Clarifying the Outline

A short post.

Yesterday I wrote about my plan to stop worrying and love the outline. In short, the idea was that, since going through my graduate program in creative writing, I’ve avoided the process of actually sitting down and laying out scenes on paper or in, for example, an application specifically designed for creating outlines (OmniOutliner is a strong candidate at the moment).

I did not mean to imply that writing programs in general or my own specifically encouraged the writer to sit down, head blank, and head in some unknown direction. Instead, the idea was that the writer should have an “idea” of where the story was headed (where this idea existed, other than the memory, is unknown to me) and allow the words to flow. The dreadful things that might happen if you didn’t heed this advice are aluded to in the previous post.

So my only revelation, if it may be called that, is that I actually need to have real, no-kidding outlines. Almost like a storyboard, if you will, complete with scene location, characters, purpose of the scene (gasp!), and notes for the future me who will actually sit down and write the thing out.

Anything to help you out, future me.