Open Thread: Oracle Hotline

[mithen]

crookedspoon asked if I would take a week to bring up outlining as a topic and see if anyone wanted to share an example of their outlines! I usually label mine "plot beats" more than an actual outline and then break it up into chapters and list what emotional beats and/or plot things need to happen in each chapter. Grabbing a non-superhero example from a recent finished work:

24. Fight with IQ. Gandalf sacrifices himself. Thrain comes upon them but Thorin can't kill him. They flee through the chaos and meet up with Pallando's group. Farewell to Samur and Bachai. Note that this ceases Easterling aid to Mordor. Strike off south toward the desert.

25. Travel through the desert. Camels. Reach the oasis. Hints that Gollum is following them.

26. Turn west through the desert to Nurn. Description of slave community. Meet the leader. Aragorn asks for royalty, gets laughed at. He rallies them. Elephants around here or last chapter.

27. The big split. Denethor has his freak-out and gets through it. Thorin and Bilbo strike off for Mount Doom. Everyone else organizes a guerrilla war against the back of Sauron's army. Farewells.

28. go meta and explain that Thorin or Bilbo can't narrate this part. Follow the guerrillas to the west (the competition starts), then switch to Thorin. They reach the base of Mt. Doom. Bilbo is beginning to have doubts he can do it. Thorin promises to throw him in.

Which is mostly a list of reminders of what Chekhov's Guns need to be put on the table for later plot purposes! The main characters are saved by elephants at the very end, for example, so I knew it was important to mention early on that there were elephants in the area. Gollum had to be there at the climax, but I didn't want him to just suddenly appear out of nowhere, so I had to remember to leave hints that he was around earlier. Some of these points shifted as I wrote them (for example, I decided it was out of character for Aragorn to just stride in and ask "Who's king around here?"--it fits the way he's written in the books in some ways, but not so much the movies, so that disappeared). Chapter 25 was clearly a little thin on plot, so as I wrote it I asked myself "What emotional/relationship themes haven't cropped up for a while, and can I fit them in here?" This led to some reminders about the worries that Thorin and Bilbo don't share an afterlife, and reminders that Thorin was there to support Bilbo with the Ring--things I hadn't mentioned for a while and needed to be there.

I'd love to see an example of an outline for your work, or just to hear how things are going for you!

Comments

[me_ya_ri]

*rueful grin* I haven't outlined anything for a good long time. I've been an into the dark writer for, oh, years now. I'm much happier with it. My outlines looked a lot like yours, though. Sometimes with more description but not much as I knew it was going to change drastically as I wrote. After a while I just got tired of write a chapter, re-outline everything, write a chapter, re-outline. *shrug*

I do have a general idea of the flow I want for a story, fast and urgent or slow and thoughtful. Which combines with the genre and the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula (which I highly recommend using--it's awesome) to give me a pretty solid structure.

I mean, a romance has meet-cute, problems (number depending on short story or novel), misunderstanding, declaration of love, and then resolution so you always have a good idea of where you are in the structure. Same thing for SF or Fantasy as they've got their own structure and expectations.

So while there's no outline there is a very broad structure I follow that makes it easier to keep track of where I am and not get lost along the way to the ending.

I've done better on the writing this week. I'm about about 6300 words so far which is better than last week's 3000 but it's nowhere near the 10K I was hoping for. I'm going to be about 5000 words shy of my goal for the month, sadly.

On the other hand the Second Chances challenge starts tomorrow so I'm really hoping to blast through that. Plus the workshop I'm going to in the middle of the month is a writing one and I've got 0 words scheduled for the 10 days so that'll help my totals a lot. :D

Hope your writing is going well!

[mithen]

I saw that you fell a bit short of your goal, but it looks like it was a very productive month anyway, so that's good!

I actually have a (for me) more focused outline for the WiP I'm in the middle of where I have four columns with "match" (each chapter revolves around one wrestling match) "events" (what happens in the present, "flashback" (each chapter has a flashback) and "themes" (what ties the present and the flashback together. It's working out pretty well for me, actually! Much more structured than usual for me, though...