Outlining vs Writing Straight Through

Got about an hour to kill before I have to head off to Kung Fu class so I figured I should post a little something my writing partner and I discussed recently, the question of whether to outline or write straight through.

When I first started writing seriously about eight months ago, btw by seriously I mean write all the time, before that I used to produce a screenplay a year, I used to write straight through. There is a certain Zen efficiency to writing straight through which I think is very satisfying. The need to pay attention to every detail at every turn tends to sharpen one's perception about where the story is going, what one needs to write next, etc, etc. The drama of knowing anything can happen at anytime to turn the whole thing on its head is also very exciting. But...

Yes. But indeed. It's all so easy to get lost in a labyrinth of one's own creation. This of course inevitably leads to loosing momentum and, oh my God, try to rewrite one of these straight through pieces of writing, just forget it. You might as well write an outline based on the writing you've supposedly finished once so you can edit that outline and start again. I think we all can see where I'm going with this. Outlining is essential. But...

Yes, yes. Outlining has its buts too. Too often, one ends up spending so much time oodling and noodling with this or that idea in an outline and never really get anywhere. It all feels so tedious too. "Oh let me write this detailed thing so I can get on with writing... the detailed thing." This was probably the single biggest reason I stopped outlining things before I wrote. I mean I've tried all the different outlining schemes, the one page outline, the three page outline, the one hundred numbered sentences outline, the six page outline, even the bee belly striped cork board with index cards outline from that "Save the Cat!" book. None of it worked for me. I'd just get lost in the outline just as much as I'd get lost in the "finished" straight through pieces.

Then one day, I finally saw the light. It wasn't that outlining wasn't working for me. It was that I was outlining with the wrong attitude. I was a big Legos kid when I was little. And I guess I treated outlining that way, like Legos, one piece fits in to the other on and on til the end. Well, it doesn't work that way. What that does is make the whole process very mechanical, very process driven, and not... free. I get so worried about making the pieces fit that I forget what I'm building or where I'm going with the whole thing, like how you're thinking why am I talking about Legos when I was supposed to talk about how to make outlining work. :D So here is the trick I found that works for me.

I preferred writing straight through because it allowed me to freely make choices as I went along on a scene by scene basis, or chapter by chapter or what ever. Hell, the choices need to be made on a sentence by sentence basis really but more on that some other time. So, being a person who prefers the freedom of choice as I went along, I needed to apply the same way of thinking to the outlines that I write, block by block, sentence by sentence, not really treating it like an "outline" which I'm going to eventually "build up on" but more as a short hand version of what I'll write in the end wrote with the same sense of "urgency" and concentration that I would have writing the whole thing straight through.

I know, it sounds oh so elementary and it is. Its so elementary some of us, like myself not long ago, tends to overlook it in the hopes that some "process" will make it easier, better, faster, whatever. The truth is there is nothing faster then knowing what you want and putting it down on paper. But when one can't do that, at least one should write down what one will write down with as much of the same sense of clarity as well.

So, by all means, outline but don't let it become a crutch. You'll be thankful for it. I sure am especially since having records of iterative steps makes it that much easier for me to migrate the content to other formats. WOOT? Yeah, yeah. I'm sure you'll be able to guess where I'm going with this but more on that later. :D

The way it is.

Okay, so here is what my writing partner and I basically found out in the past few months.

Don't write scripts.

WOT?!

Well, okay. That's not exactly true. It's more like don't write scripts if you have no way of getting it in to the hands of someone who "matters". Why? Well, it apparently has something to do with executives and it goes something like this.

Executive, by the very nature of their positions, can never like anything. They can only point out that someone else seems to like it. Are you with me so far?

It's pretty elementary when you think about it. If you want to stay for any length of time as an executive, and this goes not just for movies but for everything, books, cars, pop corn, vinyl siding, whatever, you must never have anything that fails link back to you as in "we lost money because that executive liked it". And, the surest way to ensure that nothing they liked ever fails and gets linked back to you is to, you guessed it, never like anything. But you see, you can't do the job of an executive and not ever like anything because ironically your job is to "do business" and that's where the "someone else likes it" part come in.

In a strange way "market research" is in effect just that. It's not that it's even remotely accurate. No matter what the "law of averages" says, it's pretty obvious that grabbing random people off the street in no way guarantees that their opinion reflects anything out in the general public but that is not the point. The point is that executives, those in positions of power, or whatever you want to call it can point to the results and say "See? They like it" with the invisible tag line being "therefore I am not responsible if something goes wrong" which is... true. That makes one wonder why they even need executive if all they're going to do is point at other people's opinion and say that's the way we'll go. But that would be too cynical and not really useful. To quote Sun Tzu, know your enemy and know yourself and you'll win a hundred out of a hundred fights. And knowing how things "work" is really about accepting how things "are", not how you think it ought to be. So where does all this leave the first time writer?

Where else? Up the creek! :D

But all is not lost especially if you're one of those people who can get your stuff in to the hands of people who "matter" like a movie star or a "powerful" movie producer. But if you're not blessed with connections to such folks then you must find a way to put your writing in the hands of the people who matter the most. That's right, the general public or at least some subset of it.

This issue of "They like it so it's not my fault" explains why Hollywood has gone so gaga over what goes on at Comic-Con in the past few years. It also explains the big story today which is about some dude out of Uruguay who put on a slick "giant robots attacking a city" thing on youTube and landed a million dollar job to make his short in to a feature film. Basically, if you can get eye balls on your own then you've given those in charge the perfect excuse to flex their career muscle and do what they're supposed to do... safely.

And now you know why my writing partner and I have decided to write a novel and publish it on our own. In the end what matters is that people like what you wrote. Those people don't necessarily have to be studio executives to start with. As a matter of fact, if enough of the general public likes your writing and are willing to say it with their wallets, it's pretty much guaranteed that some executive somewhere will like your writing. Why wouldn't they? You've made their job so much easier and safer to do. I mean, do you think the executive who green lit the Harry Potter movies were sweating bullets worrying how it might fail and ruin his career? Probably not.

So, the question then becomes... how do you get the general public to like you? Any ideas? ;)

Why The Keyboard Miner?

Hello Dear reader who I may or may never have in the near or very far future or never:

Having been a pixel miner for most of my working career, and by that I mean I created pixels in one form or another for a living, I thought it would be proper to refer to myself as a keyboard miner now that I've decided I'm going to try and make a living by, well... typing in to my keyboard. :D

In the past several months, I've written, with and without writing partners, five screenplays, three treatments for film, and am in the process of writing a treatment for a novel. Had a producer like one of the scripts but haven't sold anything as of yet. As you may have guessed, this "trying to write for a living" things is pretty new to me and thought it would be a good idea to document it as I go along for my future reference and for those who might be interested in a writing career of your own.

All I can say is "here goes nothing" and hope that it all doesn't amount to that, nothing. Here's hoping the ride won't be too rough. :D Or maybe it should be rough, that way you'll keep coming back to read how much I'm suffering at the moment. Hehe~. Schadenfreaude here I come! :D

But seriously, please tune in. Who knows, maybe you and me will learn something along the way.