How to outline a story

My buddy Luka was talking the other day about a story he wants to write. He told me he wants to do an outline first, but he isn't sure how. He said he'd look up instructions online. Being a dork with a new blog, I immediately offered, "I can write down for you how I do it, and it can be my next blog entry."

But then I thought later, what if that's totally redundant? What if there's plenty of better instructions out there already? I mean, I'm obviously not the first person who ever wrote about how to write. Writers love to write about how to write. It's so much easier than actually working. So I spent some quality time with Google, and I can tell you first off, do not Google 'how to write an outline' unless you're writing a term paper. That's all you get from that search. You want to search 'how to outline a novel' instead.

That search will get you a whole lot of instructions about how to compress an already-developed novel into an outline. Most of the instruction-writers seem to think they're telling you how to outline before you write. But the things they tell you to write down are the kind of things you probably don't know yet, or which you'll change while you're working. I used to try to outline the way they tell you to, and found it incredibly frustrating. Most of the time I just threw out my outline and winged it instead.

They tell you to write down things like your cast of characters, the major events of your plot, details of setting and motivation. Well, if you already know what you're going to write, you go right ahead and do that. What you are doing is called taking notes. You are, in essence, writing yourself a memo so you don't forget. That's okay. Good luck. Go write. No, go on now, you're set.

Still here? Then I bet you have an idea for a book/comic/movie/whatever, and you want to write an outline to figure out how it goes. Awesome. Yours is going to end up being better than the guys who just toodled off to outline the complete story that's already sitting in their heads. This is because any story that can fit inside someone's head all at once is a pretty simple one. Not that that's always a bad thing, but it's not going to be the kind of rip-roaring mind-twister of a ride that's too alive to balance nicely atop your brain.

What's for lunch?

First thing you want to do is write down the things that are balancing in your brain. No particular order, don't try to make sense of it, just spam it all down on the page. It won't be anything like an outline, but that's just fine. For demonstration purposes, I'm going to use a dream I had the other night, which I could turn into a comic or screenplay or whatever if I wanted to. I haven't written a word about it yet, so this is the real process I'm going through right now. Your first stage will look something like this:

A detective was interested in this weird girl whom everyone thought was crazy. He thought she had something going on in her life that threatened her, and wanted to help her. She disappeared in strange circumstances, leaving the caretaker of her apartment building messily dead. She was the main suspect, but he didn't believe she did it, he thought she was in danger. Through various clues, he found that she'd been kidnapped by a tall dark man, and the dark man did the murder. The detective learned she'd been taken to Faerie. He followed and tried to rescue her her. Then she told him the dark man was her brother Deimos, and she wouldn't leave without him, but Deimos wouldn't leave because he was in love with the king of the realm, Karil. Karil is more like Bowie's goblin king than like Oberon. The detective was in the tricky position of giving up on the girl or trying to gank the King of Faerie's murderous enforcer who doesn't want to leave.

You'll notice a few things about what I just wrote. Half the characters don't have names; big chunks of plot are missing; motivations are thin or absent; it's a bit derivative, and possibly cheezy; it's somewhat unbalanced in terms of buildup, climax, etc.; and it completely lacks an ending. I couldn't outline this the way most sources tell you to outline. Nothing would follow from anything else, and in trying to fill in the gaps, I'd come up with dumb stuff and then be stuck with it.

So I'm going to need a different kind of outlining to make headway from here.

What's in the fridge?

The next step is to organize these thoughts. This is where it starts taking on a sort of outliney-looking form. At this point I find color useful, but you can use indenting or something instead if you prefer. But whatever you do, at this point, do not number anything. You have to be free to shuffle things and insert things, and if you have a numbering scheme going, you'll be reluctant to change anything. At this stage, the whole point is to change things.

First jot down some categories, like so:

Characters

Events

Conflicts

Images

You can add more categories at any time, change the names of the categories, whatever. Some things will be in more than one category. Some categories may be empty. That's fine. Now divide up everything you know so far until everything is written under a category heading. Try to keep each item short, like one sentence. I like to use a different color for this stage.

