Writing software, and not-outlining

[Stella_Omega]

There are things I like about MS word, like the find/replace which can become so precise, and the Track Changes function which is fabulous for editing. But for writing the story in the first place... Just doesn't feel right. (aren't we picky, and only a few years ago we had our first typewriter!)

I've tried a couple of "Writer's software" and the one I like for mac is scrivener I like the index cards! Seriously, download it, if you're on a mac, and try it out.

For Windows, my friends tell me they prefer Liquid Story Binder(which is so elegant!) or PageFour.

And,yeah. I can't outline worth a damn. Right now, I'm trying the "Five scenes First" technique. Opening scene, first complication, point of no return, climax, closing scene. Then (supposedly), you fill in all the other complications and stuff.

What do you do instead of outlining?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

It must come from being primarily an audial learner, at least for many years. Most of my teachers tried to teach me how to take notes, usually in outline form and I just couldn't. I know that this sounds creepy but I managed to work my way clear up to a Master's by not taking outline notes. I'd just sit down in the lecture hall and when the prof began to speak, I'd blink and quietly say "record!". Then when it came time for the exam, I'd sit down, blink and say "playback!" Mind, I wouldn't advocate that anyone else do this. I can. It's weird.

So, when I'm writing a story I toodle along writing dialog and events until I think of another situation that one or more of my characters should have happen. So I write it. The ideas seem to come sequentially, anyway, so I'm hoping it works.

After all, you did say that you'd probably throw out about 2/3 of it anyway . . .


I mean, isn't a first draft mostly for putting the ideas on paper and organizing them comes later? I hope?

 

[Stella_Omega]

I mean, isn't a first draft mostly for putting the ideas on paper and organizing them comes later? I hope?

That's kinda the way I work, too!

 

[voluptuary_manque]

That's kinda the way I work, too!

Oh good. I feel much better now.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I don't outline either and it probably shows in my writing.

Usually I have an idea and I noodle on it for a while, then it just becomes a movie that plays in my head when I'm falling asleep at night or for an afternoon nap. Then all I have to do is sit down and write what I see in my movie. There is also dialog in the movie and that helps a lot.

Sometimes as I'm writing I get another idea that should happen in the movie and I just write it.

For long novel and novella length things I like yWrite, it's in its fifth generation (compatible with vista).

For short stories I use MSWord.

 

[Katyusha]

I don't outline my stories...I can't. I took copious notes in class in high school and college (scriptographic memory...if I write it down I'll remember it without having to look again) both from lecture and from the texts but I can't outline stories at all. The stories go where they want and the characters do what they want and if I make an outline and try to stick to it it feels like I'm trying to force it into a mold it doesn't want to fit into.

 

[JackLuis]

I am really trying to write from an outline instead of "winging it" like I have for most of my writitng.

I find it damn hard to do. I have the feeling that once i've worked thru the plot points and the conclusion, what's the use in making it all fit to the outline? The story is told and all I'm doing is embellishing it. Once I know how it is going to end it all seems fruitless.

I have to try to approach each plot point as a sepreat piece, maybe and try to write 1,500 -2,500 ( or 400-750 words might be better if they are the right ones) words to hit the points I've outlined?

You think that might work?

 

[slyc_willie]

What do you do instead of outlining?

Every story, of course, begins with a premise. You already have an idea in your head of who at least one of the main characters are, and what they are trying to do. Or who they're trying to do.

As I posted in your other thread, I can't make an outline first and then write from it. For one, I feel like the story has already been written (I echo JackLuis' comment -- I feel like I'd be embellishing a story already finished). For another, an outline gives me the sense that the story must follow the course as given in the outline. I can't make my characters do that. More often than not, as I'm writing dialogue, the characters will say or do something that pushes the story in a different direction. I have to honor that.

What I do have, however, are impressions and scenarios that spring to mind as I'm writing, and I feel the challenge of 'gently guiding' my characters toward those. The ways in which they make it to the scene I want often surprises me.

Essentially, I get a series of events and scenes stuck in my head with a common thread connecting them. That thread, often enough, loops back and forth and whips all over the place. If the scene remains important as I continue to write, then it will make it into the story.

 

[Stella_Omega]

My problem is endings-- climaxes. I always want to see what happens next-- but as a reader, a perfect climactic scene is what I need, or else I want to rip the author's head off their neck, And dammit. Short stories, no problem...

