A Simple Outline

by Holly West

If you've been paying attention (and if not, why not?) then you know I recently finished a new manuscript. Said manuscript is now with an editor, so I have a couple of weeks of down time until I have to dig back into it.

<twiddles thumbs>

Me being me, I'm having trouble deciding how to use this down time. And since more than a week has gone by since I turned the book in, there's less and less of it to use. I thought about tackling NaNoWriMo but for various reasons, it's not a good idea for me this year. I'd only be setting myself up to fail, so why bother?

I'm fully aware that this sort of all-or-nothing attitude often gets me in trouble. I'm not the sort of person who does well writing in my spare time--I need oceans of seemingly free time in front of me, endless weeks where I have nothing of substance on my schedule. Vacation coming up? Obviously, I can't start a project two weeks prior. Mother-in-law visiting from England? Might as well call the entire month of November a wash.

This is all very silly, of course, and I'm not giving in to what is essentially large-scale work avoidance. And just to prove it, I'm here to post a simple, starting outline template that I'll be using to plot my next novel as soon as I finish writing this post.

Before I begin, note that this particular outline works well for who-dun-its. Other types of stories will fit, but the labels will differ slightly. Also, if you're writing literary fiction--wait. Why are you writing literary fiction?

My most important sources for plotting my novels are Screenwriting Tips for Writers by Alexandra Sokoloff and Save the Cat by Blake Snyder--I know, me and every other genre writer who uses the screenwriting structure to plot their books. But some of this also comes from my own experience with actually writing my own novels. Still, if you want detailed information about any of my outline points, visit either of these sites and Alex's in particular. Great stuff.

Finally, I know I've talked about this before, as have many other bloggers, including those on Do Some Damage. I find it valuable to occasionally re-visit these topics as I find inspiration and motivation in studying structure.

***

Here ya go, and don't say I never gave you anything:

Before you begin, think about your theme, central question and premise. The premise, especially, doesn't need to be written in stone at this point, but it'll help you define where you'd like to go with the book and will help you outline Act II.

Need some help formulating your premise? Here are some examples from movies (all of which I got from IMDB):

Saturday Night Fever
A Brooklyn teenager feels his only chance to succeed is as the king of the disco floor.

Goodfellas
Henry Hill and his friends work their way up through the mob hierarchy.

Play Misty for Me
A brief fling between a male disc jockey and an obsessed female fan takes a frightening, and perhaps even deadly, turn when another woman enters the picture.

Vertigo
A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

Interstellar
A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival.

Theme/Central Question

Figure out your theme early on because because you'll be "stating" it Act I, near the beginning of your book. My favorite example of stating one's theme in a movie is "Chinatown," when Jake Gittes tells his client, Ida Sessions, to "let sleeping dogs lie." Of course Jake doesn't follow his own advice--if he did, we wouldn't have a movie.

My theme in NOSE DIVE is "fearing change is pointless because it's inevitable." The theme crops up throughout the manuscript in both subtle and overt ways. I didn't plan many of those references in advance, but that's the weird thing about theme--once it's defined, it finds many ways to weave itself into the writing.

Your central question--the one that will hopefully be answered by the end of you book--doesn't have to be overly complicated. My central question in NOSE DIVE is "What do you really want out of life?" It takes a murder and nearly getting killed herself for my heroine to figure it out, but darn it, she gets there.

Inner/Outer Need
One more thing--determining your protagonist's inner and outer needs from the outset and keeping them in mind will help as you plot and write.

***

Outline Template

ACT I (about 20k words)
Opening image - Sets the mood: voice, location, genre, etc.

Introduction of your "hero(ine)" in their ordinary world

Begin set up - Note: if this is a murder mystery, you need to introduce all of your suspects in Act I.

Central question/Theme stated - This is normally brief, but as I said above, the theme will be woven in throughout the story.

Continue set up

Inciting Incident/Call to Adventure - This isn't as big as the "catalyst," but it gives you a chance to show what your hero is made of.

Continue set up

Catalyst - Stakes are raised and your hero must make a decision to continue on the ordinary path or step into the "new world."

Debate/Gathering of Team/Formulating a Plan - Will she or won't she? Who are her allies? How will she respond to the catalyst? A note about reluctant heroes: While I'm in favor of them in general, it's important that your protagonist moves the plot along rather than the plot moving her. Aside from her initial reluctance to step into the "new world"that might occur in Act I, once she's in, consider her all-in.

Act I Climax - All that debating/team gathering/plan formulating above? Whatever happens at the climax should solidify your hero's decision to act.

ACT II-A (about 20k words)

Break into Act II - Enacting the plan

Fun & Games - Remember that premise we talked about? Act II begins what's called "the promise of the premise." If you get stuck in your plotting, refer back to your premise and think about ways you can fulfill what you've promised.

Introduce B-story

Attack on hero - Stakes are raised - plot reversal

Parade of Suspects - This is where you'll revisit all of your potential suspects while you move the plot forward.

Midpoint - Usually a major plot reversal or development that offers your hero a new direction going into Act II-B.

