I try to write quality posts here on Suvudu that can begin discussion.
Because I love discussion. I love chatting with fantasy or craft of writing fans about this and that. It is fun to read different perspectives on a wide range of different topics and incorporate them if I deem them sensible. Yes, I am a Borg that way.
The George R. R. Martin discussions of the last week has definitely done this. I am happy about it. I think the more people express themselves, the better for them. That includes me, of course. But every once in a while during my posts, someone asks a very good question and I can’t help but write a long response.
The question evolved out of the Martin discussion. George is a freewriter. He doesn’t outline. He may know where a few of his main characters will end up, but by the large he doesn’t know what a character is going to do on the page every day he sits down at the keyboard. That’s an exciting way to write; it also induces panic in me if I try to do it! I don’t want to write about a character for 200 pages, have that character take me down the wrong path for the overall story, and then have to erase those 200 pages and begin again to get to where I want to be.
It’s happened to George since A Game of Thrones. That is simply too much time lost for my own writing endeavors, too much sweat and tears shed.
Here is the question a commenter name Steven asked me:
“When thinking about your characters before you begin writing, what is your process for outlining those characters? How specific do you get?”
Well, as I’ve said, I’m an outliner. I am no longer in denial about it. I’m actually one of those OCD outliners when it comes to my craft. I spend two or three months with my characters and the story in advance, letting scenes and character arcs percolate.
Then I sit down and write a general outline with beginning, middle, and end elements.
When it comes to characters, I know the main characters’ beginnings, middles, and ends. I know who they are at the beginning and who they have become at the end—and what events in the middle have changes them.
This is all before I write a word down.
It is very different for George.
For instance, in The Dark Thorn, my main character, Richard McAllister, is a destroyed homeless man living in Seattle. He hates himself because of an event that took place while fulfilling his role in keeping the fey world and our world separate, and as penance he chooses to live a nasty, dirty life.
You asked for how specific I get before I write, Steven? I knew before I even wrote his first chapter why Richard was destroyed. I knew who he would be at the end, a man mostly redeemed. I knew three or four events in the middle that would facilitate that change. That was pretty much it but I also knew all of that in detail.
I have four point of view characters. I did this for all of them before I began writing. I choose to put my time dreaming up front before I write; that way I don’t run into snags when the actual hard work plays out on the keyboard.
I cannot imagine what George goes through, with all of those POV characters flying around. Can’t imagine it at all. He has rewritten so many of his POV character chapters over the last nineteen years, it would drive me insane. While George thinks his character is going down the right path but ultimately will discover the character isn’t, George must retrace those footsteps, destroy his own work, and begin again. All of that lengthens the amount of time it takes him to finish a book. All of that is extra work that doesn’t need to be done.
The problem is, I don’t know if we actually choose if we are freewriters or outliners.
It very well could be DNA related. Ha!
And at present, while George writes the most critical part of the series where all of his characters must be perfectly placed for the series conclusion to work, I’m sure he wonders from time to time “why, oh why, wasn’t I born an outliner?”
The point is every writer is different. They approach the craft different. Initially I started my craft five years ago as a loose outliner because that is what works for Terry Brooks. I thought if it works for him, it might work for me. I was wrong. Turned out I am a far more OCD outliner than Terry, going to the point of outlining most of my chapters before writing them, thinking through every nuance before actually committing my time to the electrons in my computer.
Hopeful writers out there, try a couple of different sides in this and see what works for you. Don’t be afraid to freewrite; don’t be afraid to try outlining. Only you can decide the one best way for you.
It’s at that time your writing will really take off.
I know that a lot of writers (such as Martin) are freewriters, but I absolutely cannot comprehend it.
I’m a devout outliner. Heck, I’ve occasionally been known to outline short stories, or individual chapters, if they’re complex enough. It’s rare, but it happens. I absolutely outline my novels, though.
Not in too much detail. I don’t do scene-by-scene outlines, and I usually spend only a couple of days on a given outline. It’s just a general “Here’s a few sentences or paragraphs on what happens in each chapter.” And it varies. My outline for Agents of Artifice was several pages long; my outline for The Conqueror’s Shadow, only about two.
And obviously, any good outliner needs to be prepared to deviate from the outline, if better ideas occur. But having the roadmap is still absolutely essential, at least for me.
You’re right that new authors should find their own way–but I always suggest very strongly that they try outlining several times before giving up on it.