So noqw, I'm trying real hard to come up with a BIG FINISH, with all the bad guys and good guys and the guns and everything. And then-- if I get that-- then I write what happened before it.

 

[slyc_willie]

My problem is endings-- climaxes. I always want to see what happens next-- but as a reader, a perfect climactic scene is what I need, or else I want to rip the author's head off their neck, And dammit. Short stories, no problem...

So noqw, I'm trying real hard to come up with a BIG FINISH, with all the bad guys and good guys and the guns and everything. And then-- if I get that-- then I write what happened before it.

I tried that once, writing a dramatic, heroic climax, in which the hero goes all out against the bad guy. Guns blazing, blood flying, a lot of emphatic shouting and so forth.

But then I tried to go back and write the story that lead up to the climax.

Didn't work out so well.

It seems the climax was the story, I guess.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

My problem is endings-- climaxes. I always want to see what happens next-- but as a reader, a perfect climactic scene is what I need, or else I want to rip the author's head off their neck, And dammit. Short stories, no problem...

So noqw, I'm trying real hard to come up with a BIG FINISH, with all the bad guys and good guys and the guns and everything. And then-- if I get that-- then I write what happened before it.

I was going to have Walker Brigade end that way...bullets flying, aliens blown to pieces and such. It didn't quiet work out that way. But I think the ending I finally wrote is much better and explains some thing that happened in the beginning of the story.

The same was true with The Du Page Affair...the ending I finally wrote wasn't the one I had originally drafted initially. But I think the one I finally published was a good one.

I have outlined...basic premise and occurrences...for Orchard Falls and I'm struggling to stick to the plot curve. I like the curve it's just that it's the first time I have written to a kind of outline.

 

[Weird Harold]

There are things I like about MS word, like the find/replace which can become so precise, and the Track Changes function which is fabulous for editing. But for writing the story in the first place... Just doesn't feel right. (aren't we picky, and only a few years ago we had our first typewriter!)

I learned word-processing on Wordstar (for the 8-bit C/PM OS) and have nly grudgingly learned to like WinWord.

Word is so configurable, that I don't feel any need for any other word processing program, although I do use Wordpad for progamming purposes because Word is pain when it comes to working without wordwrap.

I don't do a formal, structured outline when beginning a story, it's more like a summary or precis of the major story points and each point gets expanded with each editing pass until I have completely fleshed out each point.

 

[Stella_Omega]

hum, well. a sketch of how the ending could play out-- just enough to know who has to get there, and what they have to be prepared to do...

Then, if they don't quite end up there, you can tweak. Sounds like Harold has a method...

 

[rgraham666]

Generally, I meditate on the story until I've a pretty good idea of the flow of the thing. Once that's done I start writing. Works okay for short stories and novellas.

For my novels, I haven't really come up with a standard method as I've written so few.

 

[serpentmoon]

What do you do instead of outlining?

I can’t outline, hard as I have tried. For me there is no story until the moment of writing it. It’s almost like watching and listening to a movie in your head and at the same time discovering the characters. So at first I don’t know the characters so well and this tends to give a distance to early chapters because I am not deep in the characters’ heads.

Endings are a nightmare because I never want anything to end and any ‘big’ finish always feels too much of a set up, too self conscious, but that said I often don’t read endings which can’t help much.

Really I would love to have more control over the whole process but I think it just works differently for different folks, there's no right or wrong to it.

 

[Weird Harold]

Then, if they don't quite end up there, you can tweak. Sounds like Harold has a method...

It's actually an adaptation of "program design with psuedocode" -- it eventually boils down to each scene being the equivalent of a subroutine or function in a program. In a lot of ways, my writing style is more coding a story than writing a story.

 

[Liar]

Outlining is one thing. I don't use any software, or even a notepad or post-it notes. I alvays let an idea gestate into a detailed plan in my head before I start to write, and I've never had any problem holding pretty complex outlines, character progress, timelines and themes in my head. It's kind of like

What I need though, is a good environment for writing the actual text. It's a tedious chore for me, to choose words, type them out, string them together and produce readable paragraphs.

What I look for in a writing sortware is ease of use, intuitivity and freedom from distraction. If I can do too much with it, I'll just get annoyed. It's not really some special function that speaks to me, more than that I need an interface that helps me focus on just that, crafting text, and that I'm comfortable with.

Best one I've found so far is RoughDraft. Super simple, but does everything I want it to, and not much more. It just feels a little bit easier to write with, for no obvious reason.

