Writing Meditations: Outlining is your servant, not your master

I love outlining. It maps super well to my brain, and how I work. I feel incredibly encumbered by ideas and the way that they could take shape. Usually, the overwhelming pressure of figuring out how a story will all come out stops me from actually writing the story. Outlining, almost feels like therapy, as it allows me to relieve my mind of the various associated thoughts I have swirling around in there. I often compare it to the relief I believe Dumbledore gets from the Pensieve, as he pulls painful or hard memories from his mind. This is especially poignant as I go through my normal day.

Stephen King talks about how important it is to write every day to maintain that story urgency, or the energy you have watching your story develop. This is more story anxiety for me. I think about it all day and all night, and I feel bad that I am not attending to it during my every waking hour. This is where outlines are very powerful for me personally. I get the skeleton or the basic shape of what I want my story to become down and I stop worrying about it. It comfortably sits in the back of my mind, not pestering me, and definitely not weighing down my psyche. I've found all writing to have a similar effect on me. I include this in my writing quota as well, since I believe it has a marked effect on my progress as a writer. What I mean by that is if I have a certain word count, and that day I start with outlining, then I include that in my quota for the day. It is actually writing, even if it is done in a very different way than sitting down and typing out your story.

Here's the catch. That works for me and it works for me because I don't consider my outlines to be my master. When I originally outlined the Healer I had in mind 10 chapters, I wanted the story to sit at about 90,000 words, and Jarrick was going to be the main point of view character. A lot of that has held true, but now my book is twenty chapters. For that's entirely fine, and honestly how I personally expect it to be.

Brandon Sanderson calls people who mostly don't outline but write to discover, discovery writers. I know nothing in life is particularly black and white, so I consider myself an outliner and a discovery writer. This means that I like to outline but when the story has to go somewhere different it does. I think that there is some conventional wisdom here because as I look at it I realize that you obviously can't outline all 90,000 words. In the same paragraph where I say I don't see things as black and white, I'll say that outlining a full book is binarily not possible. It's not just impossible it's silly to think that you won't have to discover in as you write.

Let me say this another way that's less pedantic. I believe I can say, with confidence, that most people will have to deviate from their major outlined story beats. A person may want Jane to fall in love with Larry, but over the course of the story realize that it just ain't happening. Larry has, unbeknownst to the writer, become less of a fit for Jane. A healthy person will say, "yah that makes sense," write it and move on. But, I personally have struggled with it and I'm sure others have as well.

If a certain outlined motive, arc, or character trait is getting stuck in your head and you are interrupting the flow of your writing to figure out how to make it fit, then the outline is your master. Let it be your servant. Go back to that outline, cross out what doesn't make sense, rewrite what does, or maybe even delete if you outline on your computer. It will feel uncomfortable at first but like the Pensieve, it is only a tool and eventually, you will have to revisit it. Unlike a Pensieve you can change it! you can't change a memory's past, though I guess they do alter a memory in the book. The rules around magic in Harry Potter are pretty situational and loose, aren't they?

To sum up, I think you can get relief from writing your ideas down, but ultimately nothing should or really can get in the way of your story or voice. There will be times that the natural writing process is hard and laborious, and you will struggle. Don't let your tools add to your struggle. Don't use a Philips when a flat head is called for and don't try to screw in a nail.