Sime~Gen(tm) Inc.

Where Sime and Gen Meet, Creativity Happens

WorldCrafters Guild

Workshop:  OUTLINING 2 - Rules of Outlining; Outlining Conflict; Outlining for Length Estimate

 

 

(again this post has been exhumed from the archives by Margaret Carr)

Kaas wrote:

You know it might be easier if someone could hand me the concise rules of   outlining and a perfectly done example of an outline for a relatively complex   story. That way I would know what is being asked of me.

JL here: Perfectly done example posted already.    Well maybe not perfect -- of course, it didn't sell so maybe it's not that perfect. On the other hand, it went to market just after they stopped buying vampire novels. 

BUT THERE ARE NO RULES to outlining - because no two writers ever create the same way - and no single writer ever does it the same way twice. The "perfect" outline is the one you could turn into a book in 4 weeks flat and not have the editor send it back for rewrite.

Outlining - summarizing - synopsizing - whatever you call it is an ART just like the writing itself. Or maybe more like class note-taking - it's SELECTING what parts are the functional machinery out from the whiz-bang background noise of detail.

Honing the skill of DIVIDING your own fiction into the "decorative" part that changes from story to story - and the FUNCTIONAL COMPONENTS - that are the same from story to story - and then writing a flowing synopsis to show that you know the difference, have all the functional parts under perfect control, and have the decoration to wrap around it so readers won't be aware there are any functional parts - that's what creates the perfect outline.

Now, I also posted to the workshop the "outline" that a writer might have used to create that ODO episode. (1999 comment -- if Margaret Carr finds it, I'll repost it to the Guild Workshop here)

By comparing the episode with what I wrote, you'll begin to understand what an outline is. Of course, I wrote it on the assumption the reader knows DS9. That allows the strip-away of detail.

When you're doing an outline for yourself to work from, that's what you do - leave OUT all the stuff you already know and put down the stuff you don't yet know about how to write the story. That "stuff" you don't know is usually (for my kind of writer) the functional parts I've been focusing on here - conflict, protag, antag, theme, beginning, middle, end, resolution, (we haven't done suspense yet). Get those functional parts organized, and the actual writing becomes FUN instead of tediousness requiring hard discipline.

And that's all I wanted you (Kaas) to send me about this Sime~Gen story you want to write. I know the S~G background. I don't need to see your decorative wrapping paper. I want to see how sturdy your box is - whether it will survive the mail and deliver your payload gift to the readers.

The key question - "What is the story in one sentence?"

And no, I don't think there's a list of technical terms for story-components anywhere. I've seen lists in writing books - but they don't all call the same components by the same names. Once you have identified inside your own head what the functional components of your kind of story are - you will probably develop a set of names of your own. However, a writer who has developed their internal referents always recognizes WHAT another writer is referring to - by whatever term - simply from what it DOES for the story- structure.

One item I think all writers agree on is "Theme" - and I think that's because it's taught in English class in High School - or used to be.

The Theme is the philosophical statement about Reality that the story makes. Sometimes it's the "moral."

In teaching theme to writers (rather than readers) - I will usually say that theme is the reason why you want to write the story, and the theme is the source of your Title - and it is the source of your SELECTIVITY SCREEN that you use to decide what details are artistically correct for this story, and what to throw away.

The whole story has to have a single, unified, unambiguous theme. Once you've got that, and a conflict, your structure is pretty well determined, as is your market, your genre, the size of the finished product,, the style needed to tell the story, and a thousand others things. All the parts have to go together, so nail a couple (any pair of parts) and the REST self-generates.

The Theme is the reason you want to write the story - and the reason you want to write the story is the reason your reader wants to read the story (i.e. determines your market).

The opening line is your "narrative hook" - to pull the reader into the story. That means it has to tell the reader why they should read the story. That means it's made out of your theme and conflict - and tells the reader what this story is ABOUT.

That's why you need to learn to separate the working components of the story from the details - so you can SEE instantly where they fit together and where they have to be adjusted. Fiddle with the skeleton of the story before you write it so the joints articulate properly - and then you can write the story and it'll stand on its own.

The way you learn to do this is to take apart some good stories that you really loved - disassemble them into components as I did the Odo episode for you. While practicing dissecting good stories, you must also spend some time every day writing story outlines (not stories you intend to write - just sit down and manipulate components into story-outlines - like a pianist doing scales. PRACTICE is the key as in any performing art.

Live Long and Prosper,

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

LEARNING TO WRITE OUTLINES -- The question was asked:  With all due respect... how can you possibly be sure I am ignoring the  conflicts inherit in my premise?

JL here: Because the story starts and ends with a Hung Hero. Where there's a conflict-driven plot, you can't have a hung hero. He/she unhangs on the first page and keeps driving and driving until the resolution - refusing to pause long enough to be hung.

So even if you don't know how to outline at all - or do it instinctively in the subconscious - or are using one of the (zillions of) other outlining methods I've mastered - no matter how you go about presenting the material - it will be perfectly clear that you've got your teeth into a conflict and your Hero resolves that conflict at the end.

