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Where Sime and Gen Meet, Creativity Happens
Workshop: Outlining (posted Jan 22 1997)
Guild members -- this is a very important post.
- [ From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg * EMC.Ver #3.0 ] --
Workshoppers: (Again the Kaas below is Kaas Baichtal and the "Cheryl" here is Cheryl Wolverton, creator of our Romance Section.)
======== OUTLINING
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 15:21:53 -0500
From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Subject: WORK: submission procedure
-- [ From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg * EMC.Ver #3.0 ] --
Folks:
Kaas asked about workshopping a S~G story she's got cooking, and Sosu Sue asked about joining this workshop (she writes pro grade fiction but hasn't clicked commercially yet). We've been muddling along without any statement of procedure for almost 6 months - guess it's time.
I replied to Kaas the following:
We don't want actual fiction material posted to the workshop list. Send me the outline - I'll figure out what you need to learn and make that a workshop topic.
(1999 comment -- the WorldCrafters Guild procedures will be different BUT the concept of the OUTLINE as discussed here will be the core of the matter when we get around to accepting work that students have done for analysis online. Our procedures will involve making sure that the submitting apprentice knows that the response is directed toward the submitted work, but that others won't instantly identify that individual as being the author in question. This below is an older post from the Virtual Selyn Listserv where we slowly evolved this working method. JL)
And Kaas asked quite reasonably:
Ok. Just for my information, how thorough of an outline is appropriate? A summary of each chapter, for example? Descriptions of the main characters?
And I had just described what I prefer to see in an "outline" (which Kaas may not have been around when we focused on the defn and development of "outline" - Kaas and Sosu Sue should fetch the archive from when we discussed that - anyone remember when that was? - and read what an OUTLINE is all about (it does NOT resemble what you learn to do in school).
OK, here's what I wrote to Cheryl Wolverton re COMPANION'S HEART - the S~G she did at a 100 page length that I challenged her to make into a full length, fully backgrounded novel in the S~G universe but formulated for the Genre Romance market.
Now THERE is a challenge for a writing student - but I gave her a clue - I said to incorporate the material from the prior stories (now posted on Tecton Central I think) about these characters into FLASHBACKS - which is why I directed the workshop's attention to the anatomy of FLASHBACK. She said she hates flashbacks and besides they're forbidden in Romance Genre. I replied since the entire universe background is pure sf and therefore out of spec for the Romance Genre the way to sell it is to use out-of-spec techniques but use them correctly instead of incorrectly - that the reason editors don't want Romance writers to use flashback is that an awful lot of Romance writers don't know HOW to create a flashback. The PERFECT example of a Romance that relies on Flashback for its emotional impact is FOREVER KNIGHT - which is a vampire show and S~G as Professor Lorrah avers belongs to the vampire archetype.
I wrote: "I want to see it laid out clearly in an outline of some sort (any sort will do) - I want to see Tannon's internal conflict, Tannon's external conflict; Alissa's internal conflict; Alissa's external conflict - AND THE THEME ELEMENT THAT TIES THOSE FOUR ELEMENTS INTO ONE WOVEN CABLE - macramé will do fine. Or think of making them mirror images - whatever works for you.
And I want to see the RESOLUTION in theme and conflict and event-sequence of the plot. I want to see the beginning where the elements that will conflict to generate the plot first come in contact. I want to see the MIDDLE defined by the WORST MOMENT OF BOTH THEIR LIVES. And I want to see the CLIMAX defined as the conflict resolving - and the END as the result or denouement of that resolution. Nail the quarter-points between Beginning and Middle and the one between Middle and Climax if you can but it's not exactly necessary at this stage. But nailing the quarter points helps meter the pacing - in the hotter subgenera of Romance you have that formula given to you by the publisher in where the sex scenes go and how many there must be (or not be).
Lay it out in a framework and we'll start working on where the flashbacks go and what they have to cover to progress."
And that basically is OUTLINE.
Now, I could follow and understand an outline about that couched in incomplete sentences using the character names and nothing about them. I know the characters sorta and I know the background universe.
If you send me an "outline" with the above listed elements about characters I don't know in a universe I've never heard of - it would be hard to follow. So the SALIENT points absolutely necessary to understand the characters and the universe IN TERMS OF THIS PLOT (and only in terms of the plot - not of the STORY) have to be included when dealing with the unfamiliar.
