Bettina's Books: Spell It Out For Me: How to Outline Your Stories

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Spell It Out For Me: How to Outline Your Stories

Does anyone here hate to outline their stories? *looks to audience, counts dozens of hands, sighs, and then launches into lecture* Okay, yes, outlines are boring, tedious, time-consuming, and it feels like they kill the creative spark, dousing that fire of literary aspiration before it even has a chance.

Considering all of that, why would you ever want to use an outline? I have given several good reasons in the post below this one, but I'll give one great reason right here: an outline assures that your story has a goal.

While that might not seem all that important when you're furiously scribbling down a brilliant first chapter, eventually inspiration will slow down (due to the need to eat, sleep, or go to one's day job), and when you come back to the story, it could be difficult to recapture that creative spirit. (For those of you who have no problem with this, please share your secret.) For the rest of us, here are a few prompts that will need the next 4 to 5 scenes outlined before you start writing them. I'll provide the pitch of the story, and you write a few sentences for the first 4 or 5 scenes.

Pitch 1: Sara was having a tea party with her favorite dolls when she abruptly finds herself transported to the place she had just imagined. Her dolls are real people, and she is welcomed warmly into the family. Since she pretended that her dolls were princesses, the family in question is royal. The opportunities for fun are nearly infinite, but so are the intrigues and plots against the royal family. Will Sara be stuck in the middle?

Pitch 2: As a member of EarthForce's forward brigade, Jackson knew he would see battles and enemies that most humans couldn't imagine...but he never expected to face other humans in battle. When Jackson's expeditionary brigade lands on a newly discovered hospitable planet, they try to lay claim to it for Earth's burgeoning population, only to find that humans already live there - and they refuse to relocate. Torn between duty to his unit and his duty to humanity, Jackson struggles with whether he should follow the customary order (cleanse future colonies for the human population's arrival) or side with the humans who were there first, and know the danger of the planet well.

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Writing Prompts: Traditional and Bookends

This section contains traditional prompts--those that inspire writers to start a short story or novel. It also contains a type of prompt that I created: the Bookend Prompts.

For the Traditional Prompts, take my suggestions and start writing! Feel free to tweak, alter, or completely reinvent the prompts to suit whatever story you want to write.

Traditional Prompt:
"I always knew that jumping jacks were dangerous. Now, I had proof..."

Bookend Prompts: Use the pair of prompts listed below as the beginning and end of your writing. A bit more challenging, but I know you can do it!

Bookend Prompts

1a. Why me?

1b. When he heard the sizzling of meat on the grill, he knew he was home.

For more writing prompts, check back regularly in the main blog (center column). I'll post more as I think of them!

Fanfiction Links

Even with a solid grasp of writing basics, it can still be intimidating to create an entire world of your own in which to write. Has this setting been done before? Are the plot twists too predictable? Are the characters no more than stock cut-outs, or are they so original that a reader won't know how to empathize with them?

To avoid those pitfalls, I suggest starting with fanfiction. You can't make money off of it, because the characters and settings have already been taken by established writers, but you can practice emulating writing styles, character descriptions, and plot twists until you're confident enough to use these elements in your own writing.

There are sites online that will host your fanfiction, but be sure to add a disclaimer at the beginning of these stories, so that it's apparent you aren't trying to horn in on another author or screenwriter's meal ticket. At these links you will find several (okay, so it's a few dozen) of my fanfiction attempts. These are Supernatural and Magnificent Seven fictions, sometimes crossed with other shows or characters, such as Highlander, The Pretender, and Boondock Saints.

Standard disclaimer for stories in this section: These characters aren't mine, and I'm writing for fun, not profit. No copyright infringement intended.