BTW: one of the reasons I'm harping on learning to WRITE outlines either before or after creating the story is that THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST DO TO SELL anything before you've written it. Otherwise - writing the outline down is a total waste of time. However, by writing it down you are also able to set it out for workshopping, and to look at it yourself to find the flaws before wasting time writing words that don't work.

There is no way to make a living in this industry if you write everything before you sell it. (unless you're Andre Norton - that's what she does - writes on spec only - because her nerves can't take it any other way).

Too many ideas just don't click in the marketplace. You have to know how to present an idea in the format that working editors know how to decode into the finished product and judge whether it fits their line or not. And HOW MUCH YOU GET PAID for the novel you haven't written depends on how well you write the outline - not on how well you write the book.

It is an application of this set of skills that is causing the phenomenal progress of the S~G script - 9 places! That wouldn't have happened without a brilliant reduction of the 120 pages of script into ONE PAGE synopsis. You can't get a workable selling synopsis out of 120 pages without an OUTLINE. You don't reduce the 120 pages, you reduce the outline! In fact, you start with the one page concept, expand to 5 pages, expand to 20, then expand to 120 - then reduce the same way. The techniques I'm harping on here are those exact same techniques. This is not makework. This is professional craftsmanship.

This is a critical skill - no matter whether you do it instinctively or by cold calculated technique - whether you do it before or after you've got the whole story in your head.

But it's only critical if your goal is to make a living from writing.

Otherwise it's only a useful learning tool.

Live Long and Prosper,

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

================================PART TWO: SOLVING A STORY: OUTLINING CONFLICT Subject: WORK:SolvingAStory - OUTLINING CONFLICT

-- [ From: Jacqueline Lichtenberg * EMC.Ver #3.0 ] --

Workshoppers:

Jean wrote:

Not only not as complex as the Sime~Gen conflict, but even simpler than the Savage Empire conflict. And until I find it, this book is going nowhere.

JL here: note that Jean said "until I find it" -- not until you find it, until she finds it.

That's what I was referring to in my longer post on list policy rules.

If Jean wrote this story before finding the 'correct' conflict' - and then tossed it into the workshop for discussion - and all the good folks on the workshop found that the conflict was missing or not right for this story - and told her their solutions - Jean still wouldn't have a workable story.

But Jean is a seasoned pro who knows there's no point writing the story until AFTER she finds the correct conflict to go with all the other pieces.

What the people on here who are struggling with CONFLICT need to be asking themselves as they watch Jean is "How will Jean know when she's found the correct conflict to go with all the other pieces that have surfaced in her mind over the last few days?" and "By what method does she conduct her search?"

That second question is probably not going to yield a useful answer because no two writers do it the same way exactly. However, Jean and I do it by asking pertinent, salient, systematic questions.

For example: Whose story is it really? Why do I really want to write this story? What am I trying to say about the human condition? What's the theme? If you've got the theme, you've narrowed down the potential list of useful conflicts. What's the story in one sentence? Is this a beartrap plot or a Likeable Hero plot? Who should the reader be rooting for - the guy or the gal? Is this a misunderstanding plot?

With the dual-pov Romance, you STILL have to generate the conflict in person#2 from the conflict inside person#1. Figuring out which one is Person#1 is sometimes hard, but once you've got it, Person#2's conflict is determined.

Once you've got the beginning, the end is determined - from which the middle becomes apparent.

And with a Romance, you know the genre and so you know the formula. That's more than half the work right there. Then you have to ask - "What do the readers want to read about?" and "What have I got to say that validates the general reader's feelings and at the same time adds something new and unique to the conversational discourse among writers in this genre?" The conversational discourse among writers is in "sentences" which are known as novels. Each novel says something which is answered by others - just like in a listserve's posts.

Phrase it another way - "What has this character got to say to this readership that they have never heard put this way before?"

Keep rephrasing and asking the question over and over - eventually you're subconscious will serve up the answer. But the thing that makes a novel LIVE for the reader is that the author conducted this search inside their own head. The results of someone else's search are meaningless.

Thank you Jean for letting us watch you search.

Live Long and Prosper,

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

==================PART THREE - Using OUTLINE to determine the Length

Leigh wrote: And being able to tell just from a one-sentence description which conflict are short-story size and which are novel-size and which are novel-series size. (I mean, if you're supposed to always be able to state the basic conflict in one sentence, you can't tell the size of the plot it'll generate by the length of the sentence).

JL again: You're right - no matter the size the conflict and its resolution fit into a single declarative sentence. Not a complex sentence. Not a complex-compound sentence. A simple declarative sentence. This person overcomes this opposition to get that reward.

The size of a work is determined more by the THEME than by the plot, which is why I tend to start with a THEME because I'm a writer who writes because I have something to SAY that I want people to HEAR. So for me the core of story is theme. And that's the size determinator.

