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Authors: Terry Brooks
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published, but Iâm hoping readers in general will find them interesting, too.
Sue Grafton would title this first chapter in her writing manual, if she had one, âO Is for Outline.â
I have a very simple ten-word formula for success as a writer of long fiction. It might apply to all forms of writing, but my experience is primarily in writing long fiction, so I am limiting the application of the formula to that form alone. I give this formula to you, as I do to anyone I speak to about writing, free of charge. It goes like this:
Read, Read, Read.
Outline, Outline, Outline.
Write, Write, Write.
Repeat.
I donât get much argument about steps one and three, which are pretty much self-evident to anyone with real aspirations for becoming a published writer. Nor does anyone have too much to say about step four, which is difficult to avoid in this business unless the degree of luck you experience in attempting to interest a publisher in your work is legendary.
But whole bunches of people recoil with genuine horror when I mention step two. They remember with no fondness whatsoever their secondary school experiences. They remember what they had to go through in learning about outlining from one or more teachers of English. The hated words still echo somewhere in the deep recesses of their minds.
Large Roman Numeral One, Capital A, small Roman numeral one, little a
âa litany of senseless conformity and rote invented solely to drive students mad.
Well, forget all that. When I speak of outlining, I want you to think of something else entirely, something that shares only one thing in common with all that early secondary school nonsense. That one thing is another âOâ wordâorganization.
Now, you are going to hear a lot of very successful writers tell you that they donât outline their books. Never have, never will. They are going to give you all sorts of reasons why you shouldnât eitherâsometimes in direct fashion, sometimes by implication.
Iâve never done it,
they will advise,
so itâs all right if you donât
. Or,
Iâve never seen the point to it, so how could you?
Like that. Iâve listened to and read comments like this for yearsânot from writers selling five thousand copies of their books a year, but five hundred thousand.
Let me give you some examples. Stephen King writes in his entertaining and informative book
On Writing
that plotting just gets in the way of storytelling and robs it of its spontaneity. He prefers just to plop down characters in a challenging situation and see what they will do. Anne Lamott in her wonderful book on what it is like to become a published writer,
Bird by Bird
, talks about just sitting down at the keyboard with no plan in mind whatsoever and thrashing around for hours, sometimes days, until something finally happens. Iâve listened to Terry McMillan, on being asked about outlining, reply to an audience of two thousand at the Maui Writers Conference, âWhy would I want to tell the same story twice?â On a fantasy writing panel several years ago, after I had given my usual spiel about the importance of outlining, I had Anne McCaffrey turn to me and gently and sweetly say, âTerry, I donât think Iâve ever outlined anything in my life.â
The list of successful writers who claim not to outline their books before they write them goes on and on. All right, you say, so why are you telling us we should outline when they donât? Why canât we do like they do? Why canât we just sit down and tell our stories?
Well, maybe you can. Maybe youâre one of the lucky ones who can make it work. On the other hand, maybe not. We know right off the bat that you probably arenât Stephen King or Anne Lamott or Terry McMillan or Anne McCaffrey. We also know that a lot of other writers arenât either, and a fair number, some of them very successful, do outline their work before they sit down to
Sue Grafton would title this first chapter in her writing manual, if she had one, âO Is for Outline.â
I have a very simple ten-word formula for success as a writer of long fiction. It might apply to all forms of writing, but my experience is primarily in writing long fiction, so I am limiting the application of the formula to that form alone. I give this formula to you, as I do to anyone I speak to about writing, free of charge. It goes like this:
Read, Read, Read.
Outline, Outline, Outline.
Write, Write, Write.
Repeat.
I donât get much argument about steps one and three, which are pretty much self-evident to anyone with real aspirations for becoming a published writer. Nor does anyone have too much to say about step four, which is difficult to avoid in this business unless the degree of luck you experience in attempting to interest a publisher in your work is legendary.
But whole bunches of people recoil with genuine horror when I mention step two. They remember with no fondness whatsoever their secondary school experiences. They remember what they had to go through in learning about outlining from one or more teachers of English. The hated words still echo somewhere in the deep recesses of their minds.
Large Roman Numeral One, Capital A, small Roman numeral one, little a
âa litany of senseless conformity and rote invented solely to drive students mad.
Well, forget all that. When I speak of outlining, I want you to think of something else entirely, something that shares only one thing in common with all that early secondary school nonsense. That one thing is another âOâ wordâorganization.
Now, you are going to hear a lot of very successful writers tell you that they donât outline their books. Never have, never will. They are going to give you all sorts of reasons why you shouldnât eitherâsometimes in direct fashion, sometimes by implication.
Iâve never done it,
they will advise,
so itâs all right if you donât
. Or,
Iâve never seen the point to it, so how could you?
Like that. Iâve listened to and read comments like this for yearsânot from writers selling five thousand copies of their books a year, but five hundred thousand.
Let me give you some examples. Stephen King writes in his entertaining and informative book
On Writing
that plotting just gets in the way of storytelling and robs it of its spontaneity. He prefers just to plop down characters in a challenging situation and see what they will do. Anne Lamott in her wonderful book on what it is like to become a published writer,
Bird by Bird
, talks about just sitting down at the keyboard with no plan in mind whatsoever and thrashing around for hours, sometimes days, until something finally happens. Iâve listened to Terry McMillan, on being asked about outlining, reply to an audience of two thousand at the Maui Writers Conference, âWhy would I want to tell the same story twice?â On a fantasy writing panel several years ago, after I had given my usual spiel about the importance of outlining, I had Anne McCaffrey turn to me and gently and sweetly say, âTerry, I donât think Iâve ever outlined anything in my life.â
The list of successful writers who claim not to outline their books before they write them goes on and on. All right, you say, so why are you telling us we should outline when they donât? Why canât we do like they do? Why canât we just sit down and tell our stories?
Well, maybe you can. Maybe youâre one of the lucky ones who can make it work. On the other hand, maybe not. We know right off the bat that you probably arenât Stephen King or Anne Lamott or Terry McMillan or Anne McCaffrey. We also know that a lot of other writers arenât either, and a fair number, some of them very successful, do outline their work before they sit down to
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