Karen S. Wiesner: Advance Your Career: Writing in Stages, Part 2

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner 

Advance Your Career:

Writing in Stages, Part 2 

Based on CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} 

This is the second of four articles with techniques to advance your writing career. 

In Part 1 of this series, you read about advancing your career by using story folders, and now you've got a solid way of organizing all your story ideas to ensure you have lots of projects growing over a period of (hopefully) years. In the next three parts of this series, we'll talk about writing in stages so you're set up from the start to get the layering necessary to build three-dimensional CPR (Characters, Plots, and Relationships) elements. In the ideal writing situation, a book goes through eleven stages (though the last two are optional, which I’ll explain later), including:

Stage 1: Brainstorming

Stage 2: Researching

Stage 3: Outlining

Stage 4: Setting aside the project

Stage 5: Writing the first draft

Stage 6: Setting aside

Stage 7: Revising

Stage 8: Setting aside

Stage 9: Editing and polishing

Stage 10: Setting aside

Stage 11: Final read-through

Let's go over each of these, discussing the whys and wherefores for each step to ensure the creation of solidly layered stories.

Stage 1: Brainstorming

In Sometimes the Magic Works, Terry Brooks says that dreaming (a term referring to the back-and-forth process of brainstorming in the mind) opens the door to creativity and allows the imagination to invent something wonderful. It happens when your mind drifts to a place you’ve never been--a place you can come back to and tell readers about. This is possibly where writers got such a bad rap from those who see us constantly daydreaming. Little do they realize that, until a writer has brainstormed adequately, he won’t have a story to tell.

Constant brainstorming, or brewing, is the most important part of writing an outline or a book. No writing system, technique, or tool will work for you if you’re not brainstorming constantly during a project, through all the stages. From the beginning of a project--before you even write a word of it--through the outlining, the writing, and revising, and the final edit and polish, brainstorm! It's the second half of the secret to never burning out, never facing writer's block. (Waiting until a story is ripe to begin working on it is the first half.) Start brainstorming days, weeks, months, or even years before you begin working on a story; jot down notes as they come to you and put them into their own folder. If you want specific ideas for ways to brainstorm, the internet and other writing reference titles--including my own--are abundant on this topic.

Brainstorming is the very ambition, focus, and joy necessary to planning and completing a project. Both inspiration and productivity flow from this exercise, and brainstorming should never truly stop after you begin writing. Brainstorming is so often what turns an average story into an extraordinarily memorable one. Dreaming about your story infuses you with the inner resources to write with that coveted magical element that turns work into passion. It’s also the secret to sitting down to a blank screen or paper and immediately beginning to work without agonizing over where to start. Brainstorming has the amazing side effect of forcing a writer to move from Point A to Point B and to continue on from there. Having given you a few sparks, it helps you to connect the dots in order to get those elements to fit together, logically and cohesively.

Without adequate brainstorming, a writer has no motivation for fantasizing about every aspect of the story he'll write. The process of writing will be dry and agonizing, and he’ll likely never make it past chapter three. By brainstorming days, weeks, months, or even years before beginning tangible work on a story, you create the layers for your story over time; this type of planning also produces cohesion in your work. Brainstorm enough, and when you start the project, it’ll be like turning on a movie and writing fast to keep up with everything you see.

Stage 2: Researching

Research is a layer of the story, but it’s also a form of brainstorming. While you’re reading, you’re thinking of ways you plan to use the material you’re researching. Research will give you the knowledge you need to plan a story. It will also give you story ideas. That’s why it’s so important to do your research before you begin a project--not during, if you can help it. This isn’t to say that you won’t need to do some follow-up and/or further narrow your research when you realize your outline or first draft has taken a turn you hadn’t planned for, or needs more than you’ve already acquired. Ideally, you’ll do your research in between other stages in your various projects. Your research may form the basis for character development, an appropriate setting, and much of the plot, fitting them together naturally. You’ll know you’ve done your research well when you can write about everything in your story intelligently, without questioning anything, and when your research naturally becomes an integral part of the book. If you can't do that, you're not done researching yet or you need to rethink whether you want this to be a part of the book at all. Believe me, proper research is so critical to creating a strong story.

Stage 3: Outlining

I'm adamant about outlining every single story before I write a word of it. That's my modus operandi without fail, and it's not something I would ever want to stop doing because I truly believe it's the only way to be sure I have a solid story before I commit to writing. I don't see the point of writing (and rewriting again and again) a book that may not be strong enough or good enough to sell, if you're writing to be published. I consider that to be writing a book backwards. My goal is to find out if I have a strong story worth writing first--in my world, by creating a scene-by-scene outline--so I'll never have regrets and almost never have to do any of the steps more than once.

An outline is essentially any guideline a writer uses to create and assemble a story. Whatever form an author chooses to use, it needs to show the details behind the finished product--details that many times are invisible, fitting seamlessly with all the other elements of a story but need to be identified and developed even before writing begins, to ensure proper three-dimensional CPR development.

