#9 How to Outline, Do the Writing Only You Can Do, A Writer's Life, End Writer's Block
After generating story ideas, focusing, reporting and researching, the writer still isn’t ready to compose—or at least they should wait before they do for one more step: organizing.
Generals wouldn’t go into battle without a plan. Builders wouldn’t break ground without a blueprint in hand. Yet planning stories, organizing information into coherent, appropriate structures, is an overlooked opportunity for all too many writers.
Some writers make formal outlines, the kind their composition teachers would be proud of. Others may itemize the top points they want to cover. Others make informal lists of the points or scenes they want to cover. More than once, I’ve simply used the letters BME—beginning, middle, end—to chart my path.
Screenwriters generally use three-by-five cards, which they use to identify scenes for a film. Final Draft, the most popular screenwriting software, incorporates the technique in digital form.
Writers choose their own paths, as it were. Some eschew outlines altogether, preferring to come to the writing desk every day without a plan at all, other than to write for a certain amount or time or until they generate a set number of words.
Dan Barry of The New York Times says that, when he writes, “I don’t have an outline. I sit and try to figure out: How do I entice you.”
Paige Williams of The New Yorker told me, “I organize chronologically at first, during the thinking stage, then I may change it up, via structure, during the writing.”
For the thriller writer James Patterson, the outline is the book. “Everything has to be in it: the character arcs, the villain, the set-ups and payoffs. He writes and rewrites his outline until he is happy with it.” Patterson doesn’t even begin writing until his outline is completed. But his outline usually changes between the drafting and editing.
Outlines are maps, and the journeys they plot may take different routes than envisioned originally.
Whatever the methods they choose, writers recognize they have a goal when it comes to outlining: to produce a story that is well-organized, that tracks from start to finish.
“With an outline, you can think your story through, quickly and without great effort,” Jon Franklin says in “Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Successful Dramatic Nonfiction by a Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner.”
“Massive structural problems will stand out, and you can solve them with the stroke of a pen. You can think the story through, time and again, very quickly, and still retain the energy, enthusiasm and freshness you need to do a good job when it comes time to actually write the story.”
However you decide to plan your story, here is a list of ways you can tackle this essential step:
Make a list of what you want to say.
What piece of information should be at the beginning?
What piece of information should be at the end?
What belongs in the middle?
Ask the questions the reader will ask and put them in the order they will be asked.
Assign values to quotations.
Think of “chapters.”
Identify the material in blocks. Organize them in sequence.
Give the reader information in the lead that makes the reader ask a question. Answer it with information that sparks a new question. Continue until all the questions are answered.
Write a headline and subheads for your story.
Pick a starting point as near the end as you can. Look for the moment:
when things change;
when things will never be the same;
when we learn lessons;
when things hang in the balance;
when you don’t know how things will turn out.
Draft many possible leads—a dozen, two dozen, three dozen—as quickly as possible.
Write with the clock. Begin at a moment in time. End at a moment in time.
Seek a natural order for the story: narrative, chronology, pyramid, problem-solution, follow-up, a visit with, a walk-through, a day in the life.
Draft a lead, list three to five main points and an ending.
Draft many endings as quickly as possible. Once you know where you’re going, you may see how to get there.
Diagram the pattern of the story.
Write an outline.
Clip the notes on each part of the subject together. Move the piles around until you discover a working order.
Use timelines.
Organize your story by the high points. Organize it by scenes.
Good luck!
“Interior with an Etruscan Vase” / Henri Matisse
CRAFT LESSON
Blog posts by their nature are, with some exception, brief.
This week’s Craft Lesson, “Do the Writing Only You Can Do,” however, is a longish essay that explores the lessons learned when I began assigning my own stories instead of letting editors do the job. From longform narratives to raw personal essays, these are the stories that taught me more about my craft, and myself, than any others in my career. My hope is that some of them will resonate with you and lead you to tackle the kinds of stories only you can do.
“The Windshield, on the Road to Villacoublay” / Henri Matisse
BOOKBAG 1
“A Writer’s Life” is a memoir written by Gay Talese, considered one of the parents of “The New Journalism" that was the precursor of today’s narrative nonfiction movement. It goes behind the scenes of some of Talese’s most famous stories, including “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,”
Composed with the same detailed rendering as his stories, the book, described in this extensive review, shows what happens when you practice what you preach.