ACT II-B (about 20k words)

Continue plan/investigation - keep in mind that the steps taken now will likely be more obsessive and maybe even fool hardy. Your antagonist will also be taking bigger steps (whether on or off-screen) to thwart your hero. As these two opposing forces battle, your hero might be compelled to "cross the line" in his/her pursuit of truth. Often, there is a point at which your hero falsely believes they know who the antagonist is, leading to a misstep.

Continue B-story

Bad Guys Close In - This could be a direct attack on your hero or an attack on someone/thing he/she holds dear. Whatever it is raises the stakes to their highest point thus far and gets us wondering whether your hero's goals are achievable.

All is Lost Moment

Dark Night of the Soul - Think of this as your hero's opportunity to lick his or her wounds, both literally and figuratively. It's the soul searching required for your hero to start gathering up the energy needed to fight (and hopefully, win) the final battle. Through everything that's happened up to this point, he/she finally understands what's at stake and what he/she is really up against and yet still moves forward.

Break into Act III - A final revelation before the end of the game, revelation of true opponent that propels the story into the "final battle." May also start a ticking clock. In a way, this is a "new beginning" as it gives your hero a sudden burst of energy to fight the final battle.

ACT III (15k to 20k words)
Break into Act III - Your team is assembled and ready for battle

Final Battle - Make it count. There doesn't need to be explosions or even gunfire, but make sure however you choose to do it sticks in the readers mind with a steady escalation of tension.

Resolution

Final Image

***

Wowza. This post ended up way longer  than I expected. And I realize now that I wrote it more for myself than for you. Of course, there are loads of things I missed--plants/payoffs, sequences, set-piece scenes... there are lots of things to keep in mind. But if you just need a little push to get writing, this outline might provide it. I know it works for me.

Staking Out Your Piece of Mental Real Estate

By Holly West

I've talked about my use of the three-act screenwriting structure to plot my novels a few times now. I'm one of those people who need a succinct way to organize the chaos in my mind--without some sort of road map, my thoughts are in free-fall and nothing gets done.

Kind of like this, but without the guy strapped to my back

Now, after a brief hiatus from writing, I'm back to plotting my latest WIP and hope to be finished this week. And this brings me to a subject I've been thinking about lately: Mental Real Estate.

Until recently, I'd never heard the term before. But while scouring Alex Sokoloff's handy book, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, for well, tricks, I came upon a reference to mental real estate (sometimes integrated with "high concept"). Here is a rather wordy run-down of what mental real estate is:

Wordplayer.com: Mental Real Estate

"I name something, and you either recognize it, or you don't. Could be a person, place, or thing, like the classic twenty questions game. If you recognize the thing I tell you, that means it's taking up space in your head--tangling up a few billion neurons--residing on a chunk of mental real estate. That makes it valuable, because if something is taking up space in your head, chance are, it's taking up space in a good percentage of other heads across the country. And Hollywood can use that. It's the main commodity of the town. Hollywood buys, sells, and trades in mental real estate."

Basically, mental real estate is anything that takes up space in our collective and individual consciousness--those elements that the writer can be reasonably assured will be familiar to their potential audience. It can be pop culture references, iconic characters, history, human emotions, universal life themes, shared experiences... the list is infinite.

Mental real estate is different from a literary trope in that tropes are often used as building blocks in writing while mental real estate is a subject or theme (the foundation?) on which a story is built. I would argue that many literary tropes are so familiar to us that they qualify as mental real estate (for example: the hero's journey, in whole or in part) but most examples of mental real estate can't be considered literary tropes.

As writers, why are we interested in mental real estate? Because if we can use pre-established elements to help us strike a chord with a potential reader, it makes our job easier. It can make the difference between our books gathering dust on the bookshelf or being carried to the checkout register. It can be the thing that gets an agent to request your manuscript instead of sending out a canned rejection. It can be the spark that persuades an editor to take a chance on your book instead of the countless others being pummeled at them.

I just took a look at the latest NY Times Best Seller list, searching for examples of mental real estate. I realized that without exception, the authors themselves--James Patterson, Gillian Flynn, David Baldacci, Donna Tartt, Dan Brown--are the properties. Most of us don't have that sort of name recognition to trade in, so until we become household names, we've got to come up with some other form of mental real estate.

As the quote above points out, Hollywood shamelessly pedals mental real estate, to the point that cheapens the concept. However, whether we're aware of it or not, we're all trading in mental real estate to some degree or another. By writing about the subjects that are important to you, you're staking out a piece of mental real estate, however big or small. My challenge to you is to become more conscience about how you use it, and how you can use it to your advantage.

Some writers deal in huge mental real estate--think The DaVinci Code (conspiracy in the Catholic Church), Schindler's List (the Holocaust), or Wicked (The Wizard of Oz). Heck, with the publication of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, being a Scandinavian writer became big mental real estate. Go on then, I'm sure you can think of many more examples than I can.

