Outlining: A Personal Journey

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      To outline or not to outline; that is the question. At least that is one burning question this week at Wicked Writers, where we endeavor to discuss, convince or even lecture on the necessity of plotting one’s course when beginning that next bestseller. Some might suggest that it is in fact the most important writing one will ever do.

     As I contemplated this week's prompt, I was unsure just which side of the fence I was standing behind. I have written by simply sitting down and blazing ahead, come Hell or high water. More recently, I have written with more of a plan. It wasn't until I had written this post's rough draft that I came to fully realize just which side of the fence I should be standing behind. Walk with me, won't you...

     I might be a special case and I will leave that for you to decide just how special needs that might be. What I mean by this is, I have done quite a lot of writing where I have started madly typing away, allowing the visuals in my head to play out as if they were the scenes in a motion picture that had yet to be written down. A script in reverse, if you will. Regular readers of mine will recall that I have mentioned this before. In fact, my first novel was written just this way. It did take twenty years to write, so it would be extremely difficult for me to champion this method of writing. It took much editing and many rewrites to get it where it is now, and may be one of the reasons why it took so long. Perhaps if I would have mapped it out with an outline it might not have taken so long to complete. I have also written all of my short stories in this fashion, but the size and scope was so much easier to rein in, if and when things began to go astray.

     For my second novel I did map it out. I don’t know whether it was the greatest outline in the world since I had never tried writing a novel with one before. I think it did help me to map out the action beforehand and to narrow my focus. That novel only took eight months to write from beginning to end of second draft. My third novel in the series currently only exists as an outline. Yet, even now, as I contemplate working on that project this winter, I can hear the outline speaking to me. I grow excited just thinking about it, most likely since I don't have to do the heavy lifting now. I am confident that once I blow the dust off of that thing, the images will begin to play and the writing will be quite easy. Whether it is good or not remains to be seen!

     You will be visited by three ghosts... Okay, perhaps just one.

     Come just a little further please...

     I recall a painful writing experience that occurred in my youth. Today, not only does every home have a computer, but there is one in every other room. However, what you are about to see occurred back in the 1980's when there were only one or two computers on every block. You know, the dark ages! Anyway, my neighbors allowed me access to their pc for my writing. I spent many an afternoon there, but one particular evening I must have been late getting home and neglected to save my work. I recall leaving their home, feeling horrible as I walked back across the street. That night I spent hours jumping out of my bed as bits of action, dialogue, etc., came flooding back as I was attempting to go to sleep. Eventually, I got enough of it back, or at least enough to save the story. If I would have had an outline, it might have saved me from a lot of stress, unless of course I had neglected to save that, too.

     As you have taken this journey with me, you must realize, as I have, just how important outlines can be.  Mine are not great sketches of character or the latitude and longitude of every single subplot. They are only a few sentences that essentially script out where I need to be with each chapter. They still allow me the freedom to create, unshackled to strict rules, while helping me to focus on what should to be happening next. Perhaps more importantly than anything for me has been how helpful they have been with my pacing. Studying my outlines I have come to realize just what was needed and exactly when it was needed, much like a film director planning his shots by storyboard.

     If one would have asked me how much stock I put into outlining prior to this week, I might have said that I was not a believer. However, as you and I have found as we walked the terrain of this subject, I believe that I can be firmly counted among the converted. How about you? Are you reluctant to sit down and outline for fear that it zaps the creative process? Is it far too mundane a task? Are some of you other Wicked Writers out there believers in simply sketching your writing, and thus leaving plenty of opportunity for creativity or spontaneity? Do some of you actually prefer the shackles? (Poor attempt to entice comments?)

     The Wicked Writers Staff thank you for all of your comments this week and every week, and hope that you will keep them coming. We are reclining about Headquarters, snacking on Maple Bars and sipping coffee, eagerly awaiting more. Or is it just me?

     Oh, and thanks for taking the walk with me...

Advice, dialogue and (mis)communicating

I found this interesting blog on LinkedIn, from Anne Maclachlan, who does a bit called "Here's Why."

Anne was kind enough to give me permission to repost the blog she did on author Dr. Deborah Tannen, a New York Times bestselling author and communications expert, for our weekend readers and writers who just can't wait until CJ Ellisson blogs again on Monday.