(Of course, it helps that I got my start doing work-for-hire, in which outlining is mandatory, since the property-owner has to approve an outline before you can start writing.)
I started out as a free-writer, because I had this image that it’s what writers do. They sit down, and creativity pours out of them. Well it does, but for that I have got several books with black holes in them.
Finally last year learned my lesson, and did a complete, detail outline before writing my novel for NaNo. And guess what? It worked. Now, I am definitely an outliner and proud of it. I would rather spend that time in the beginning than get frustrated and daunted by a first draft with plot lines that mysteriously disappear.
Funny you should bring this up, I just had a banner weekend over on DeviantArt with a guide I wrote on writing novels…
http://barbecuediguana.deviantart.com/art/How-to-Write-a-Novel-152122723
I’ve been writing on and off since I was fifteen – always freewriting – and somehow I managed to get through both college and grad school (as a writing major) without ever using an outline.
Of course, it also needs to be said that during this long long time, everything I wrote pretty much sucked. It wasn’t until I turned 35 that I finally got frustrated enough to give outlining a try.
It was not love at first sight.
I think the problem (and this is probably GRR Martin’s problem too) is that when you grow up freewriting you get accustomed to the feel of the process, the adventure of the draft, and you know from your own enthusiasm whether or not its going well. Outlining ahead of time just seems to steal the wind from your sails – especially if you do a formal outline with numbers and indented tiers and such. That and outlining just doesn’t seem to bring you in close enough to the story to get to the actual story. Only drafting does.
However, writing is a whole lot easier when you plan ahead. It also allows for more complex storylines and dramatic endings. So nowadays I do storyboarding. I write a very crude mockup of the story just to get the general idea of where it will begin, go and end. I guess this could be called a light outline; however, almost inevitably, the draft will go in a completely different direction from what I had planned and normally I just run with it. In the end the stories turn out very different from what I had planned, and often better than what I had planned, but I don’t think I could have done them without some planning beforehand.
It’s worth noting that George did report back in 1996 or thereabouts creating an outline for the series once it became clear that the events of A GAME OF THRONES, A CLASH OF KINGS and A STORM OF SWORDS could not possibly fit in one book. Apparently this was a somewhat brief and not-very-detailed affair, and I’m sure it has not survived contact with the five-year-gap and the introduction of the AFFC/ADWD situation unscathed, but it’s incorrect to say that GRRM doesn’t know where the series is going at all.
The other element is that GRRM has the same writing technique as Tolkien, what was once called the ‘waves coming up the beach’ approach. Tolkien would write vast reams of material, then go back and write over the top of it, refining and changing things based on information from later in the book that he’d reached in his prior drafts (for example, when he got back to writing about Bree he decided the weird Hobbit called Trotter who’d shown up to help the other Hobbits out wasn’t cutting it, and replaced him with a human guy called Aragorn). So whilst there is an element of making it up as you go along, an exhaustive revising/rewriting process can eliminate the problems of this approach (at the obvious cost of adding vast amounts of writing time to the book).
Maybe, I’m a fool but I can’t outline. I hate it with a passion. I’ve just never seen the point. If you make an outline that is half the pages of the novel you are writing (some authors do this), than you’ve pretty much written the novel. I just wouldn’t write the novel after that. Not to say that outlining is wrong, many amazing writers outline.
I like my writing to be more organic. Sometimes, I’ll write a scene and not know why it is there until 50-100 pages later. I like being surprised by what will happen. Maybe, that sounds very hippy/new age stuff but that’s just me.
I have tried outlining–in fact, many variations of outlines, but I cannot find any outline that works for me. I even did an outline workshop, and while everyone else was going, “Wow! This method is really great!” I was the one who had to battle with each step. The last two steps I never even understood, and those were the easiest parts for everyone else. I wanted to outline so I could get a book done to be faster and easier.
But I absolutely cannot outline. In order for me to get an understanding of the story, I need to make first contact with the story–actually write it and get settled into it. I also need to be able to take intuitive leaps. Not an idea in a different direction, but just put something in that I’m not sure what I’ll do with or if it’ll even stay in there. That’s how I got a major plot element into the story–by taking that leap, and as I revised, it fell right in where I needed it.
I may not even know who all my main characters are before I start. My last one, I knew one, and there ended up being a total of four. I came to the third chapter and realized that the MC needed to go into the tunnel with someone, so I tossed in a police man and a fire fighter. Those became two of the main characters.