 

[Liar]

It's actually an adaptation of "program design with psuedocode" -- it eventually boils down to each scene being the equivalent of a subroutine or function in a program. In a lot of ways, my writing style is more coding a story than writing a story.

Do you ever re-use functions and just edit the parameters? I've found myself guilty of that. Xeroxing a whole sub-plot or plot twist from one story, or from earlier in the same story, change the names and settings and have it played out again, with a different result because of different factors.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I spent much of yesterday reading a horror writing anthology. All of the contributors are famous horror authors, and every one of them has their own way of writing. THAT was the bottomline. AND many of them are candid about how their 'ways' violate the rules we learned in school and college.

They dont agree on outlining, either. A few dont do it at all, a few construct outlines as long and detailed as their finished novel or story. I cant imagine a 400 page outline, but one writer did it.

 

[Weird Harold]

Do you ever re-use functions and just edit the parameters? I've found myself guilty of that. Xeroxing a whole sub-plot or plot twist from one story, or from earlier in the same story, change the names and settings and have it played out again, with a different result because of different factors.

I haven't yet, but I'm far from prolific when it comes to writing.

I did use canned comments when writing performance reports before I retired, and that was my only prior fiction writing experience before posting at Lit.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I read about an author who, when called to join his wife/partner/SO for an evening on the town, replied "Not yet! I can't wait to see what happens next!" Naturally this was in the story that was on his screen at the time!

I'm not quite that spontaneous. It's more like, "Okay, now that I've got them into this fix, however pleasent it might be, how do I get them out?"

I sort of feel like Stanley in Laurel and Hardy, I guess.

 

[christabelll]

I did an outline once... and wandered so far away from it that I didn't recognise it....

I simply write - add or take away later or even as I am writing.
Write as much as I can - then read and re read endless to fix it.... then if luck is with me send it to some one willing to edit it and point out inconsistencies that I am blind to.

Then rewrite it again.

 

[Boota]

Christopher Moore posted on his website about how he writes novels. I talked to him about it, asked a few questions, and now that is how I do it. It is not an outline, but it almost is, and it really works great for me:

Find a large sheet of paper. I bought a 2'X4' tablet of newsprint. Turn it on it's side (the 4' side down) and draw a line across the bottom of the page. Now think of your story. At the far left of the page is your beginning. At the far right is the end. Maybe somewhere - about 3/4 through - the protagonist needs to find out his wife is secretly a Bigfoot. Draw a line up from there and in a little box write "Find out wife is a Bigfoot". At about the 7/8 part of the line you have decided how to resolve the Mrs. Bigfoot issue. The cool thing about this method is that there is a lot of blank space between the 3/4 mark and the 7/8 mark where you don't have to write anything. It gives you a lot of room to be spontaneous. If an idea changes due to something you wrote on the fly, you have a solid, albeit patchy, plan for where the story needs to be heading, and it's right in front of you on one big page. You can jump in, drop a new idea, change the direction without necessarily having to change the destination, and be on your way.

I won't even put the first word on the page with a novel until I've established a plan, but outlines don't work for me, either. I wish I had known about Christopher Moore's method when I wrote Mr. Undesirable. Things would have been a LOT easier. I had two notebooks filled with longhand notes. For Picking On Retards I had one big story plan page and three sketchy pages of notes on character and fine details. And the books are roughly the same size. (Too long. )

For short stories I don't plan anything. I start writing and get what I get. I'm not worried about fucking something up and losing 10 to 20 pages. Blowing off a couple hundred pages does concern me, though. My non-erotic novella here on Lit, The Last Days of Mr. Right, was written in under 20 days, no plan, no notes, no nothing. I made it up as I went along, did a quick edit and called it done. I was just trying to gear up to write Picking On Retards and wanted to do something that didn't require as much thought as a whole novel. I think of it as a short story that didn't know any better.

 

[Stella_Omega]

T hat sounds like it would work for me, too!

You're supposed to be able to do that with index cards, but I've never been successful. One sheet of paper, however, I can probably keep that under control.

 

[off2bed]

I don't outline much, and when I do it's just to get the story out there and see how complete it seems. Whether I follow it or not isn't that important if I come up with a better path for the characters to follow. I've done chapter summaries in paragraph form as outlines.

What I'd like is writing software that has tabs (like a web browser) that I can use for each chapter. I use OpenOffice, and it (and MS Word) have "sections" you can use that way but it's cumbersome.

Ooh, I see "PageFour is a tabbed word processor." Cool, thanks Stella!