Anne is not only a blogger, but a published author of horror with "The Thing in the Crosstrees" from the anthology The Bitter End: Tales of Nautical Terror. She is a former news content producer for the San Diego Tribune. She has produced two interactive English as a Second Language (ESL) textbooks and has won awards for her writing from the Society of Professional Journalists and San Diego Press Club, as well as the Southern California Writers Conference.

Since her credentials make me seem like a novice, I have paid attention to her blogs closely, especially this week's on Dr. Tannen. I found Dr. Tannen's article very informative. It has a lot of good advice and our topic this week deals with advice. A few weeks ago, we talked about writing believable dialogue and Dr. Tannen talks about the dialogue (or lack thereof) between men and women.

For aspiring writers, her writing could give valuable tips for writing believable conflict between male and female characters. For our readers, it might help explain some of the dialogue in today's books or, more importantly, in normal life.

Judge for yourselves.

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Here's Why.

In which all the mysteries of the universe are explained

Dr. Deborah Tannen: Solving the communications battle of the sexes.

Deborah Tannen is still my favorite communications expert (so this is more or less a shameless plug of her work) and here’s precisely why: You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation.

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That’s what started it for me, anyway. Dr. Tannen covers everything from male-female communication in the workplace and in social situations to family dynamics and that scary mother-daughter thing. Her advice is concrete and usable. She explains why we tend to communicate the way we do, investigates the social and genetic influences on speech, and lays out how better to listen and understand.

And the thing is, her observations are so accurate and astute that they just might affect your life. If you want to see how and why, here’s an excerpt from some of her writing for a quick look.

Before the next time you want to ask a woman “Why didn’t you just   say that?” or want to yell “You aren’t listening!” at your favorite man, it might be worth your while to investigate these books.

Good luck, all the same.

Excerpt from "You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in  Conversation" by Dr. Deborah Tannen.

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Again, I want to thank Anne Maclachlan for letting Wicked Writers repost her blog. Hopefully, our readers have found something useful from it.

Oh, and don't forget to catch Wicked Writers next week when we talk about the art of reviewing. Our guest blogger will be Harley Palmer, founder of the Writing Academy at Writing.com, who will share how she reviews the dozens of short stories she has received from her students' writing assignments.

“This Story Needs More Dialogue,” She Gasped

Writing believable dialogue in fiction has been a topic very much on my mind lately, and not only because it’s the Wicked Writers’ topic of the week.

In the past few years, I always thought writing dialogue was the easiest part of putting a novel together. Character A meets Character B at Location X and tells him/her Important Information Z. Simple. I invested much more time crafting plot lines, researching the accuracy of my settings, and so on. But now as I revise, I’ve discovered the trickiest element to get right is the one I gave least thought to.

One reason I may have downplayed the importance of dialogue is that many novels I love use it either sparingly or in between long passages of narrative (that is, non-dialogue). Middlesex, Water for Elephants, Life of Pi, and Poisonwood Bible are all contemportary novels that stuck with me long after I finished the last page.

I just finished reading a suspense novel recommended by one of our Wicked Writers followers, Suzanne Adair (thanks!): A Trace of Smoke. It’s an excellent example of a book that strikes the right balance between strong dialogue and a cinematic narrative style, evoking crisp images of Berlin in the turbulent year of 1931. (If you’re interested in other recommendations, please check out more of my favorite books on www.goodreads.com.)

However minimal dialogue appears within a piece, I’m discovering that it’s the engine that moves along any narrative. In recently editing and critiquing other writers’ works of fiction, I find that nowadays I’m often tempted to put down any book that relies mostly on large blocks of narrative to tell a story (or backstory). I need to understand the characters and hear their voices, not just learn details about their past. And as Greg pointed out in his post yesterday, these voices need to impart more than simply their words but give me a sense of who they are and what they're all about.

I’ve found that editing for a living, and now with a new eye on dialogue, has helped me to see the spots in my own writing that need tweaking. It comes almost second nature to me, when I see other writers insert three or four blocks of consecutive descriptive passages, to suggest, “break this passage up with some dialogue.”

Trying to apply that advice to my own work has been quite an eye-opener, to say the least. I can now understand the oft-heard lament of, “I had to skip those parts and jump right to the action.” Isn’t that what dialogue is in most stories—the action and interchange we all seek?

Did he just say "intercourse"?

Did you know that in Victorian England, men and women often had intercourse several times a day?

And men were known to ejaculate quite often.

I didn't know that until I read the dialogue in some of the short stories in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Doyle, of course, wrote his Sherlock Holmes stories in the 1890's during the reign of Queen Victoria. Back then, "intercourse" meant conversation and "ejaculate" meant "exclaim."

