Forum: Author Hangout

I wonder how many use an "Outline" or "Bible" when creating their stories?

I admit that for most of my longer form ones, I do use them. Generally anywhere from one to five pages long, that I will update as I write in order to help keep my story focused and going in the right direction. Often including aspects I will incorporate into the story, and making sure plot elements will not be forgotten and that later chapters will not contradict themselves.

It also comes in handy if I have an idea for a story, but am not ready to write it yet for various reasons. That way I can work on bits and pieces as they come to me, and not forget about it in the future.

I have at least eight outlines like this at the moment, stories I intend on writing someday, but not yet. Some of them actually date back over a decade, or I will go through them and pull out ideas I may use in another story.

Is this a concept that others use as well, or am I alone in this?

I use a basic plot item outline list for my stories, but I'm also prepared to change it as I go as I'll sometimes think of a better way to do part of the story and will adjust it.

Here is an example of one of my "outlines", which is so far only the start of a future story planned, but one I have not fleshed out beyond this.

This one is tentatively called "Fall Down and Out".

Basic outline for futuristic story with aspects lifted from Fallout.

MC is self-aware, placed into a simulation that replicates aspects of Fallout using string theory of multiple universes. He is a scientist, who invents a device that allows him to "step" into an alternate reality.

Following the theory that any alternate reality is possible, he decides to try one based upon a game he used to play as a teenager, Fallout. He decides to put himself into 2177 in Oregon. He chooses Silver Falls State Park as his destination, a place he is familiar with from his childhood. He finds the slightly crumbling ruins of the lodge and finds some half rotted newspapers dating to the week before the war and it is almost as described from the game.

He is supposed to only be in that alternate reality for a period of 12 hours, but when the 12 hours expires he does not return. When sitting down in the ruins of a conference room with a chalkboard, he runs through the formulas again and realized he made a mistake. He is not recalled because he is now in another timeline, and the one he came from is a theoretical fictional one to his new frame. Therefore the only way to return would be to recreate the machine that would allow him to cross into his former one.

He spent 4 years in the Marines as a Infantry Platoon Commander. So he understands survival, military tactics, and knows how to hunt and fish.

The only supplies he brought with him was five days of food, three days of water, a 5.56mm CAR-15 with 180 rounds, a Colt 9mm pistol with 90 rounds, tent and sleeping bag, water purification tablets, 25 one ounce silver coins, knife, 1,000 bottle caps, and a custom tablet with an encyclopedia, Geiger counter, and survival manuals built in.

After three days he decides to head towards Salem, the nearest large city 30 miles to the west. He takes the time to collect up every bottlecap he finds in the lodge, and that he scavenges along the two day trek to the city. He has over 400 of them by the time he gets to the outskirts of the city, and looking down on it 10 miles away he realizes it took a direct hit during the nuclear war. He checks his Geiger counter and radiation levels are higher than background, but not dangerously so. As he approaches the outskirts he finds a small farming community called "Four Corn", which he recognizes as where the "Four Corners Rod & Gun Club" used to be. He gains entry, and when asking about supplies the trader tells him some things they have for sale, and the price in caps.

He is glad he got that much right, and after making a deal for a black powder rifle, powder, and bullets they laugh at him when he tries to give them the 300 bottlecaps agreed upon. Turns out that one aspect that was wrong was that the currency is not bottlecaps themselves. Unlike in the game, in this "real world Fallout", "bottlecaps" refers to improvised coins made out of bottlecaps that have been filled with silver.

He talks to the "Old Crone" who is 115 years old, and the only person in the community that was born before the war. She is a mystic, and explains to him about the era of the Sino-American war when she was a teenager, and the events of the war itself. From her he finds out that in the aftermath money was worthless, but there was a lot of silver in the form of silverware, plates, candlesticks, jewelry, and other items. Traders started to melt those down and pour the silver into bottlecaps, making a standardized currency that quickly spread through most of the continent.

He does some fast calculation after examining some of the "caps" used as currency, and figures that in direct conversion, his 25 silver coins is only around 125 caps. However, he also discovers that because his silver is made of "Pure Coin", it is considered 50% more valuable because the improvised coins are generally considered to be only 50% pure. The chief of the village accepts the coins in exchange, as they can use them to trade with Eugene for some farming machines they have been wanting.

He spends two weeks with the tribe, most nights talking with Old Crone, and finding that indeed most of the history is like from the game. Power Armor, Vaults, 13 Commonwealths (Oregon being in the "North-West Commonwealth"), even the NCR and Brotherhood of Steel.

The NCR was attempting to reclaim the US one region at a time, but is still largely contained to the SWC composed of California and Nevada. The NWC was based out of Olympia, with power split between Portland and Seattle. Jefferson was an independent state, not recognized by either the NWC or NCR, but allowed to remain as they are a buffer between the expansionist goals of the NCR, and the independence of the NWC.

The Scientist agrees to go with the envoys to Eugene, and he discovers that there is a small industrial community based around the old university. Mostly it survives as part of the NWC, selling farm machinery and seeds. The trade group is composed of eight others, with the 25 silver coins, 1,500 caps, and a dozen horses that will be traded for two modified recreations of 19th century Mccormick reapers. One for grain, the other for corn.

I got through the whole first book and most of the second without an outline, just a sketchy list of future events (that was often wrong).

Late in Book 2, and for all of Book 3, I've relied on a document I'm calling 'Rolling Outline', which gets stuff slapped on it as soon as there's a future event that needs to get covered at a certain point, a plotline that can't get dropped, etc.

Not the same thing at ALL, but it works for me. I may go with more detailed outlines at some point - I do have my cases of breaking continuity and needing to go back and fix things (fortunately, before even my editors see the latest face-palming mistake, so far).

