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