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The Writer's Hub - The Essentials of Outlining

Posted Sept. 30, 2018, 10:43 p.m. by Tony Findora

Essentials of Outlining

And here you are, ready to enter the world of outlining! Typically we all fall into one of two categories–Planners and Pantsers. You either outline or fly be the seat of your pants! Maybe you do a bit of both?

In any case, I was never one to outline in the past. It felt too conforming. It felt like a waste of precious time I could have spent writing something! After reading the book, “How to Outline Your Novel” by K.M. Weiland, I’ve discovered that outlining is nothing like what I thought it was. You don’t need to have bullet points, roman numerals, alphabet letters marking things, or numbered lists of perfect order. Outlining, at its base concept, is really just getting the essential elements of your story on paper. And outlining really can apply to any form of storytelling! It could be novels, short stories, plays, films, and yes…even Roleplaying! There’s no one exact way to do it. However there are some key ideas/concepts we ought to keep in mind.

Characters

Yes, I said it. Characters. It’s the aspect of a story that we all relate to. Without them, we really miss an essential element of storytelling. Establishing your characters before you write the story really should give you a feel for what you are about to write. Get to know your characters! Who are they? What do they do? How were they raised? What special skills do they have? What fatal flaws cause them to trip up? What’s their backstory?

The possibilities are endless when determining characters. One thing to keep in mind with them is that each character has a goal within the story they wish to achieve. So you will need to really flesh out what their desires are in the world they are living in. Without that, your characters are basically just taking a ride on a train. They have a destination, but they kind of get cozy and wait out the long ride.

Setting

This is key to creating a well told story. With no background elements of where or when it takes place, the story loses a great deal of understandability. Setting gives us an inherent understanding of how the characters may think. For example, a character who lives on Qo’Nos would have a very different set of circumstances to overcome than a character who lives on Risa. Yes, there very well could be similarities, but interacting with the environment and culture becomes quite different between the two. So, make sure to establish when and where your story is taking place!

Conflict

This can be either internal or external! Having a lot of characters can cause friction, but it doesn’t have to be just because of that. Internal conflict typically resides within a character. Usually the character is conflicted about some moral or mental dilemma. An external conflict typically deals with a physical conflict that the character must overcome outside of himself. In either case, conflict is designed to keep the story going. Who wants to hear a story about how nothing bad came to someone. Our lives are filled with conflict! There’s nothing to carry the plot or transform the characters if you have no conflict.

In this section, you want to figure out what will give your characters a challenge. Don’t make it easy! The harder it is, and the more that becomes at risk for the character, the greater the necessity for a reader to want to continue on.

Plot

Plot is an entire topic in and of itself. This is the part of a story that encompasses a hook for your reader, sequencing scenes for your story, setting up the climax, and so much more! We will likely do a different post about plot in the Writer’s Hub, but for the sake of Outlining, this is a very important part. Knowing your plot saves the headache of trying to figure it out on the fly. After learning about outlining, I’ve found that I waste a lot of time watching the cursor on the computer blinking almost endlessly while I try to create the plot on the fly. Plotting out a story saves a lot of later thinking.

Theme

Every good story I’ve ever read has a theme. You might think of it as the “moral of the story”. The truth is, it is not always that easy. The theme is the idea or concept that is prevalent throughout. A theme could be as simple as posing a question and attempting to answer it. Theme really can be its own topic too (and that could mean more in the Writer’s Hub about it). If you are telling a story though, find out what your central theme is! Finding this out can actually help determine some of the other things I mentioned in this post!

Conclusion

Ah yes! The end of a good story is important. I think everyone wants to feel a sense of closure at some point. Life doesn’t quite end like a book. However, we all do go through seasons of trials that change us in ways we probably didn’t see coming. The conclusion is how we come out at the end of those trials and change into something we weren’t before. (Unless of course you’re telling the story of a character with a flat character arc, but that’s a topic for another time ;)…) What happens to the characters? Are the conficts resolved?

While pantsing can be fun in its own right, I’ve made the conscious choice to persue outlining in almost any writing I do. Whether its an article, a novel, a short story, or a series of posts in STF, I feel a need to do it now. It clears my head and gives me the juice I need to pour the words out that need written.

Let’s talk about this! Are you an outliner? Or a pantser? Maybe both? What was your biggest take away from this? What, if anything, would you like to add? If you have questions or comments, feel free to add those to as we discuss!

And remember, this list is not a finite list of things one could put in an outline. But, these are some of the bare essentials when it comes to storytelling. :)

Without further delay, thanks for reading! Let’s talk!

-Tony Findora


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