, which is probably more helpful than a feeling. Because you know where you want to go, you begin writing purposely to get there. This makes your WIP flow naturally from event to event without logical fallacies or without just not making sense in general.
In shorter works, sometimes you don’t need an outline. Sometimes you really can just rely on that vague feeling to guide you and you’ll be okay. That does not hold true for works of long length. Without an outline, you’ll just get lost. You’re just making it more difficult for yourself in the future.
How to Outline?
It depends. Everyone likes to outline differently, but I like to begin by figuring out where the story starts and where I want the story to end.
Once I have that down, it’s simply the process of getting from Point A to B. I find it easy to think about where I want to go and then think about how I can get there. Once you’re in that mindset, it’s easier to follow which ideas are viable and will work for you.
It’s good to have a few ideas down for every chapter, but I know that even if you know where to start and end, sometimes you don’t know the middle. Sometimes, you just need to approach your story in a new way. Brainstorm some ideas. Sit in the shower for 40 minutes and think. Look at your characters’ motives to see who would do what and make them do it.
Point is, have the main ideas down and go from there. You don’t need to know everything when you’re writing your story for the first time. Once you finish writing it, you’ll know more about the world you’ve created and will be better able to improve it the next draft. Not knowing something now isn’t the end of the world because sooner or later, you will.
As for the method of outlining, I like having one document where everything is in order (as shown above). I like outlining online because it’s easy to delete and add in things as you continue, because if an outline is one thing, it is flexible and you should be able to change it whenever you need.
I usually have bullets per chapter, but sometimes on the same document I’ll have a timeline of events for different sections, such as political events or events that happen from a certain organization’s POV (if relevant).
In the end, how you outline is up to you. But outlining, if done correctly, can be a very useful tool for your writing journey.
Thoughts on outlining? Comment below!