Writing By The Seat Of My Baggy Pants by Marian Allen
I love writing farce. I don't have to worry about how things are going to fit together. Events just go pinwheeling off in all directions and nothing has to make sense.
Yeah, right.
That first sentence is true, anyway. The rest of the paragraph is only true up to a point.
Okay, look: I understand the benefits of outlining. Outlining gives a project focus, direction, organization, structure.
An outline is a map, not a GPS. It displays clearly where you COULD go, without locking you into a route. It's easy to change your mind at any point along the way and you don't have to take both hands off the wheel to do it.
But I can't do it cold. I have to write my way into a story/book in order to get a sense of what's happening and who the characters are and how events and people bounce off each other.
And outlining is logical. Farce isn't. According to The Free Dictionary (my favorite kind) farce is: A light dramatic work in which highly improbable plot situations, exaggerated characters, and often slapstick elements are used for humorous effect.
Part of the joy of a farce (assuming you enjoy farce) is its absurdity. Put one person in a stateroom ordering room service and it might be funny. Put eleventy-seven people in a stateroom, have one of them trying to give someone a manicure, and you have a farce. (The Marx Brothers in A Night At The Opera, in case you didn't know.)
At some point, though, an outline helps, possibly especially with farce.
After all, SOMETHING is going on. There has to be some form to the action or it isn't a story. So, even in the heat of creation, I have to stop and write a throughline: A synopsis of what's actually going on underneath the nonsense, like great detective's revelation of how the crime took place: "Here's what happened." Sometimes things depart from the throughline and a new one needs to be written, like the multiple endings in CLUE: THE MOVIE.
[caption id="attachment_8078" align="aligncenter" width="236" caption="Click to enlarge, click back arrow to return to post."]
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Maybe along the way, maybe after the first rough draft has barreled through the chicken house, the cutting and pasting begins. In the case of FORCE OF HABIT, it was more than once along the way. There were so many viewpoints and so many interwoven storylines, I had to outline it chapter by chapter in order to keep track of who was in the scene, who knew what when and who was getting a turn at the action.
[caption id="attachment_8080" align="aligncenter" width="236" caption="Click to enlarge, click back arrow to return to post."]
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I also went through at least two versions of the book's outline. I make these out of leftover Debate Team pads. They come divided into seven columns, which I then divide horizontally into six rows. That gives me 42 chapters. If I need fewer, I use fewer. If I need more, I use another page. As you see, this one is color-coded by point-of-view.
[caption id="attachment_8081" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Click to enlarge, click back arrow to return to post."]
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If I hadn't stopped now and then to write a throughline and a book outline, I could never have finished the book. If I hadn't done the chapter outlines, I might have finished it but it would have been, you know, surreal, with characters suddenly appearing in scenes when we had just seen them on another part of the planet or people being unaware of something they had just been discussing a couple of scenes ago.
But I made myself do the housekeeping on the book and it's finished and published and the people who have read it have had a smooth, silly happy time of it. That makes the work worthwhile.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pump up my whoopee cushion.
Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes
"By the Book", is a short story set on the world of FORCE OF HABIT and features one of the novel's characters. It's free at Smashwords.
Yeah, right.
That first sentence is true, anyway. The rest of the paragraph is only true up to a point.
Okay, look: I understand the benefits of outlining. Outlining gives a project focus, direction, organization, structure.
An outline is a map, not a GPS. It displays clearly where you COULD go, without locking you into a route. It's easy to change your mind at any point along the way and you don't have to take both hands off the wheel to do it.
But I can't do it cold. I have to write my way into a story/book in order to get a sense of what's happening and who the characters are and how events and people bounce off each other.
And outlining is logical. Farce isn't. According to The Free Dictionary (my favorite kind) farce is: A light dramatic work in which highly improbable plot situations, exaggerated characters, and often slapstick elements are used for humorous effect.
Part of the joy of a farce (assuming you enjoy farce) is its absurdity. Put one person in a stateroom ordering room service and it might be funny. Put eleventy-seven people in a stateroom, have one of them trying to give someone a manicure, and you have a farce. (The Marx Brothers in A Night At The Opera, in case you didn't know.)
At some point, though, an outline helps, possibly especially with farce.
After all, SOMETHING is going on. There has to be some form to the action or it isn't a story. So, even in the heat of creation, I have to stop and write a throughline: A synopsis of what's actually going on underneath the nonsense, like great detective's revelation of how the crime took place: "Here's what happened." Sometimes things depart from the throughline and a new one needs to be written, like the multiple endings in CLUE: THE MOVIE.
[caption id="attachment_8078" align="aligncenter" width="236" caption="Click to enlarge, click back arrow to return to post."]
[/caption]Maybe along the way, maybe after the first rough draft has barreled through the chicken house, the cutting and pasting begins. In the case of FORCE OF HABIT, it was more than once along the way. There were so many viewpoints and so many interwoven storylines, I had to outline it chapter by chapter in order to keep track of who was in the scene, who knew what when and who was getting a turn at the action.
[caption id="attachment_8080" align="aligncenter" width="236" caption="Click to enlarge, click back arrow to return to post."]
[/caption]I also went through at least two versions of the book's outline. I make these out of leftover Debate Team pads. They come divided into seven columns, which I then divide horizontally into six rows. That gives me 42 chapters. If I need fewer, I use fewer. If I need more, I use another page. As you see, this one is color-coded by point-of-view.
[caption id="attachment_8081" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Click to enlarge, click back arrow to return to post."]
[/caption]If I hadn't stopped now and then to write a throughline and a book outline, I could never have finished the book. If I hadn't done the chapter outlines, I might have finished it but it would have been, you know, surreal, with characters suddenly appearing in scenes when we had just seen them on another part of the planet or people being unaware of something they had just been discussing a couple of scenes ago.
But I made myself do the housekeeping on the book and it's finished and published and the people who have read it have had a smooth, silly happy time of it. That makes the work worthwhile.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pump up my whoopee cushion.
Marian Allen
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes
"By the Book", is a short story set on the world of FORCE OF HABIT and features one of the novel's characters. It's free at Smashwords.