But many of us choose smaller properties. Let's take Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell, for example. The mental real estate on which it's built--poverty in the Ozarks, meth-labs, a girl's struggle to protect her family--aren't all that big or, with the exception of protecting one's family, aren't all that universal (unless you happen to be a meth cook in the backwoods of Missouri). But Woodrell wanted to explore this world and did it with so deft a hand that he helped to make Rural Noir a piece of mental real estate in and of itself.

It's tempting to equate the concept of "mental real estate" to "chasing trends." In fact, it can be--writers do it all the time. Personally, writing is too hard for me to waste time trying to duplicate what another author has done, no matter how successful they might be. I'd rather carve out my own little piece of land (a topic or theme that I'm interested in) and shape it to the best of my ability. To use Mistress of Fortune as an example, its main piece of mental real estate is Restoration-era London, a period I've been interested in since I was a teenager. Sure, if I wanted to write a historical I could've used a more valuable piece of mental real estate, like Tudor England, but that's not my jam. I'm still hoping that Restoration Noir will become a thing.

King Charles II is my homeboy

But that doesn't mean I don't actively look for potentially valuable mental real estate. In my current project, a buried treasure (of sorts) is found and people die in their pursuit of it. Buried treasure is a huge piece of mental real estate in our collective consciousness, and while it's basically a MacGuffin in my story, that doesn't make it any less valuable. Another piece of mental real estate that features in the novel is a large, Google-esque, tech company.

When I first started plotting the novel, I'd never heard of mental real estate. I'd come up with a premise, a protagonist, and a setting, all of which I was interested in and really wanted to write about. But with the introduction mental real estate into my bag o' tricks, I looked for ways I could still tell my story while still incorporating those recognizable details that will make the story more saleable. Doing so took the story I was interested in writing and elevated it to the next level (well, hopefully. It's not done yet, so we'll have to see about that).

What do you think about the idea of mental real estate? Do you actively try to come up with valuable mental real estate/high concept ideas? Is staking out mental real estate really just "chasing trends?"

How to Write a Novel in 90 Days*

by Holly West

*More or less

This week, I'm finishing up copyedits on my second book, Mistress of Lies. It's the last round of edits, which means that once it's turned in, it's pretty much done.

To be honest, it's a little hard for me to fathom. For years and years and years I dreamed of writing just one novel. That was my holy grail, the pinnacle of personal success that I thought I'd never reach. That being the case, writing two books was out of the question.

And yet, here I am.

Book one, Mistress of Fortune, took me about two and a half years to write and polish (much longer to actually publish, but that's another story altogether). Book two, my first under contract, took me about six months to write a draft suitable to turn in to my editor, meaning it was polished, but not all that shiny. Writing to a fixed deadline obviously required a lot more discipline than I'd displayed during the writing of the first book. Even so, I dawdled and complained, and generally waited until the very last minute to get that thing done.

It's how I roll.

Initially, I'd intended to write book two "by the seat of my pants." I'd written Mistress of Fortune with a loose outline but I didn't write the scenes in order. I jumped around depending on what I felt like writing on a given day. This method worked, but revising it was a nightmare; going into book two I thought that writing it in order, as it came to me, would be a better strategy.

Not so much. Three months before my deadline, I had about 20,000 words written but felt directionless, unmotivated, and miserable. I had no idea how that damned book was going to get finished, let alone be even remotely readable.

I had 90 days to finish the novel. Here's what I did:

Days 1-30: I'd sold the second book based on a synopsis and sample chapters, but the synopsis had been short and was an insufficient road map for going forward. Plus, I'd changed some major elements in the story with my editor's blessing. Hence, I gave myself nearly a full month to write a detailed outline and synopsis.

Coming from a screenwriting background, the three-act format has always appealed to me and I stuck to it faithfully in writing the outline. I used the outline to write the synopsis (about twenty pages), then had my husband read it to make sure it made sense. He provided some useful feedback and I revised the story accordingly. In this way, the developmental part of editing the manuscript was, to a large extent, taken care of in the synopsis phase.

Days 30-60: I wrote the first draft. It was weak in some places, but I had a finished novel, gosh darn it, and that was all that mattered.

Days 60 - 90: My husband and I both read through the manuscript. I revised it based on both of our notes, taking care to polish it as much as I could along the way. I reserved the last four days to do a complete read-through myself, knowing there was no time to make any big developmental changes. It was mostly just copyediting at that point.

Day 90 (Deadline Day): I sent it to my editor and crossed my fingers.

Though I knew it still needed work, I was happy with the finished novel. The story is much more personal for my protagonist and in my opinion, has more heart as a result. And surprisingly, the first edit letter I received for this manuscript was pretty painless--there were some character motivations that needed strengthening and an important, but not too difficult, story element that needed changing, but that was pretty much it. Further edits have gone just as smoothly.

I kinda-sorta feel like I've hit upon my method when it comes to writing a book, though it might only work for genre novels. Do I think I can write my next novel in 90 days? Perhaps not. But having a process that works for me gives me confidence that I can do this again and again.

For those of you who've written more than one novel, how did your process change with subsequent books?