My Argument For Outlining

I have basically found that those who write screenplays and teleplays generally tend to outline, and those who write novels generally tend not to.  This is a fairly gross generalization, and I am not close friends with many professionals yet, so I'm basing this gross generalization off what I have read.

In ON WRITING, Stephen King says that when he has tried outlining, his novels have felt (to himself, at least) too "plotted", not spontaneous or organic enough.  By contrast John Vorhaus, in THE LITTLE BOOK OF SITCOM and other writing books, is all about using the outlining stage as a "platform document" -- one of the ways we can discover more about our characters, story and world that gets us to the next "platform" of story development quickly and organically.

I could offer more examples on both sides of the debate, but that would be pointless.  Lest ye forget, I do not claim to be an expert.  I'm a guy who has studied this stuff from books (and blogs and expo panels and interviews) for two decades and who has yet to sell a screenplay or novel.  This blog is nothing more than a journal of what I am doing this time, on this specific novel.

Feel free to try this at home, kids; I am not a professional!

I have written two novels so far, completing only the second one, which I felt so poorly about that I submitted it only to one publishing house and gave up after they rejected me.  I have completed several scripts for short films, but most of those were co-written with at least one other person.  And I have completed maybe five screenplays, but I didn't rewrite or submit any of them to agents or producers or production companies.

So in addition to my theoretical knowledge of the writing process, I have a pretty good idea of what works and doesn't seem to work for me.  (This is the only "expertise" I claim.)  And, in retrospect, I find that I am too insecure to write without an outline.

Why does an outline offer me a sense of security?

Because I am not trying to be an artiste, I am trying to be an entertainer.  I want to entertain my audiences.  I want them to have a good time.

And every single time I have chosen to either skip the outlining process or have started writing pages before I was finished outlining, I have hit some creative wall and failed to complete the project, be it prose or script format.  I inevitably come to some point where I can't figure out where to go next, and I doubt my ability to pull off this particular story, and hen I usually think of a better idea (by which I really mean "newer") and I give up.

The only way to fail is to give up.  I have heard this from several professional creatives (writers, actors, directors, musicians, etc.) and I believe it must be true.  I am convinced that the only reason I have not succeeded yet (in this context, I mean "published or sold a story") is because I have always, always given up.

And by contrast, the only feature-length screenplays I have finished (for Script Frenzy contests, not for sale) have been outlined.

When I complete an outline, my goal changes from "Is this good enough" (entirely TOO subjective a goal) to simply giving fleshing out the outline into a draft.

But with hindsight, I believe the Outline does something else: It forces me to stop thinking about the story as a nebulous, ubiquitous Story-That-Might-Be and make it a 40-scene Story-That-Is.  By simply (and more-or-less arbitrarily -- but more on that next post) deciding that my story will play out over the course of, more or less, 40 scenes I take the first step in plucking my story idea from the ether of party conversation topic and planting it firmly into the soil of actual writing.  I force myself to start answering practical questions about the actual shape. texture and pace of my story.

I suspect that this is why authors who start out writing for TV tend not to get Writer's Block.  First, they don't have time to.  if they get Writer's Block, they lose a paycheck.  So they don't.  But maybe more importantly, they know they have so many pages that their story has to fit into, and they have so much time to get the job done.  The begin with not only a structure, but a structure specific to the show they are writing for.  And after writing for a number of shows, I'm guessing that they start to see patterns that demystified the story-telling process.  (But that's speculation on my part.)

At any rate, because writing teleplays is an unarguably commercial endeavor, these writers get to jump past a lot of the high-minded and lizard-brain insecurities and doubts.  A beginning novelist with an artistic bent might seek to revolutionize the the very prose form itself with her first novel, having never written a "straight" novel.  (Beginning screenwriters also may suffer this aspiration.)  But when writing for television is your aspiration, you know the only way in is to learn the rules and master them.

And, to be fair, I'm talking about American television here.  I have read that neither Russell T. Davies nor Steven Moffat write outlines for their work.  However, I know that Russell T. Davies started out writing for British soap operas, which is just as demanding and "formulaic" (I hate that term because it tends to be bandied about by people who think they are very clever but have not, themselves, sold a novel or screenplay or teleplay; my issue, not there, but there we are) as American TV.

My point is this: I know from all the short films I have helped shoot (as well as having heard many professional artists say the same thing) that limitations often bring about the most creative decisions.

And the Outline provides me the first layer of limitations.

Ultimately, I am not trying to convert you, curious reader, to either side of the debate.  I'm just explaining why I, with this novel, feel outlining is essential.

Next blog entry: How I Outline.