In my article at ProWritingTips.com, I laid out five basic reasons for writing an outline before launching into fiction writing. While these particular tips were tailored for fiction, they were in no way meant to be a definitive guide to outlining. I left out a great deal of detail like how long or in depth an outline should be. Honestly, the article was selfishly tailored towards novels, as my novel is my highest priority.
The wonder that is fiction is drawn from the lack of exact solutions. There is no surefire, one-size-fits-all solution to writing fiction. Attempting to create one would at best leave the creative process hobbled and stifled, and at worst would kill it outright. The bit about a hundred monkeys with a hundred typewriters is pure hogwash.
But, writers do use tools. There are different tools for different projects. There are different tools for different points within the same project. Typically, the writer isn’t even limited to just one tool at any given moment.
The solution that I’ve found works best for me, is to keep myself open to as many tools as possible. After all, my primary goal is to become the best that I can at writing. I have a desire, so strong that it borders on sin, to craft stories in which the reader cannot turn away from. It’s an addiction, and if I can find a better high, I’m likely going to look at it. And I’m likely going to look at it here, or at ProWritingTips.
However, when addressing the topic of tools, the sheer selection means that any instruction on the art of writing will invariable A) leave something out, B) list a method that isn’t exactly applicable with a writer’s current situation, and C) list a method which has several alternatives.
With option B, there isn’t much I can do for you. However, with options A and C, I urge you to speak up. We are, after all, a community. I’m just doing my part to add tools to your writer’s tool chest.
There is an oft repeated phrase amongst those who give advice on writing and maintaining a blog. That bit of advice is to capitalize on the law of large numbers, something which is really only economically feasible online. More specifically, that advice is to limit the topic of a blog as much as possible.
This theory makes a lot of sense. I subscribe to it, and I even pointed this out in a round-about fashion in a post sometime ago regarding lit-nerd-core – a musical sub-genre so specific that it can only appeal to a statistically minute audience. The upside is, of course, that working in such a limited genre will strike a chord with such precision that audience which is eventually attracted will be passionate and loyal.
As turn about is fair play, I can ask this own question of my writings here, about my blog. Am I writing a vanity blog merely here to showcase what I believe to be my talents? Yes, to a point. But more so, am I also keeping to that “oft repeated phrase”, that bit of advice that I abide by the Law of Large Numbers? And if so, how does that jibe with the inherent vanity of operating a blog under one’s own name?
That answer is a bit more complicated. You see, despite the bredth in overt topics in the majority of my blog posts, there is one overbearing theme that is typically represented, that is the attention to story. While I do maintain that my website is a website about writing, and about a writer, the primary core of my content is about story – I just typically strip genre out of that.
After all, television is a fine medium for telling a story, that’s how it started, and even reality television attempts to keep with that trend. I’ll assert that reality television often does a tragically blunt job at doing so, but there is story there. Even in the recurring Monday pieces, the Water Cooler Talking Points, there is the element of story. For what is the “news” but stories of the world.
Despite the relatively wide variety of topics, talking about story is an effort to keep to an older maxim than appealing to the Law of Large Numbers, and that is that no writer can exist in a vacuum. The phrase is typically used to say that a writer must indeed read, but was likely birthed in an era when reading was the primary method, other than oral traditions, in which a writer could observe others telling a story. Today, we are much more blessed. We have numerous genres, and they are able to be interwoven with such ease that “literature” can flourish outside of the pages of books.
I would, of course, be remiss to say that this is the only reason I will blast out a two-thousand word missive on any number of topics. Staying in practice is a wonderful motive, and as I spend the majority of my day writing marketing copy, I often yearn to let my fingers run wild and bang out a piece of what passes as journalism today. This also falls into another old bit of overused writing advice, that of “write what you know.”
As I’ve worked as both a screenwriter and an entertainment journalist, these pieces easily fall into the “what I know” category. As does the current event pieces, a means of adding to experience by observation and empathy. By that logic, however, the invisible connecting thread of story is also something I know, for I’ve been writing those for as long as I can honestly recall.
So, there is a method to my madness, I just choose to keep that method a little out of the way, a little less obvious. In a age where every argument must be summed up in a soundbite, I’m choosing to nuance. Or madness. The two might just be closer than we imagine.
Bradley Robb likes TV and books, and has an intense dislike for cinnamon. Once, Bradley stopped a Soviet T-60 with his middle finger. Bradley writes speculative fiction and edits Fiction Matters, and never really got the hang of talking about himself in the third person.