Feb 6 2006
Outline or not?

For Outlines

“You have to be able to construct your brilliant sentences into paragraphs and chapters that work as a whole on all levels.

“One reason that an outline makes this work is because it’s an example of things on the micro level controlling the macro level. Picture each chapter as a state and the book as a country. If the infrastructure of a bunch of states is out of order, the country is in disarray. The smaller makes up the larger, and the smaller not only influences the larger, but also actually drives and controls it.

“It is much easier to make changes in an outline and then guide the overall book than to just start writing and figure it out later. The latter attitude drives the creation of a lot of crappy books.”(1)

“Beginnings and endings are usually shorter than middles, but in a way are more important. Beginnings pull you in. If a paragraph, chapter, or book has a lame beginning, there is a chance that some people won’t even finish it. The end of a chapter is the part that has to segue smoothly into the next chapter, and the ending of a book is the part people remember the most. On the other hand, with a lot of book, the first line is the one people remember.”(1)

“You will use information on beginnings, middles, and endings later when you’re actually writing the book, but keep it in mind when you are writing the outline. It will help you flow your micro thoughts in a direction that will flow your macro ones in the same direction later.”(1)

“Good writing sets up things to flow from one thing to another thing in a way that makes sense to the reader. It is generally accomplished by having the end of one idea remotely related to the next idea. If they are not related, it is good to relate them with some sort of “glue,” such as a sentence or two that explains why the reader should be willing to make the jump from one to another.”(1)

“Basically, an outline is a blueprint. It’s a recipe for a meal you are making our of words. It’s not absolute, in the same way a good cook will use a written recipe but then improvise on the fly as she’s working, adding her own flourishes to make it art”(2)

“One mark of a beginner is his impulse to push language around to make it accommodate what he has already conceived to be the truth, or, in some cases, what he as already conceived to be the form.”(3)

No Outlines

“To write…you must have a steak of arrogance-not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write. By arrogance I mean that when you are writing you must assume that the next thing you put down belongs not for reasons of logic, good sense, or narrative development, but because you put it there. You, the same person who said that, also said this. The adhesive force is your way of writing, not sensible connection.”(3)

“You look up and stare out the window again, but this time you are drumming your fingers on the desk, and you don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, until you got to it. And the story begins to materialize, and another thing is happening, which is that you are learning what you aren’t writing, and this is helping you to find out what you are writing.”(4)

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.”(5)

Your Choice

“I used to find myself in this predicament: I have a “plot,” I write it down, and then I say “So what?” The story has not come to life; I failed to generate the details, the scenes. I thought too mush in terms of plot outline rather than in terms of character and place and event. Sometimes students ask me, “What do you think of this story?” And they proceed to tell me a plot outline. I tell them I’d be able to say what I thought only after I read the plot outline developed in drafted story. The plot outline is like a game plan in basketball or football. It can look good on a chart, but one the ball flies, it does not suffice. You must have the players. If a player trips, other players may have to come up with a new plan, the pan is not sacred: it shifts, depending on the position of the players on the field and on the flight of the ball in the wind.

“Although plot outline is not the same as plot, it’s good to have a guide as you go through all the story details. Image-making is a forest in which you can easily get lost unless you have a map and compass – an outline. Some people don’t work from outlines, yet they conceive plots because they have interconnected their characters, places and events.
If you don’t write from an outline, once you have finished a story, you still should be able to see its outline, the way after a touchdown it’s easy to draw a chart of what happened in the play. Something must happen, and in the end, we must know why it has happened.” (6)



1) Dean, Michael W. $30 Writing School. Thomson Course Technology. 2004. pp 53-55.
2) Dean, Michael W. $30 Writing School. Thomson Course Technology. 2004. p 62.
3) Hugo, Richard. The Triggering Town. WW Norton & Company. 1979. p 4-5.
4) Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Anchor Book. 1995. p 9.
5) Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Anchor Book. 1995. pp 25-26.
6)Novakovich, Josip. Fiction Writer’s Workshop. Story Press. 1995. pp 90-91.