Post #157 February 18, 2019

“Plot Outlines and When to Ignore Them”

As an author, I’ve always been a big believer in planning and outlining your story ahead of time.  It keeps me on track.  But sometimes, you just have to deviate from the outline.  Here are some reasons why it might be necessary to ignore an outline and strike out on your own as a storyteller:

1. A main character has evolved in a direction different from what you expected or planned for.  When this happens, chalk it up to the likelihood that you’ve drawn a vivid personality who just can’t be confined to your outline.  It’s happened to me.  Sometimes, characters are just ornery and won’t be pigeonholed.  The trick here is to ask yourself if the story really should go off in this new direction.  Sometimes, that helps the story.  If it’s a surprise to you, it may well be to the reader as well.  The new plot direction may well turn out to be in better alignment with your ornery character and make more sense, make a better, more believable or satisfactory story.  Just think about it before you allow it happen.
2. You’ve written yourself into a corner.  This tells me that I didn’t plan as well as I should have.  There were questions I didn’t ask or didn’t answer and now I’m in a pickle.  Go back to your outline.  Were there developments or ramifications you didn’t anticipate?  Can you get the story back on track, maybe by introducing a new character or bending the storyline just a little, a small tweak?  You may need to go back to the beginning and lay in some motivations and dialogue or narrative to build a bridge out of the corner you’ve written yourself into.  Here’s a case where your original outline likely wasn’t thought out as well as it should have been.  Better luck next time…this is how you learn the craft.
3. The story is going nowhere.  It reads and sounds aimless and meandering.  It has no life.  Although maybe your writing itself is a little flat—it happens to all of us—more likely, this indicates an outline problem.  You didn’t attend to the basics of storytelling as well as you should have: introduce the hero, give him a problem not easily solved, and a reason to need to solve it.  Then throw complications in his path and watch him struggle.  In the end, he (or she or it) overcomes all the complications and solves the problem or fails magnificently and learns something useful in the process.  See if your outline meets these essential building blocks of any well-told story.
4. Deviating from your outline actually improves the story.  You have an outline.  You think it’s detailed enough, anticipating plot twists and turns but something happens and it seems like striking out in a new direction makes for more conflict, more believable narrative or action, and it’s more consistent with your overall theme or story line.  Think about it.  Does deviating from the outline better meet the basics of storytelling?  Why?  Answer these questions and you’ll know whether or not it’s a good idea to head off to some place new. 
5. There’s just action for the sake of action but no real purpose.  We’ve all read stories where, at the end ,when your old Aunt Bessie asks you what the story was about, you say, “I have no idea.”  If your story develops from your outline as a stream of action sequences with no clear goal or path to anywhere, go back to that outline and study it.  Compare it to the basics of storytelling and remember: your hero should be changed in some way by what happens.  Maybe he’s wiser.  Maybe he’s dead.  But change, growth, adjustment, a moral for God’s sake, that’s what the best stories have.  These things go by different names but they’re talking about the same thing.  Good stories have morals, messages, warnings…this could happen to you so watch out!  If you’re outline has led you to something that doesn’t clearly have these attributes, the outline is no good.  Go ahead and toss it in the round file.
6. And please…do yourself a favor and study up on the basic mechanics of storytelling. 
    
   I outline stories in some detail to prevent these things from happening.  Sometimes, they do anyway.  Outlines keep me on track and when I get off track, I have some idea of where I’m trying to get back to.  I don’t have any scruples against deviating from my outline but I don’t do it unless the reasons cited above are operating and I believe the story will be improved if I do.
    
   Some writers say they just love sitting down at their desk every morning, not really knowing where the story will take them.  They like to be surprised.  Which is fine as it stands.
    
   Just not for me.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on February 25, 2019.  In this post, we’ll take a look at the early returns from my new series Time Jumpers, maybe a short excerpt from an upcoming episode and then talk about some of the do’s and don’t of series and serial storytelling.
    
   See you then.
    
   Phil B.