Huh. I guess I do believe in outlines after all

[commodorified]

So a shocking amount of writing advice I've encountered is about cutting the excess away, and this has rarely been my problem.

I tend to produce first drafts so condensed as to be downright gnomic, and then show them to friends who are kind enough to be informatively bewildered at me until I unpack.

Related to this, I always said I don't outline, at least outside my head. It occurs to me that my first drafts ARE outlines, really. Just, I outline in actual paragraphs.

Huh. That's an oddly useful insight.

In other news I forget where I recently saw someone comment that you can tell the difference between bad allergies and a cold because colds are PAINFUL, but that, sadly, is also very useful information right now.

Comments

[niqaeli]

When I ever get anything written anymore, it's generally from chatfic/the flailed email equivalent of chatfic -- and it's cleaned up and expanded from that into actual prose. Which is basically just a way of outlining!

I've figured out that while formal outlines don't work at all for me, for anything longer than about 2k words to have a CHANCE of getting written, I need to have a sketchy, elastic version of the whole thing written down. Or else what happens when I'm writing prose is that I stop at some point because, you know, sleep and food etc., and then I just never can pick it back up. Whereas that issue doesn't happen to me when I'm just flail-sketching out ideas, and if I have a sketch down when I start writing actual prose I find I can pick stuff back up because I'm not going AAAAHH I DON'T KNOW WHAT NEXT.

So, you know, non-traditional-outline writing club, represent!

(Honestly, it is amazing to me how much writing advice fails to acknowledge the fact that not everyone's brain functions the same way. I mean this is a general problem, but it boggles me that in a creative endeavour with so many people what ain't neurotypical that people writing advice are often terrible at recognising that their One True Way may not work for everyone.)

[mmegaera]

That's how I do it, too. Writing, not colds or allergies. I hope you feel better soon.

[recessional]

Mine aren't quite so condensed and I tend to have to go in both directions, but yeah: my first drafts are outlines. I need to tell myself the whole story. And I need to tell it in a way that's still interesting to me, or else I get bored, which is what yon "normal" kinds of outlines tend to be.

The closest I get to normal ones is sometimes having in Scrivener an empty file going "so I still need that scene about the thing to go here" or "something happens between this and previous, no fucking idea what." :P

[izzy]

I've been told on more than one beta-occasion, "izzy, we don't know what's in your head. you'll need to actually write that bit down." "oh yeah. thanks." But then I've also been told that I produce "solid" first drafts, so six of one, I guess. (I don't think I've ever outlined for something fic-like. I'll fill a separate document with rambly notes, but I feel like that's a different thing?)

[stoutfellow]

In other news I forget where I recently saw someone comment that you can tell the difference between bad allergies and a cold because colds are PAINFUL, but that, sadly, is also very useful information right now.

That might have been me. You have my sympathy, from recent experience.

[dejla]

So sorry about the cold! Feel better soon! (I'm trying to send mental antibodies your way.)

I have to be careful if I put down notes or outline or whatever, because sometimes my brain decides "Well, you've written that already, so we're done with that."