While unpublished or newer authors might want to just write without boundaries or prerequisites in order to teach themselves the process of crafting a solid story, published and career authors often desire more discipline if they're going to create amazing stories every single time. Unfortunately, the idea of a published author writing a story without some sort of plan is acceptable, even encouraged, and prevalent. Don’t get me wrong, those authors who have been through the process of writing a book many, many times have an outline regardless of whether it’s formally written down or not. Their own experience in the process is guiding them. An author who’s written nothing, or only a few books, and works without a plan to get him started may end up with unstable, disjointed stories of the sort that reviewers rip to shreds. Author Terry Brooks says, “I believe, especially with long fiction, that an outline keeps you organized and focused over the course of the writing. I am not wedded to an outline once it is in place and will change it to suit the progress of the story and to accommodate new and better ideas, but I like having a blueprint to go back to. Also, having an outline forces you to think your story through and work out the kinks and bad spots. I do a lot less editing and rewriting when I take time to do the outline first.” I would emphasize what he said about changing an outline to suit the progress of a story. Most writers don't realize just how incredibly flexible an outline is in that regard. Let's analyze that deeply.

First things first: A story needs the proper foundation, framework, and internal workings to be strong. Choosing the right elements before the first draft is begun will prevent endless rewrites and one dimensional stories. The primary goals in producing an outline are as follows:

•  To encourage your mind to brainstorm a story from start to finish (in my world, that means a summary of every single scene in the book), providing yourself with a strong, rich layer.

•  To allow yourself to see the holes in your story before you start writing the first draft. With a scene-by-scene outline, you have the means to evaluate what still needs work, what needs to be revised and fine-tuned, before you commit it to a full, written draft.

•  To help you stay focused when you start to write the book, keeping you from getting sidetracked by small details. Everything you need is right there in one consolidated document. You won't have to go looking for anything and interrupt your progress, because all the hard work of puzzling out your story was completed in the outlining stage. 

How does all this work in the real world? In mine, I always outline a book scene by scene before I write it. I work chronologically until my outline contains every single scene I’ll have in the book; it's also okay to write an outline in a nonlinear fashion. Sometimes it helps to know the end of the book before you outline the beginning and/or middle, so feel free to outline non-chronologically if the story comes to you in that way. Additionally, you may need to utilize a process I call “outlining and writing in tandem”, which basically means outlining as far as you can go, scene by scene, in the book; then writing the first scene if you stall, going back to the outline, and switching back and forth between these if you need to, always returning to the outlining and staying with it as long as you can. Use that method if you need to, until you get used to the idea and process of outlining a book before you start writing.

Something I want you to notice is that this isn’t simply an outline that you’re creating. When I outline, this is unmistakably the first draft of my book because it is my book…just in condensed form. An outline like this is so complete it contains every single one of my character and relationship developments, along with plot threads unfurled with the good pacing and the necessary hints or seeds of tension from start to logical finish. And, yes, my outlines do include pacing and tension, or at least allusions about where they should be included--it's a mini version of the book, after all. Because it’s an outline, it doesn’t even need to be my best writing.

Once my outline is complete and contains every single scene in the book, I read it over, filling in any gaps or holes, fleshing out the scenes with dialogue, introspection, action, descriptions, whatever. Basically, I revise the outline in the same way I would a first draft. Most authors don’t and won’t spend endless time revising the words and sentence structure in an outline, since they’re the only ones who’ll see it. And this makes for a lot less obsession over every word and sentence, and puts the revision where it should be in the logical order of writing a book--near the end. Revising less than a hundred pages of an outline will certainly be much easier than revising 400 manuscript pages. Incidentally, writing your manuscript based on an outline this complete might almost make you feel guilty, like you’re cheating, because the writing process should be simple at this point because you worked out all the kinks and smoothed out the rough or weak spots while outlining. That's my experience with outlining and I've written whole books about how to do that.

Now, before we go any further in proving the flexibility of an outline, let’s talk about something that most authors who don’t like to use an outline say: They fear using an outline will kill their enthusiasm for writing the book, or that their creativity will be hampered or caged. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never felt stifled by an outline. Just the opposite, in fact. The outline frees me to explore every aspect of a book--without risk. It allows my ideas (and my characters) to come to life on their own and grow. Use your outline to explore any angle you want. If new characters crop up, wonderful! Include them. If they’re not right for the story, removing them won’t take you much time at all. Explore a new story thread--follow it wherever it takes you. If it’s a logical thread, keep it. If it’s not, delete it. You’ll only lose a little time, and your story will be stronger for it. If you realize halfway through or even all the way through outlining a book that some of your ideas aren’t working, it’s a matter of deleting the offending scenes and starting again in a new direction. This is a change that probably won’t take longer than a few days to make in the much shorter outline (instead of the months or even years it might take to identify and correct a full draft of a book created without an outline). Exploring new angles, characters, and concepts while outlining allows you to avoid spending countless hours laboring only to discover your ideas don't work. That's flexibility of story that can't be denied. A written draft is never so pliable.

Working the problem areas out of a story *within the outline* is ideal productivity, and it’s within every writer’s grasp. The clearer a writer’s vision of the story before writing, the more fleshed out, cohesive, and solid the story will be once it makes it to paper. Remember, your blueprint is just one of many layers of your story. If you’re jumping directly into the writing, you’re missing so many layers that will have to be tacked on awkwardly or laboriously overhauled and reshaped during multiple revisions…revisions that ultimately may not fix the foundational problems your story has.

In the next part, we'll talk about stages 4-7.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

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