On Outlining: When You Find Your Interest Flagging
I've been giving some thought to the common complaint of pantsers that they cannot write an outline and then retain interest in writing the story.
This is one of those ideas that I can wrap my head around and yet don't have. Personally, if I don't write at least a third of the scenes in order before putting my fingers to the keyboard, I will write a scene and then dry up like the creek behind my house in summer. I describe a character and then everyone freezes up and nothing else is forthcoming.
But I understand where the pantser is coming from.
Look, we all tackle our problems in unique ways. I don't expect a dedicated 'write-from-the-seat-of-your-pants, first scene to last' to like or benefit from my numbered checklist of scenes. Nor do I expect myself to want to create an Excel spreadsheet with numbered beats. You do you, I do me, when it comes to outlining.
That unique preparation routine comes from a unique outlook on the writing process. To me, the numbered list of things my characters encounter and do in order is the 'dirty draft.' It can be re-written, moved around, erased, ignored, added to, and adorned with notes and arrows.
I can produce this dirty draft if I have the criminal's plot and the characters written out somewhere. It's penciled on a notebook with lots of space all around my checklist. Once my fingers hit the keyboard, I am re-writing the outline. Single numbered events, such as "3. Our heroes interview manor house inhabitants" can become three scenes. Or it can be woven into the next scene on the list or dropped all together. Sometimes event 3 becomes event 10. The outline develops a million sidenotes and redacted texts. So long as my heroes ultimately uncover the criminal's plot, I consider myself more or less faithful to my outline.
Where my plan suffers is when I get lazy about revising the dirty draft. When I hit a new character, feel the tug of a new plot element or whole subplot, and suppress it out of the fear of the work that it will require. I see a spy novel developing out of my murder mystery, but I don't want to pick up my outline and add the arrows and redactions necessary.
I have to remind myself that the second draft that I am writing will need revision anyway. No big deal, no terrible time-waster: just some scenes will be changed and moved. Some characters will be added or deleted. It ain't done until a satisfactory story has been produced, and that takes more than two drafts. Always. So why cry about an erased snippet of outline or note in the margins?
I think that must be the universal law that I will apply to writers: don't get lazy. Your method of preparing for writing only fails, whatever the method, when you succumb to 'get-it-over-with-itis.' When you refuse to do the revisions that your heart knows the story needs. When you balk at adding a note. That's when you stop being a writer and your story becomes boring to you.
That's why the pantsers and I are on the same page: we lose interest when the work that we are willing to do is already completed.
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