Well, how are you all doing? What amazing things happened to you today, or yesterday, or this last weekend? Did you meet new people and develop magical companionships? Did an event cause your life to change dramatically? Did you do something incredibly stupid, or incredibly hilarious? Did you fall in love, if so with whom and what made you decide this terrible fate? (kidding...)
Are you feeling overwhelmed yet? Wouldn't it be so much nicer if you'd written all of this down in a journal perhaps... so you could tell me EVERYTHING cool that happened? Well my friends, that's what's so important about outlines. I highly... highly on like the highest mountain tops, suggest that you do not embark on the mission of finishing a novel without first completing an outline.
An outline is like a map for your entire story. For example if I looked at your outline I'd expect to see the writing pyramid; the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Keep in mind, this does not mean every little detail, but you need to know all of the important stuff and where they ought to be, otherwise while you're writing one day (and you think you can succeed by going off the top of your head) you'll begin to feel lost and forget how to get from point A to point B in your story.
Here's a shabby example... The Little Mermaid: Point A-You meet the main character being reckless and curious in a sunken ship exploring and is threatened by a shark, Point B- Ariel sees a ship sailing above and has to investigate, and that's where she sees Eric and falls in love at first sight. These are decent steps in an outline because the readers (or film watchers) already know the character's behavior based off of Point A, so when point B arrives it makes sense that she's careless and adventurous, falling in love compulsively and risking her exposure. Your job after is to create the filling in between those steps, like the dialogue, character development, etc to make a fun read!
Making outlines is also a healthy activity for those amazing days when you have a million great ideas and have no idea how to use them all when you're writing 100+ pages. TAKE NOTES, don't let a good idea fall through the cracks because you were too lazy to use a pencil to paper or document it on the computer. Shame on you for not sharing your genius.
Another fantastic thing about outlines is that it's not set in stone. Outlines are easy to manipulate if you change your mind about an event in your story or even characters (this WILL happen, even after you think you've finished, sorry :/) So if you were taking weeks or months pondering over your outline, but suddenly you have an even better idea to add, you can easily see where you could add it in, or take out something else to make room. This will be much less painful than having half a book with no outline to go off of and realize you don't know how to end it or how to keep track of your character development. Trust me, love the outlines.
Until next time!
Me
No comments:
Post a Comment