#1) determine your theme

#2) determine your target reader/viewership's current headset so you know how many points to argue and how many to take for granted. You have to ARTISTICALLY SELECT what to assume - on purpose.

#3)arrange the points that have to be made into theme, and SUBORDINATE THEMES (we haven't covered subordinate conflicts and subordinate themes because we haven't nailed primary themes and conflicts well enough yet to get fancy.)

#4) COUNT what you've got.

A short story is a single POINT - a turning point - in one person's WHOLE LIFE. The single most crucial decision point in the entire life of one person.

A novella and novelette are the same but the time-frame can be greater - with more background and backstory and character motivation.

A novella or novelette can have ONE MAIN CHARACTER and as many as 2 SUBORDINATE characters (whose themes and conflicts are the subthemes and subconflicts of the main character's inner conflict).

It's kinda like nest-'ems - the little Russian folktoy dolls one inside another?

A Novel can have several main characters and each of those main characters can have two subordinate characters branching from them.

My rule is 100,000 words per Main and Two Subs. For the 75,000 wd novel you eliminate the subs.

In a longer novel, you have several internal climax points. They have to have relative-intensity relationships in a pattern with the absolute highest peak of tension at the final ending climax, the second highest in the middle, and the dips at the quarters. In a very long novel, you need climaxes halving the distances between the quarters. For movies and tv the patterns are different (for tv the pattern is generated by the COMMERCIAL PLACEMENT not the drama itself). The INTERNAL CLIMAX PATTERN is the key to holding reader attention.

For a series, you need as many simultaneously developing, crosslinked PLOTS as you project books in the series.

Or - sometimes a thing like Sime~Gen is called a series but it's not. S~G is a universe. It spans over 2,000 years of human history and beyond human. The people in the later books don't know the people in the early books - except as historical characters that don't resemble the real people. That's not a series. Except that in S~G there is a buried link - the reincarnation concept. I have a long karmic story to tell of souls learning HARD lessons and multiple themes.

But take Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels - that's a series where HISTORY and THE CHURCH are the heros with the problem. They are stories of THE THRONE AND WHO WILL BE KING. The problem is always WHO WILL BE KING and the resolution is THIS PERSON WILL BE KING FOR A WHILE. They are stories of church/politics. Each novel progresses that envelope story while telling an independent story of its own.

So taken as a whole, the Deryni books are one EPISODIC NOVEL. They "work" because the envelope conflict (church vs. state) is thematically related to the particular conflict and theme set taken up in each book.

There are very elaborate schemes for novel structures. Long novels and series that don't work fail because they don't have those schemes properly reticulated. A novel that's accidentally successful and the author has to invent sequels that were never planned for usually FAILS as a series because the groundwork wasn't there to begin with.

I think the art of the really long, long novel is GONE now because people aren't learning to read in high school. My high school English classes included all this about novel structure. I'm appalled there are college graduates who don't have this. But I learned the rules of Main and Subordinate and space and climax peaks from The Famous Writers' School correspondence lessons. It's really very, very simple once you get the hang of it. Learning to DO it is much harder than learning to recognize and understand it.

And there's no hope whatever learning to DO it if you haven't mastered the simple, straightforward, one-pov problem/resolution structure. You can only master it by learning to recognize it - and then learning to imitate it - then doing it over and over and over until your subconscious does it while you're asleep. Once you've got it really down pat, then you'll find all these story ideas that come to you come properly formulated - except you may have to dig to find the pieces as Jean is with this Romance she's got hold of. But I've seen her do this before - she and I both know that the whole novel is inside her and properly structured. She just has to DISCOVER it.

As in learning to play a musical instrument, unlearning bad habits is harder than just learning it right to begin with. On this list, we've got a bunch unlearning as fast as they can.

But learning to write is just like learning to play a musical instrument or dance or any other performing art's skillset. Discipline and practice are the keys. Don't let your subconscious get away with piddling in your word processor. If it does a mess, make it clean up the mess. Over and over until it learns not to piddle.

Do the exercises I've set you. Recognition - watch tv (especially commercials) analytically. Extract the outlines. Do the elemental exercises that aren't whole story exercises. And create PLOTS - not about characters you really care about. Keep a cold analytical distance - you're only playing scales. It's an exercise and you have to do it until you do it smoothly and without exerting any effort. THEN we go on to whole stories and harder things - like braiding plots into a macrame novel.

At that point, you'll be beyond my skills. Maybe by then other pros will turn up on this workshop who can teach us all a thing or two.

Or maybe we'll all together invent something totally new in the history of fiction.

Just look at the people on this list - it is possible we could be the crucible from which something totally NEW will emerge.

But for that to have artistic merit, we all must be strong in our basic skills.

So we'll get back to HOW DO YOU RECOGNIZE IT WHEN YOU'VE NAILED THE CONFLICT . It's a vitally important subject - how to monitor your own performance. The writer's metronome! Watch Jean work.

Live Long and Prosper,

Jacqueline Lichtenberg