The wonderful world of outlining

My relationship with outlining is a pretty strange one. One of the greatest compliments I ever received was from my high school English teacher when she said that my outlines were really tight and logical.

I remember how shocked she was when I told her that they were so methodical because an outline is completely contrary to my normal inclination.

You see- I’m a closet “Seat of the Pants Writer.”

If I don’t start off with a pretty good road map of where I’m going then I get all flighty and have a mess of verbal hiccups going on all over the place.

The outlines served me well in college and all through graduate school. I’d insert my ideas for my research papers and figure out where I’d put in my citations for my primary and secondary resources. That way, if I had a really “cool” idea, I’d be able to slap it in there without my anal retentive tendencies freaking out.

For some unknown reason, when I turned to writing fiction, I tossed out all the hard won experience of the past thirty years out of the window and decided to write freestyle. Oh, I know why I did that, all right. I was convinced that “creative writers” just opened up a new Word document and all the words flowed exactly where they were supposed to go. It was like magic sprinkled with fairy dust. And none of that dry academic stuff that I had been doing for the previous decade, oh no! I was a “real writer” now.

When I started to write my very first (insert squeal here) manuscript, a historical romance set during the Norman Conquest, I tried the seat of the pants method and failed miserably. Now, I know that for most authors, the first manuscript smells like rabbit poo, but mine was particularly fragrant. I realized about three chapters into the mess that I was in trouble and I needed to switch tactics.

Lucky for me, I got into screenwriting about that time, and I learned the value of storyboarding and note cards, at least for screenplays. Being a smart girl, I realized that the basic methods for story telling applied for novel writing as well, so I wised up and went back to outlining.

Throwing myself into outlining with the fervor of a new convert (can you really call yourself a “convert” if you’re returning to an earlier practice? I don’t think so), I started by organizing the files on my thumb drive into logical folders. That set the tone so I could get the outline of each project going.

Now I can’t even think of starting a project without an outline. I won’t let myself do any “serious typing” without one. After the outline is finished, I pull out the note cards and start playing with expanding the elements on the short outline and fiddling with the order of chapters or scenes (particularly if this is for a subplot). Then I start getting character sketches and making sure I have a strategy before I start the actual writing. No more wandering around for me. I mean business.

That trusty jump drive served me well for months. Any time I had a copy of MS Word or Open Office on a computer, I could add to my word count. Since I had all of the research handy in those folders, I could pull them out and keep going.

Then something happened—I decided that I wanted to go beyond Word and get some software with more bells and whistles deisgned specifically for a writer.

Now, in the interests of full disclosure, this idea came about while I was shopping around for a good screenwriting software. I finally decided on
Final Draft. And, oh, it didn’t take long for me to start poking around for something for novelists as well.

After asking around, I settled on Write Way Pro. Christmas came early this weekend when I found both of the boxes in my mailbox. Sunday afternoon, I installed both of them on my computer and started playing around with them.

I’ll be posting some initial reviews of each program later, but I will say now that Write Way has already helped me organize my ideas and get my plotting going even more than I expected. Yes, I’m pleased.