I've decided to participate in NaNoWriMo for the first time this year, so I'll be writing a draft of 50,000+ words in one month, if all goes well. I've decided to write a novel-length version of my novelette "Too Far to Follow." It was a frustrating story to write, as I was trying to cram the entire arc of two people's lives (and an anthropological look at two different cultures) into 15,000 words. A few months after finishing it, I decided it might work better as a novel.

So a week or so ago, I prepared my outline for the novel version, intended to cover enough ground to ensure the 50,000 word goal.

There are lots of different approaches to outlining. Some writers refuse to outline at all, not wanting to stifle or constrain the creative flow of the writing itself. If this works for you, great! I find that writers who can pull this off (Stephen King, for example) are ones who are natural storytellers, with an almost hardwired sense of how events follow one another and escalate in dramatic force. That's not how my own mind works. I get into characters and cultures and ideas, which I'm always tempted to explore in roundabout ways, at the expense of plot. For me, outlining is a necessity. It's also important pragmatically. I have a full-time job, and my evening and weekend writing time is precious to me. I don't want to waste a half hour of it staring at a blank screen and wondering "what happens next?" I need to know what I'll be writing when I sit down to write.

I tried the snowflake method when I started planning A Wall Against the Morning. That was the first project I undertook, and I was very organized about it, ending up with a paragraph describing each scene, along with notes about what each scene needed to accomplish in terms of plot, character, exposition, etc. As I gained experience writing short stories this year, however, I moved into a sparser, simpler method. I now write a single sentence or phrase for each scene, something like "Officials attempt to take device". (Of course, this is shorthand for something that makes sense in my own mind, in the context of the story.) That's enough to tell me what I'm supposed to be writing about when I get to that scene. The details are all left open; sometimes even the outcome of the scene is open. This gives me freedom to follow the story down a different path or with a new emphasis, if inspiration takes me that way. I've occassionally had to remove, add, or rearrange scenes as I write, but I've never felt compelled to ditch everything and start over.

I knew I wanted something like 70 scenes for this novel, since I tend to write scenes between 500 and 1000 words in length. For convenience, I divided this number into 10 chapters of 7 scenes each. I made a text file with a blank line for each scene.

Next, I identified key scenes in the story: places where the plot takes an important turn, where something dramatic happens. I placed these scenes on the list, making each one the final scene of a chapter. Then it was a matter of filling in with supporting scenes that move the story toward the next key scene. In a short story, the key scene is the climax or ending, and each earlier scene builds toward it. In a novel, there are usually several key scenes, each of which shifts the story in a new direction. Knowing what the next key scene is keeps my writing focused and paced.

For the most part, my 7-scenes-per-chapter plan worked out well, although in some cases I needed to use more or fewer scenes in a chapter. Since this is an outline for a draft, I didn't worry too much about whether each scene would be strictly necessary, or whether I might need additional scenes. Such adjustments will become clear after the draft is finished.

For this project, I did something additional I usually don't do when outlining short stories. For each scene, I added the location where the scene takes places, the characters involved, and who the viewpoint character is. This allows for a quick, at-a-glance appraisal of how much "screen time" the various people and places get in the story, and allows me to track each character's story line through the book.

Now, when November comes, I'll be able to sit down at my computer and immerse myself in writing, one scene at a time, with no down time due to plot paralysis.