Outlines, Timelines & Changing Minds

I had this beautiful idea that I wouldn’t write a complete outline for my novel, choosing to let the story grow naturally as I typed away on my laptop. I had a general plot and I knew the sequence of events well enough, but I wasn’t going to outline everything scene by scene. You shouldn’t be surprised to hear that this naive amateur was quite obviously mistaken in thinking that would work.

My first week of writing went really well, but I noticed that my scenes were all over the place. Although I was writing at a good pace, it would be months before I could put something together that traveled along a linear story arc with the jumble of scenes I had written.

Realizing I wasn’t going to be able to go with the flow as I had imagined, I turned to the internet and my solid collection of books on writing for ways to add a little structure to my writing project.

As you saw last week, before even considering your plot outline you need to have a strong set of characters. So I spent a week building people and creating personalities for them. Now it was time to get down to the hard stuff: outlining.

Over the past week I have been writing a synopsis for my novel and building a timeline of three acts. The synopsis is of the utmost importance because it is often what publishers will read before they even consider looking at your novel. If the synopsis does not show a strong writing ability and a solid story arc then publishers won’t even consider opening your manuscript. In order to write a solid synopsis I have to make sure that the three acts of my novel are strong.

The first act needs to outline the significant event of the novel. It needs to address the motivations of characters and build a background for their actions. The first act needs to develop characters that are strong enough to keep the reader interested throughout the next two acts. The first act is crucial as it needs to engage the reader enough to keep them reading.

The second act complicates and deepens the drama. It still addresses the motivations and desires of the characters, but in Act II they might begin to change based on unfolding events. The end of the second act is where you often find the climax of the novel, the point in which the protagonist learns something significant about himself.

The third act is the wrapping paper; time to tie everything together and throw a bow on top. By the third act all major plot points need to have been addressed and resolved. The characters have changed or learned something from their actions in the novel. The final scene itself needs to be strong enough to linger in the readers mind after they have closed the book and put it away.

Needless to say my outline is starting to look an awful lot like a Shakespearean play, Act I, Scene I – In fair Montreal, where we lay our scene, a star-crossed writer changes her mind…again.

I thought character development was going to be hard, but outlining is quite the daunting task, especially when I keep changing my mind every couple hours. Scenes that I thought I would place at the beginning of my novel are quickly finding their way to the middle and the middle is seeping into the end, but I feel confident that I have a solid collection of scenes to work with. Hopefully by next week (maybe the week after) I will be back to daily writing, tackling one scene at a time. In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me – I’ve got plotting to do.