Outlines Are My Frenemy

I said once before that outlines are something I never saw the merits of as a teenager. I used to think that they hindered the creative process by restricting what you could and couldn't say. I always thought I had to strictly follow the outline. This is not the case. Well, it is in respect to scholarly papers. Outlines keep you on track with the facts and keep you from straying too far form the point you're trying to make. However, when it comes to creative writing, outlines are like frenemies.

I'll explain. After I had kids, I lost the freedom I had to drop everything and lock myself in a room and write until I passed out in front of my computer. I now have to stop in the middle of a great flow of creative energy to make dinner, pick kids up from school, or take sick kids to the doctor. This often causes me to lose my train of thought. Sometimes, I get a great idea when I'm cutting the crusts off bread and by the time I finally get to my computer, the words are gone.

Outlines can save you from the stress of starting and stopping and forgetting. If you're lucky enough to be able to write all your main points out without getting interrupted, then do it. Fill in with little details: snippets of conversation or description of the scene. These are guidelines that you can use to kick start your brain when you come back later, and will help you pick up where you left off. They also give you the chance to look over your story and see if it has real legs to stand on: that is, can it make sense somewhere other than inside your head?

An outline gives you the opportunity to work out any kinks in your story and character relationships before you commit to writing 50,000 words or more. And the best thing, is that you can throw in any idea you think of. During the pre-writing phase, any idea can seem great, and most times they are.

On the other hand, outlines also can sometimes get in the way. Right now, I'm working on a project and I'm finding myself using only about 1/3 of the ideas I wrote down. While not using every idea isn't a bad thing, I just hate leaving good dialogue to collect dust. But what can I do? The story needs to evolve and improve and while that patch of dialogue might be amazing, it just doesn't fit into the story anymore.

Outlines also become a problem for me when I'm trying to rewrite a chapter. It's hard to change the story when my brain remembers it so vividly another way. I then have to write a new outline of what has actually happened in the story and what I want to happen next. I then compare the new outline to the old one and see if anything repeats or if the ending for the story has changed all together. Again, this is not a bad thing, but it is time consuming.

All the stress that comes with the ups and downs of using outlines, are just part of building a story from an idea into something amazing.