Today, we'd get calls from the PTA about such language, but in order to write believable dialogue, we have to talk like the characters would really talk or really did talk.

As readers, we have to understand this and take it in context. Thus, when we hear Little Richard sing "Good golly, Miss Molly, she sure likes to ball," we have to know that "ball" in the 50s meant "to party."

Or when Doris Day crooned "By the light of the silvery moon, I want to spoon, with my honey and croon love's tune," we should make it a point to understand that, in the 1940's, spooning was holding your loved one close in public, not cuddling up nude in bed after a one-night stand.

As a writer, it's my job to make the readers understand that. Don't be fooled by those novels set in the Old West or Shakespearean times or in a fantasy realm akin to Lord of the Rings or in the 50s like Rebel Without A Cause where the characters talk like your next-door neighbors. That is the author being lazy.

Unfortunately, I have been lazy at times in the past with my own dialogue. I've produced enough cheese to supply Mickey D's for a year. But, I've learned a lot over the years, so let me tell you some of the things I have learned and see if you recognize them from your reading (if you're a writer, learn from them, please).

#1) Use real people

Do the characters in your book read like the cast of Jersey Shore? Do they talk like them or are they as believable as Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer and  Russ Tamblyn passing for Puerto Rican in West Side Story?

It took me a few years, but, eventually, I got away from copying people from the movies. Why? Because those people in the movies are actors. They are acting.

I've been halfway around the world in my travels with the Navy, with newspapers and magazines. I've built up a wealth of knowledge and experience. For example, I can have a Boston character say "wicked" every third word and feel comfortable about it because I grew up in the Boston area.

I also freely borrow from all people. For example, I copy black people from all walks of life, just so you readers don't think we all just walked off the set of the latest Friday movie.

Note: Please try to avoid stereotyping. Not every Italian sounds like Joe Pesci. Maybe they talk like Joe Pantoliano, Annabella Sciorra, Al Pacino, Jennifer Esposito,  Vanessa Ferlito or Robert DeNiro.

#2) I ask the experts

An "expert" is anyone who knows more than me or has more direct experience in something than I do. Therefore, we are all surrounded by experts. If I want a character to sound believable when he talks about military intelligence, I ask my older brother, who was an intelligence officer in the Army.

If I don't have an expert readily at hand, I hit the Internet to make sure the terms I need are correct. After all, Devereaux Marshall Fox, the male lead in Land of the Blind, can't be in Antarctica enjoying the Aurora Borealis, now can he? Not when the Aurora Borealis is also called the Northern Lights, better seen in Alaska from the inn of C.J. Ellisson's Vampire Vacation.

#3) I take hints, suggestions and criticism

With a grain of salt, sometimes, but I take it. The readers offer insights that I can't get -- namely, the views and perspectives of other people. Maybe the reader is from Brooklyn and doesn't think my Brooklynite cop sounds authentic. Or maybe the reader is a retired general who points out that, in real life, a one-star general would not be talking to a battalion as if he were in charge of it.

When I was younger, I had this penchant for contradicting my dialogue. I tried to write a story based on the old TV show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Whenever the ship was in danger, I would have the captain order "Left right rudder!"

WTF?

In other words, I was just being verbose in saying "go straight."

Someone was kind enough to point that out to me that it should be "Left full rudder!"

#4) Shift the attributes

Professionally, I am a journalist. A sports writer specifically. In the journalism world, dialogue generally begins with the quote and ends with ," such-and-such said.

C.J. pointed out that I use this form of attribution way too much. And I agree.

I guess it won't kill me to put the attribute first such as Jodi groaned, "I knew you were going to say that." Or "I knew you were going to say that." Jodi slapped her head and groaned.

I guess variety can be the spice of talk.

A special note: one thing I do disagree with from many of my critics is the word "said." Everyone tells me to just use "said." Can you imagine using that word fifty kazillion times in a novel? I like to use synonyms such as "stated," "explained," "noted," "exclaimed," eh, I mean "ejaculated."

#5) And finally, check, recheck and then check again

Once I do the dialogue, I often post it on Writing.com. But, before I do that, I say it to myself over and over again to see if it sounds natural. If it sounds like real people having a real conversation.

Because, if I don't believe the dialogue I've written, then what's the point of showing it to other people?

Feel free to leave a comment and let us know what kind of dialogue you like.