For this post, I also examined Talese’s writing rituals, which are quirky and revealing. But then what would you expect from a writer who used to view his drafts through the lenses of binoculars?
WRITERS SPEAK
“If writing a book is impossible, write a chapter. If writing a chapter is impossible, write a page. If writing a page is impossible, write a paragraph. If writing a paragraph is impossible, write a sentence. If writing a sentence is impossible, write a word and teach yourself everything there is to know about that word and then write another, connected word and see where the connection leads.”
- Richard Rhodes
Rhodes is the acclaimed author of 26 books, including “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” which won a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and “How to Write: Advice and Reflections,” so he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the craft of writing. His linear advice about writer’s block is so basic, so sound, that it amounts to a definitive cure for this literary ailment.
Given to me by my mentor and the king of laminators, the late Don Murray, Rhodes’ advice got me through the crucible of one book and numerous articles and essays. It works.
Wikimedia Commons
TIP OF THE WEEK
“Write the ending first. It gives you a destination and tells you what to foreshadow.”
Recently, I had an email exchange with David Finkel, The Washington Post editor and writer whose two books, “The Good Soldiers” and “Thank You For Your Service,” followed a combat unit in Iraq and then chronicled their re-entry into American society. The full interview is forthcoming, but something he said reinforces this week’s tip. Finkel, a MacArthur “genius,” said he needs to know his ending before he begins writing. Here’s what he told me:
“If I know my ending, and I mean the actual ending, down to the last sentence, even the last word. it also means I know the emotional tone of the piece and I can structure my material to get there as consistently and efficiently as possible.”
“Festival of Flowers, Nice” / Henri Matisse
BOOKBAG 2
A fan of audiobooks? You’ll enjoy this Guardian story about the voices behind your favorite books and what a difficult job it is: sore throats, aching heads and 100 pages a day.
If you were seriously ill, how would you like it if the closest doctor was hundreds of miles away? That’s the disturbing reality chronicled by The Washington Post’s Eli Saslow in a gripping story about physicians remotely providing care via computers and high-res cameras. “If anything defines the growing health gap between rural and urban America, it’s the rise of emergency telemedicine in the poorest, sickest, and most remote parts of the country, where the choice is increasingly to have a doctor on screen or no doctor at all.”
FEEDBACK
After I wrote in last week’s newsletter about writers adhering to what I think of as “the first draft culture,” when multiple drafts are needed to produce prose that is clear, complete and accurate, I heard from Mike Gordon, an editor at The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon. We had a useful back and forth on the topic.
“I agree with the process of drafting,” Mike wrote, “but in my small newsroom, where everyone is writing a story every day, multiple drafts feel like a luxury. They write the first draft and my edits become the second draft. Perhaps you could address the use of drafts in a daily, deadline context?”
“I understand your concern..” I wrote Mike back.
“I faced the same challenges in the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau when I sometimes had four hours to report and write a national story. I found that if I managed my time—setting my own deadline to 10–15 minutes earlier than my editors had established—that I had time to mark up my story and make changes, amounting to a second draft, which was better than one.
“Reporters often don’t realize how much of their time they actually control. Too often, they waste precious minutes trying to write the “perfect” lead only to leave just enough time to make a muddle of the rest of the story. It really doesn’t take much time to review a first draft, especially if you’re racing, as you would be on deadline.
“The method I outline may seem like a time suck, but I’ve found it to be the opposite. If anything, the act of hitting the print button gives the writer the distance needed to make changes on the fly. And that distance often highlights things, such as reporting holes, extraneous material and solutions that may seem intractable. Bottom line: Even in a time-pressed environment, I’m convinced that my approach is not only possible, but a necessity.”
Mike responded, “I agree that reporters waste a lot of time. More focus would yield more time even if a draft was not the goal. But a good Draft Lite plan would be a good start.”
CHIP IN YOUR EAR
Claire de Lune / Lang Lang (YouTube)
Primer Avion / Matisse, Camilo (YouTube)
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