I keep a list of story ideas in a file, about a paragraph each, describing a couple main characters and an initial situation. Every so often, usually when I'm jotting another one down, I'll read the others and see if any of them have a "spark" that catches my interest.

When one does, when I get a glimpse of an opening line of an actual story, I move the paragraph into a new file (leaving a link to it in the index) and start typing.

As I write, I generally know what's going to happen in the next scene or two, and I'll make notes [in brackets] as I figure that out, but otherwise I'll keep writing. At some point, sometimes as early as a quarter of the way through, usually by two-thirds, I can see what sort of arc the story is taking, and will [jot that down] as well, but not in detail. I try to aim for that, but usually it isn't hard because the story's already aiming that way.

At the bottom of the file, I keep a section of notes about characters and other details.

So, yeah, that's the writing life of a pantser. Or, this one, anyway.

There's a lot of variation, I should say. One story I'm writing, I had the outline of the relationship arc before the end of chapter one, and from the start planned to take my characters to a certain event, but have had no idea where any of rest is going. Another, I'm what feels like two-thirds done but can't see past the next scene and am just driving away down a country road by the light of the headlights.

I have a series of 'first' chapters. Ideas for stories. A fair number of them, actually. As far as an actual outline, though, no. I learned with my first two novels to keep a large buffer, but other than that, I let the characters drive themselves. If I were writing shorter works, that probably wouldn't work as well, but since I seem to be stuck in epic saga mode for the time being, letting the characters grow and evolve as they will seems to work so far.

Does that mean it's perfect all the time? Oh, hell, no. That's why the 15 plus chapter buffer, in case I need to go rewrite something five chapters ago. Which has happened, not just the usual mistake of getting a name wrong, but someone not being as much of a dick as they thought.

I do extensive outline. for my shorter books the outlines come in at about 20k words and for my longer ones they come in between 40k and 50k words, and are usually outlined down to the scene level.

I use them to work out not just the story and character arcs, but to try and work out the pacing as well. They sometimes get altered as I'm writing, but not usually not significantly, as I've already worked through he story by then. It's kind of like a first draft with no dialogue or narration.

I tried it once. I found writing the story boring and didn't finish it. I know the basic facts of the story before I write it, but not the detail. I let the story unfold while writing it so to some degree I enjoy writing it like a reader enjoys reading it.

I never outline, formally, that is. Rather, I typically plan out the whole story in my head, and then sit on it for months, waiting until everything gels, often throwing a monkey wrench into the story to complicate things, and letting my subconscious work out the details (i.e. how to resolve the storytelling issues), so that when I finally start, I've got a complex tale with plenty of juicy subplots.

Recently though, I've largely been going without, getting a general idea and just writing, but that really hasn't worked out in the least! But as I'm getting older, that's an awful lot of work and a serious time investment, just as my gray matter is being stretched a little thin.

The advantage though, is that if I don't start writing it immediately, the plot goes stale as my assumptions grow too rigid to evolve naturally as I tell the story, meaning anything that takes too long jump gets dumped outright. In my later stories, there's not that defensive wall, and as long as it passes my 'three-chapter' viability test, I just plow ahead, writing it chapter by chapter, and the complexity eventually falls by the wayside.

But, even when I do plan it out in advance, my mental outlines are vague, as I work out the beginning, ending and the major waypoints, but never the exact details. So, when I say I know how the story will end, the details are vague. Say, if the protagonist ends up dying (a common occurrence, as I've always been a fan of the 'sacrificial hero' motif), I'll know that he dies, but now how, so I'm still surprised when it actually happens, and share the same shock I'm hoping to convey to the readers.

In short, too much planning essentially kills a story's spontaneity, but too little can be deadly too, as you end up venturing down dead-end paths without actually 'thinking them out'. At least for me, creativity is best left to the subsconsious, as the logical, detail oriented left brain runs rampant of the more creative right side of the brain. If you write out the full story before editing, like many of us do here, there's plenty of time to flesh out the details and make any necessary corrections, including adding foreshadowing and enough red herrings to leave the conclusion in doubt (so the ending makes sense, when it occurs, though certainly not expected).

So, I mentally outline using my subconscious, write straight through without editing, then once I know how everything works out in the end, head back and do some extensive revisions, knowing where the story is headed I can then tailor the story to lead the readers there. However, writing each chapter on the fly you lose virtually ALL of those advantages! But as I already stated, that approach takes a LOT of work!

The general idea though, is to just outline the direction you want to take, and then leave the pantsing for each chapter.

BTW, a lifetime of talking with writers and professional editors has convinced me that whatever method you use, in the end it takes about the same amount of effort to finish the story. It takes as just as much work to pre-plan a story as it does to fix a completed draft of an unplanned one.

It can be hard to convince hard-core outliners of this, however.

I use an Outline / Timeline to keep track of events occurring "Off Screen" and to remind me when certain things should occur in the story.

I use the Outline to keep track of the plans/motivations of various Characters/factions. Some may never appear in the story, but they influence the way I write a character.

My Outline(s) and Notes are often Three Times as much as what I actually post as part of my story.

My dialogue and many specific actions often evolve "seat of the pants" and occasionally result in modifications to the storyline.

Reader's will rarely Know why a Character does something, they may be able to correctly guess, but mostly they will only Know what they see the character Do. Such is life, we have Our Perspective of what people do, and not matter what they Say, we may have our own opinion about why We Think they did something.

My character outlines, usually just a few words or a sentence influence what character does a particular action. A brave character might get killed needlessly, or a lazy one fail to to perform an action that will result in a crisis; or the dyslexic guy might go left when they should have gone right.