Thus when outlining for your own use, you DON'T put in anything you know. You put down only what you DON'T KNOW - what's hard to invent because it has to be solid, logical and right. Then, with that skeleton in place, you let your subconscious tell you the story - and that makes writing FUN for you to do and FUN for your reader to read. If you're not HAVING FUN - you don't have any FUN to sell. Bottom line, people are buying entertainment from you . As a performing artist, you may sweat but they must not see that. So you only sweat in rehearsal. By performance time, you've practiced it so well, you can just go out there and clown around having fun and making it look easy. But that happens only when you've done your practicing.
Writing is a performing art - I was taught by Alma Hill when she was the prof running the N3F writing workshop. And nothing I know about writing has proved truer. It is just like dancing, singing, acting - performing. Nailing your outline is your "point to point" rehearsal.
HOWEVER: just like performing a play - there is a certain latitude the seasoned professional can take onstage, departing slightly from the script to improve on each performance. So an outline is not a strait jacket - an outline is a guideline. All you put in it are the guideposts.
Put another way - if you're reading a map preparing to drive 600 miles cross country today, and another 650 tomorrow - you take the map and a felt-tip and you write down a list of highway changes and numbers on a piece of paper large enough so you can see them without much taking your eyes off the road. You don't put a thousand details about landmarks or what you'll eat for lunch on this list of numbers. You put:
I-6this to
I-8that
North on I-8that 250 MILES
Exit to US-5what East (County 114 South) 50 miles
I-29whichever North
Best Western in Whatever Falls Wherever. CHECK THE TIRE PRESSURE.
And that's all you really need to know about the day's drive. The rest is scenery - but it's the scenery and the destination details that make it interesting and different each time of year you go to visit grandma and take her and the grandchildren to the circus or for a hayride, or to the parade.
You don't write in the OUTLINE that there's a wonderful gas station and restaurant complex at the junction with I-29whichever North. You don't write what you plan to have for dinner there - or why you're driving this hellish trip again! You write what you might forget or confuse when you're distracted, tired, or rushed.
Any other driver could pick up your directions and follow your track without a map. It's a good OUTLINE.
See? That's all you need in a novel or story outline too - just the TURNING POINTS AND DISTANCES not the landmarks or motivations.
If you have a completed manuscript - the best way to figure out what needs changing in rewrite is to DO THE OUTLINE and look for the flaws - look for where the roads or conflict and suspense lines don't connect properly.
When you're sure the outline is sturdy enough to support a story of the size you've got to write - then send it to me snail or attached file. Or try it out on another workshop member first - or see if you can induce Jim Macdonald to look at it - read some of his stuff and see if what you're trying to produce resembles what he writes more than what I write. I invited him into the list because some of you want to do his kind of thing more than mine - but really we're not all that dissimilar at rock bottom. The one thing we've both learned in pro sf is that structure counts. If you've got structure you can sell - if you don't, then no matter how well you write, you can't sell to the commercial market.
When someone sends you an outline or a ms to workshop - think about what you see lacking in it and bring that topic to the email workshop as a TOPIC not as a specific discussion of that particular story.
For example: I told Cheryl that I thought the best way to incorporate the material in the prior stories was by flashback - which started the whole discussion of what flashback IS (and is not) and why it fails so abysmally for most Romance Genre writers. What is it that makes flashback work; what causes it to fail? Why do readers learn to "hate" flashback? And why is it a staple of the MYSTERY? (at least in some "forms" )
Again: this email workshop is open to anyone who wants to write - whether commercially, professionally in some non-commercial fashion, or fannishly - whether fiction or nonfiction. My personal bias and focus is the commercial fiction arena which is COMMERCIAL ART - a very different thing from ART per se.
For months we've been emphasizing the COMMERCIAL part of that - which is the part that most beginning writers are most bewildered and mystified by. Most want to SELL SOMETHING and join the pros. So we started studying the techniques that can boost you over the barriers into selling fiction. Structure, conflict, outline, climax, resolution, beginning, middle, end. That's about it. Structure, structure, structure. If you've got it, you can sell. If not, not. (except in the '60's when "New Wave" sf went to selling structureless fiction.)
But we've collected quite an inventory of neo-pros on this list - and those who've taken the structure lessons seriously will be turning neo-pro very quickly now. Which opens a whole new vista - now that you can write and sell, how can you IMPROVE what you write?
So eventually, once we're through STYLE - we'll get to the ART part and I have a lot to say on that subject. When we get to the ART part of writing, we get to talk about how to use Tarot and Astrology to plot and characterize and make the leap from just plain commercial writing into real commercial ART. For example, why is it that Donald Duck has become an American Icon?
Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
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