Novelists Don't Have to Outline. Really.

 YOU HAVE TO OUTLINE TO BE A TOP WRITER. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY. ONLY PEOPLE WHO OUTLINE WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO BE A TOP WRITER. I have only one thing to say to this statement, which I have heard several writing gurus make. BULL CRAP. Stephen King (not an out-liner at all) would be surprised to hear he is not a top writer. Quentin Tarantino, ditto. George RR Martin, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, and many, many more don’t outline.

If you try outlining and you can’t do it, do not despair or think you’re a failure and will never be a good writer because you can’t. Some writers do outline and they do it well. Some discover their story as they write it. They learn who their characters are and their characters help them find the story that needs to be told. They do what works for them.

Experiment. Find what works for you.

 

More personally:

I had a cousin once who had six toes. It didn’t make her clairvoyant. She and I were backstroking across Lake Okoboji when she said, “You’re going to write a book someday and it will be the craziest damn book anyone has ever read.” She died in a swimming accident later that year. That’s how I know she wasn’t clairvoyant.

Wait. If Yvonne wasn’t clairvoyant, how did she know I’d write a crazy damn book? Because even though the most recent novel (out today), The Librarian and the Monster, is the sixth in the series, I think of all these books (including the ones still to be written) as one book. Each of the novels has a story unique to that novel, but there is another story that stretches over all the novels and the series won’t end until that story ends.

What if my cousin was clairvoyant? If she was, that meant she knew she would die in a swimming accident. It also meant she knew her boyfriend, who she was deeply in love with, was cheating on her with her best friend, a friend she’d known since the first grade and also loved. Which meant she didn’t confront them because she wanted to get every minute of that love she could, so she probably knew they were about to come clean and tell her the truth the very day she drown swimming in Lake Okoboji.

Her story, it seems, is a horror—love story.

And that’s how I write. I discover this and I discover that as I write and then I go back and put in the parts I need to make it the best story I can in the next draft.

Find what works for you. 

Below is a link to my novel should you feel inclined to take a look.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CT4NL78Q/ref=mes-dp?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=dOcHT&content-id=amzn1.sym.07f68587-1ea8-46cf-8c0c-8374d8d96b4a&pf_rd_p=07f68587-1ea8-46cf-8c0c-8374d8d96b4a&pf_rd_r=2ZFWDSYETWAFTX3ZF551&pd_rd_wg=8g4da&pd_rd_r=3d1ee4b6-3b0e-4fec-be30-48395762e3fb

Thanks for reading,

Brian

The Absolute Best Way To Fail At Writing A Novel

 

THE ABSOLUTE BEST WAY TO FAIL AT WRITING A NOVEL

Let me begin with the #1MOST MOST EFFECTIVE WAY YOU CAN USE TO FAIL AT WRITING YOUR NOVEL. There are other important ones. This is #1 though. Others will only hamper you from completing your novel unless there are too many of them, in which case they will sink you faster than a tsunami. It’s like fighting pygmies. Sure, you can probably take on one or two, but you get a dozen of the little buggers attacking you and you’re dead meat. So a lot of bad habits will, I have to say, make it difficult for you to be successful.

However, for now, we’ll focus on the number 1 way to fail at writing a novel. What is it? First, a few examples of someone using this method to fail effectively: Say you are a would-be writer. You’re at a party. You have a job, but it’s not something you’re excited about. What you’re excited about is writing. You confess, more than once, that you’ve always wanted to write a novel. But there’s a problem. Things keep getting in the way. You don’t have time. Not enough hours in a day, weeks in a year, that sort of thing. Some people you say this to are sympathetic. Some are understanding. Maybe one or two give you judgey looks, but that’s just one or two.

At first.

You go on to tell the people at this party that the distractions are too numerous. Your fantasy football teams, your Facebook page, your house cleaning, your trips, your new passion for cooking, your old passion for surfing the net, your Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, subscriptions, your friends, your enemies. Who has time to write?

Not you.

Then there is the more sympathetic case. You work 50 hours a week at a taxing job; you have a family, a spouse, kids, parents. You are tired when you get home from work and just want to veg out in front of the TV. There really is no time. You certainly have good reasons not to write. That’s pretty much all that can be said to someone in this position. It’s really not your fault. You have to really want to write to use the tiny amount of free time you have on writing. So that’s what it comes down to. If you really want to write, then you will need to use that tiny amount of free time to write. If you do, you will make progress. It will be slow, but slow still gets you there, eventually. Nothing gets you nowhere.

The number one way to fail at writing a novel is not to write. Sometimes we overlook the obvious. If you want to fail at writing, don’t write. If you want to give yourself a chance, you know what you have to do.