Need help outlining a novel

[sinister42]

I just finished the first draft of a mess of a thing for National Novel Writing Month, and my next step is to outline the story beginning to end and rewrite it. I've never done this before - I'm a pantser or at best a plantser, but I've realized that neither of those methods will get me a full story structure that works.

I'm reading about the "snowflake method" and that sounds like a good place to start, but what's your favorite method of outlining? I'm looking both for just general advice and for specific recommendations of software, websites, templates, things that'll let me plug in story information and help me organize it into a cohesive whole.

My real challenge is ADHD. In this case (well, in all cases), if a task seems too big and complicated and nebulous, then I find it nearly impossible to break it down into bite-sized chunks that I can deal with, and I just...don't do it.

Thus, the gold star goes to whoever can present me with software or an app or something that helps to break down the outlining process into bite-sized chunks with clear steps and instructions and goals, and that's simple enough to learn that I won't go "ah sh*t this seems hard" and drop it.

Thanks!

 

[Star-child]

Just a light suggestion - write one page-or-less synopsis. I'll bet it will suggest where the most obvious problems are an how you might break it down into parts that fit in an outline.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Hi,

Have you tried Scapple? It's by the guys who do the outstanding Scrivener (with which it interfaces). Here's the link to the product page with a free trial download.

pH

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I assume you’ve tried the pomodoro method? A friend with ADHD finds it useful

 

[sinister42]

Pomodoro is good when I remember to use it - I'm going to buckle down & try to use it more. The real problem I have is in taking big, nebulous projects and breaking them down logically and systematically into workable chunks. "Outline a novel" means as much to me as "clean the living room" does - a big task without definition or concrete steps I need to take, and it's very easy for me to go "well I don't know how to do that - hey what's that shiny object over there?"

 

[sinister42]

Scapple looks like mind-mapping. I might try that again, but the last time I tried to mind-map it was all too abstract and confusing for me to really focus on.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

When outlining a novel I just write a brief synopsis (about a page) for each chapter. Snowflakes etc. seem like a good way to complicate what is actually a very simple process. You want an overview of the novel, a sense of flow and pace, and you want to see how it works (or doesn't) as a story. Turning it into a diagram may not be the best way to accomplish that.

 

[Dragonlady]

What's pomodoro?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

What's pomodoro?

You use a timer and set a writing period (usually around 20 minutes) and write to the end of it. Then you take a break - it’s important to get up and walk around - usually for 5 minutes or so (some people find playing around with timings suit them better) and then start the timer again.

It’s used a lot by PHD students and academics where focus is important. When I use it (usually when I have a deadline) it does get words on the page or, in this case, planning.

FWIW I think Teresa is mostly right - it’s easy to overcomplicate the planning processes.

 

[-K2-]

When outlining a novel I just write a brief synopsis (about a page) for each chapter.

So now I'm curious... this is what I 'assumed' a synopsis was, yet instead (based on a 50 chapter 120k+/- word novel), a paragraph or less for each main character and a paragraph for each chapter... roughly, 10 pages +/- worth. Is it really an entire page usually?

K2

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

When writing a synopsis for a novel, one you send to a publisher or agent, you do have to condense things down to a great extent, since the entire synopsis would probably be 1-3 pages, depending on what is asked for in the guidelines. But it's not like breaking it up into a paragraph per chapter, because what you are trying to do, above all, is show that you have a story to tell. So you tell it in story form, which may mean skipping over entire chapters, and confining yourself to briefly introducing the characters and their situation, and thereafter sticking to the most important events. (This is where entering the Writing Challenges can be helpful because they teach you how to boil a story down to its essence and still make it interesting.)

Writing an outline is a different process. As for length, that depends on whether you are producing it for your own use (however long you need it to be), of because an editor or agent has asked for an outline along with sample chapters as part of a proposal (probably less than ten pages would be good). As for form, that also depends on who it is for. Some people outline as they would for an essay or academic paper. That sounds too dry and mechanical to me, but if they like it and it works for them, fine. But I wouldn't send anything like that to an agent or publisher. An agent or publisher wants a story. So a synopsis for each chapter, more detailed than the above, is what they are looking for when they ask for an outline. For my own use, I have almost always found that an outline of that sort was most useful for generating and organizing my ideas (also figuring out which ideas to discard because they weren't really working).

But we all have our own process, and if it works it works. However, each book is different, and if something worked once but isn't working later, we can always change, so long as we are talking about outlines for our own use. (I'll mention for those who haven't heard the story before—for those who have, you can skip the rest of this paragraph and you won't miss anything new—I did once compose the outline for a novel using file cards: one for each event of the book, and color coded for action, backstory, revelation of character, etc., which I then shuffled around until I felt that all the necessary elements were evenly distributed and a good pace maintained. Then I wrote the novel using the cards as my guide. It worked OK. I finished the book in a timely fashion; I was satisfied with the result; my editor was also. But somehow I have never been inspired to use that method again. Maybe some day I will. Actually ... hmmm ... it might help me with my current challenge, which is turning an over-long WIP from one book into two. I'll have to think about that.)

