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