Brightly colored frosting makes the best finger paint! It's tasty, too!
One of the things non-fiction is good for is cultivating voice. Because NF has no characters to hide behind, it forces us to write as ourselves in a way regular fiction (as opposed to fictive or inspired-by memoir) doesn’t.
The voice I’ve spent so long honing in my NF work has helped me a lot over recent months–it’s easier for me to get into a character’s head without mapping or noting or any of the other techniques I used to use. But the other NF stalwart I’ve come to depend on, the outline, doesn’t carry over to fiction.
Granted, I rarely outline my blog posts (though I do use a blog client rather than writing directly in WordPress. More on that in another post.). But other than these posts, I stick to my non-fiction outlines the way finger paint sticks to my jeans, shirts, walls, and kitchen cupboards. Writing an article without an outline is difficult for me–I end up scattered and utterly confused. When I write fiction, though, I find the very act of writing an outline leaves me scattered!
Here’s what my non-fiction outlines tend to look like:
Title: Blog Post on Outlines, Plot, Voice
Intro
- What am I writing about?
- Key point – using outlines, getting confused, thoughts
- Do outlines hinder voice or help it?
- Relevant links: x, y, z
Where Am I Going With This? 2 Paragraphs
- Point 1
- expand, include a relevant quote
- sum up
Conclusion
- What I’ve learned/am thinking about
- Questions
Extra funny thing: I can write from someone else’s outline with no hassle. Hand me a writing exercise, or hash something out with me for a short story, and I’m fine. Ask me to write the outline myself, and I’m a mess.Remember when I said non-fiction helps with voice, because there are no characters to hide behind? I think that’s my problem. Outlines in fiction–for me, anyway–take the story in an NF direction, so that I end up thinking news-and-opinion rather than character-and-plot-development.
Overall, not writing outlines isn’t a killer for me, but it is sometimes annoying. My writing group has no problem working out plots and sequencing, while I struggle to get all my ducks in a row. Oftentimes, this means I have to write and rewrite large chunks of a manuscript until it’s all internally consistent–which is a pain and a half! Lately, I’m getting over the hassle of this by keeping a soap opera diary.
A soap opera diary (I have no idea what they’re actually called, but that’s what a guy I used to know, who worked on Passions, called them) is like an encyclopedia for any given show. Continuity people keep track of all the births, deaths, marriages, evil takeovers, one night stands, coffee hijinks and more so that the show doesn’t contradict itself. There are still gaffes every now and then, but for the most part, the writers and continuity folk manage to keep the show fairly consistent. So, for my latest manuscript, I’ve started doing post-outlines, summarizing chapters and highlighting anything that could be a Big Continuity Issue later.
Do you write outlines for fiction, non-fiction, or both? How do you keep track of continuity issues?
For fiction, I write a summary of the whole novel and then chapter summaries for each chapter. Then it’s easy to fill in the details and thus write the book.
For non-fiction, I’ve done it both ways. For my article “The Power of Inspiration” and a few others I did use an outline, but a lot of times I just wing it and write what’s in my heart, especially for squidoo intros. but for some other articles as well. Outlines are good in that they do give a sense of order to what you’re doing, but on the other hand, to be tied to an outline sometimes can limit creativity. Sometimes, once I start writing, it’s easier to see where I’m going. So if you start writing and it seems disorganized, perhaps that’s the time to outline. Or perhaps what you are saying is more important than the order you say it in. So be yourself and do what you can do best.