 

[DannMcGrew]

I come from a non-fiction background in which an outline comes before the story/article and provides the framework, so to speak. So I'm curious About outlining a book/story that is already written.
Would you write an outline almost as if the actual work had not been written and then see how the written work fits? Or do you try to parse each chapter of the written work?
Given the assignment I'd be tempted to create an outline with little reference to the work as written and then compare that to what I have completed. It would be an interesting exercise and probably a good check on the conherence of my "completed" work.

As for mechanics there's a useful article from Writer's Digest a few years ago
www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/7-steps-to-creating-a-flexible-outline-for-any-story

And this from masterclass.com

How to Create a Novel Outline

1. Craft your premise. This is the underlying idea for your story. ...
2. Determine your setting. In a novel, the setting (time, place) can be just as important as the characters. ...
3. Get to know your characters. Write character profiles. ...
4. Construct your plot. Construct a timeline of events. ...
5. Write your scenes.

more at (www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-outline-your-novel#what-is-a-novel-outline)

And for that attention span issue try just the major topics first (TASK number one) then go back to sub-topics (TASK number two) and then sub-sub-topics. Leave yourself plenty of time/space between the tasks to decompress. It can be less daunting to write down PREMISE and one sentence for I II III IV V in one session then next try add I A and II A etc. Sometimes when doing that the sub-topics will just easily present themselves.

You could also try merely organizing the story with bullets ... Hero is born, hero reaches teens, aliens abduct parents, hero becomes space cadet, hero makes friends with wookie, the two get own ship and go looking for parents. then fill each one out with some plot and AFTER that go back and make it look like an outline.

Maybe consider asking for some help. You might tell the story points to someone and ask them to write them down as you speak. Just create a master list of sorts. That could provide you a jumping off point.


Just some thoughts..... I hope you might find some little thing useful.
Good luck.

 

[Dragonlady]

@Jo Zebedee thanks! I struggle with focus (I've recently identified I have a lot of ADHD traits) and did set a timer to write to the other day, which helped a lot, I'll have to try it again.

 

[sinister42]

@DannMcGrew thanks - those are helpful tips, and definitely speak to the challenges I have in breaking down big tasks into doable tasks.

 

[tinkerdan]

What I would do--take the three act structure and find all of the points where they appear in your novel and plug them in. A pants-er will likely have to extrapolate in some areas to find something the closest to this.

I seem to recall some traditional published novels that have extended confrontation periods where it almost seems like endless obstacles and culminations.

The one thing about this is that it might end up, for some, to feel like the three act stricture.

Sometimes my stories feel like three act structures as viewed through a Kline Bottle Lens.

 

[Margaret Note Spelling]

Just to be clear, are you aiming to outline what already has happened in your novel, or outline what ought to happen in the next rewrite of your novel? Are they the same thing? Are you planning to strip this version down to its bones and rewrite it from the ground up, or are you planning on slightly/drastically changing those bones, and then rewriting, or are you planning on keeping what happens and just change around the way you've written it? Because I think your outlining strategy might end up being different depending on how much of your current draft you know you're going to keep.

For instance, a drastic rewrite for me typically includes first identifying all the parts of my story I like best--events, characters, concepts, plot twists, the things I know I want to keep--and then throwing everything else out, then coming up with new ideas to make all of the things I've kept in, make sense. But a slight rewrite would be more like starting from the beginning of the text, with the original story as a reference, and copying it all out again line by line, looking hard at each sentence as I do and making sure it's really what I want to be there. I usually end up changing dialogue and actions around at that point, but the same overall things are happening in the scene--it's just being made more fleshed-out and detailed now.

 

[sinister42]

This is going to be a drastic rewrite that keeps very little of the original story. My original draft helped me kind of suss out what the plot should be, but the plot of the first draft was a disorganized mess and needs to be largely scrapped. For example, in my first draft, my protagonist is just "this guy, you know?" and he kind of wanders through the plot trying to figure out where he fits in, and the real action happens to him more than him making the action happen. It wasn't until I wrote the scene where his love interest (a cyborg) gets abducted by aliens that I realized my protagonist needed to be an astronaut that rescued him, and then most of the rest of the pieces came together from that.

Another problem with the first draft is that there are a lot of scenes where several characters just chat for ages, because I was going for word count and using those chapters as mind experiments to learn more about my characters. Obviously all that's going away.

And there are some subplots that need to be largely scrapped or tightened up considerably.

Anyway. Yes, it's a hack and slash job on the next draft - nuking the first draft from orbit and starting again.