Outline of my lover…
I know I’ve gone back and forth on this, but I think as it stands right now, the plan for writing book number two is to use an outline.
I think it is just a matter of personality, really, but I’m kind of wound in that certain way that needs more structure to be efficient.
I stopped going to hatha yoga because it was too vague, stopped going to iyengar because they spent so much time on the posture that it didn’t seem like an efficient workout, and now I’m gearing up to switch to ashtanga by learning the introductory poses at home. I gravitate toward ashtanga because it is more physical than the other disciplines, but also because it is performed using a strict series of poses. Pose number two always follows pose number one and moves right into pose number three. That interests me.
I often feel lost when I am writing the book because it seems I am simultaneously writing the prose while trying to lock in on why that scene needs to happen. What is it accomplishing? Why do these characters need to be here now?
I know that if I would just let go and live the scene, it would all find its groove, but I seem to flip back and forth between the omnipotence of the book and the needs of the characters.
That isn’t to say all the fun is boiled out of working on the book when drafting an outline, although it certainly gives that impression, but just that I keep coming back to thinking that everything has to matter. I’m not a bit fan of writing that goes off on tangents for no apparent reason. A character, on the other hand, is perfectly fine to go off on tangents, if that is their thing. It just can’t be me doing it. If my writing attracts a reader’s attention while they are reading it, I will have failed.
The outline isn’t new. Robert McKee teaches it all the time. And, I’ve been reading interviews online where Bret Easton Ellis also does them, seemingly in McKee-style. Where they are these big uber-documents that are nearly twice as big as the resulting book and everything is laid bare. All of the structure and interplay and subtext is all planned out in advance and then, when you get the outline to the point where it is locked and effective, you start the writing.
It seems like it would make the writing more purposeful, there would be clear direction, and you would know the intent of every scene and character. It would just be a matter of finding the perfect words for exactly what you want to say.
I guess it comes down to the definition of creativity. It definitely goes against the romantic notion of the found story, which Stephen King always relates as an archaeology metaphor, slowly brushing away the grains of sand to reveal an intact skeleton. Not moving so fast as to break the fossil.
But, coming at it now from the other side, which is from the inside of the text looking out, it seems easier to get lost.
One of the things that always interested me about McKee was the notion that you never write a scrap of dialogue until you are drafting the actual text. But by building characters that you knew inside and out, and who they were and why they were doing things, that by the time you finally allowed yourself to write them, they would know just what to say. The joy in the discovery of the characters still happens, just at a different stage of the process. It seems to segregate the joy of discovering the story and the joy of giving it life through words into two distinct tasks. So, perhaps that would double my joy?
I’m still torn on it, but it is my intent to outline book number two at present.