Characters
detective
girl
Deimos
Karil

Events
girl acts weird
girl vanishes
detective investigates
witnesses mention dark man
detective discovers girl was kidnapped
detective finds way into Faerie
detective finds girl
girl won't leave without brother

Motivations
detective wants girl
Deimos wants to take girl home
girl wants to be with Deimos
Deimos wants to be with Karil

Images
- parking lot behind apartment complex, shuffly old caretaker taking trash out, investigating noise, Deimos shredding him
- girl running lightly along telephone wire
- door in enormous tree, very dark, moss dripping everywhere; door is made of rusty sawblades and other old iron
- Karil in outrageous finery ordering casual atrocities
- Deimos's snarling loyalty

You may have noticed that 'Conflicts' changed to 'Motivations'. I realized as I was about to fill in the category that 'Motivations' fit the items better. You may also notice that it's still pretty disjointed. It's cool, we're not done.

Making a shopping list

So now we need to figure out what, precisely, the story lacks. Where the gaps are. What questions we need to answer. Again, I like to use yet another color.

Characters
detective -- needs a name
girl -- needs a name
Deimos
Karil

Events
girl acts weird -- how?
girl vanishes -- circumstances must include witness, leave clues
detective investigates -- why? Curiosity or hired? Conflict with cops?
witnesses mention dark man -- unless the witness is unreliable, the girl wouldn't be a suspect. Accomplice at worst, if witness saw her leaving without a struggle.
detective discovers girl was kidnapped -- How? Asked same witness? Contacts in police? Steals evidence?
detective finds way into Faerie -- that's a pretty big jump. Was he predisposed to believe in this stuff, or was it really obvious, or does he fall through by accident, or --?
detective finds girl -- another big jump. Presumably she's with Deimos, who is clearly one scary mofo, and detective doesn't know his way around. I think this is where the bulk of the adventure is.
girl won't leave without brother -- what is this girl thinking? She must know Deimos won't want to leave. Is she testing Detective's affection, or playing with him, or overly optimistic, or trying to get Deimos out of what she thinks is a bad situation, or --??

Motivations
detective wants girl -- circumstances? How'd he get interested in the first place? What's his excuse for having contact with her at all? Are they involved?
Deimos wants to take girl home -- This is pretty simple. He misses his little sis.
girl wants to be with Deimos -- then why'd she leave in the first place? Maybe she doesn't want to be in Faerie, but she's willing to risk it in the hope of getting her bro out?
Deimos wants to be with Karil -- another simple motivation: Tainted Love. (crap, now I have that song going through my head.) Is there an oath bond or spell that needs to be broken, or is he really in love with him? BIG QUESTION: Is there a reason they both have to be guys? I'm thinking no. This story has a case of Gratuitous Gay*. Change or no?

Images
- parking lot behind apartment complex, shuffly old caretaker taking trash out, investigating noise, Deimos shredding him -- why does Deimos shred him? The old guy is no threat. Either Deimos is a bad, bad man, or I gotta change the guy.
- girl running lightly along telephone wire -- So she's not human?
- door in enormous tree, very dark, moss dripping everywhere; door is made of rusty sawblades and other old iron -- iron keeps faeries out. Or in.
- Karil in outrageous finery ordering casual atrocities -- like what? What's his political situation like?
- Deimos's snarling loyalty -- compelled, genuine, or insane?

HOW DOES IT END? Does Deimos come along? Does girl stay? Something else?

So now I know what I need to fill in. I have a hell of a lot of figuring-out to do. That's going to be some serious work, but once I get all those questions answered, I'll know I have no plot holes, no flimsy motivations, no characters who are supposed to be smart but do moronic things, none of that crap. It'll be guaranteed solid.

*One note about the Gratuitous Gay. This is a problem which I doubt is particularly common, but I have it in spades. In reaction to the vast, echoing void in popular media where the queers ought to be, I have developed a habit of putting at least one interesting GLBT character in everything. This is a bad habit. Sure, these characters need to exist, but I can't fill that void singlehandedly, and it's getting to be a gimmick. So now I have to check myself each time I have a story idea. In this case, though, I won't change it, because Deimos and Karil are characters I've already played around with in other contexts, and I'm kind of attached to them as they are.

I'll continue this in another installment later. Right now I have to go do some real work. Expect the rest within the week.