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Turning Small Ideas into Big Ideas Welcome to day two of the Outlining Workshop. As explained yesterday, the advanced way to outline a novel is not as fun as the bubble method. However, we are going to use yesterday’s homework to create an extended outline.
The reason for the bubble method is to generate ideas and plot that you might use in your story. Some people feel more comfortable diving into the advanced version. Some people want to begin by throwing ideas around. Whatever works best for you. The most important thing to remember is this is not set in stone. Look at it as your personal creative playground and have fun with it. I personally like to “wing it” and used to create my novel as I go. However, I ran into many problems with plot, forgetting important events and being victim to writer’s block. That’s why outlining comes in handy but you don’t have to outline every single detail, nor do you *have* to follow your outline. It can be seen more as a guide or a cliff’s note of your novel. Outlining a Novel - Advanced I’m going to use the completed version of yesterday’s “journey of a tiger” bubble which features the question “What problems would my tiger face?”  One a blank sheet of paper, write the topic on the top (which was previously put in the middle and circled in the bubble method). Don’t worry about titling your novel right now, just worry about getting ideas on paper. I am going to put “Journey of a Tiger” at the top of my paper. Next, break your ideas into parts, either by chapters or sections, however you normally work. We are going to work on plotting out the first four chapters of “Journey of a Tiger”. Leave space between each section as pictured below:  Spread your bubbles on the table. It doesn’t matter what order they are in. Choose one of your bubble papers which should have a question at the top. I am choosing “What problems would my tiger face?”. In your bubbles, choose which problems seem to go together. For instance, I am choosing “people would run”, “Too big to fit on city bus” and “people surprised he can talk”. Since my novel is about the journey of a tiger, it would seem logical to start at the beginning and tell the reader where the tiger came from, who he is and try to make the reader guess what problems he’ll come across. Normally, we’d see a tiger in the zoo. So let’s pick “zoo” for our opening scenario and write it by “Chapter One”. This is the topic for chapter one, without worrying about titles. (They can be changed later). If my tiger starts in the zoo, then what can happen that makes him leave the zoo? Also, what can we inject in the background that can lead the tiger to our chosen problems? Since my tiger can talk, that can be injected into the first chapter. But first, since we have a new setting (zoo) and a new set of problems (leaving the zoo), we have to do another bubble method to plot out the first chapter. In the middle of a new sheet of paper, write “zoo”. Think of things that would make a talking tiger escape a zoo and how. Could he see the city buildings in the background and yearn to explore beyond (now I’m thinking of Madagascar lol)? How about if a talking bird told him stories of the outside world sparking the tiger’s curiosity? How would he get out? Could he somehow convince the bird to steal the keys of a guard? As with yesterday, keep bubbling no matter how silly and let the ideas flow. When you’re done, you’ll have something like this for chapter one.  If you happen to get stuck, it’s important to keep going. What I do is I find the best word or idea and put brackets around them. Like this: [WRITERS BLOCK HERE]. You can always come back later when you’re editing. Take a look at your paper and mentally join the similar plot lines. Star them with your pen or mark them with a highlighter so you can transfer them to your advanced outline. Do some mental connect-the-dots and brainstorm which way the plot would seem most natural. Don’t worry, nothing is set in stone. You can always change this later. For my chapter one, I choose “talking bird tells stories”, “tiger yearns to explore” and “offers bird [something] in exchange to steal the guard’s keys. Write your key plot points down, leaving space for writing as pictures below:  Next, simply brainstorm in your head what actions could take place to lead up and connect your plot points. You can write this down on scratch paper, do it in your head or use the bubble method. Don’t forget the very beginning of your story that leads up to your first plot point! - tiger is fascinated with the city - talks to his friend, the hippo - his bird friend flies up Talking bird tells story - tiger listens with wide eyes - he sighs and asks more about beyond the city buildings Tiger yearns to explore - he reminds himself how boring life is in the zoo - he wants to be a ‘real’ tiger, like in the stories bird talks about - daydreams of an escape idea Offers bird [something] in return for stealing guard’s keys - bird is reluctant at first - but bird realized there is [something] he needs and wants to go with tiger [for some reason] Get these dots on paper in their respective places. You’ll connect them later when you begin writing.  Now that we have our first chapter outlined, it’s time to review our bubble papers and choose which question we’ll work with first. My choice is “What problems would my tiger face” as pictured in the beginning of this post. My problems are: “people would run”, “Too big to fit on city bus” and “people surprised he can talk”. At this point, you need to guess which answers would go where in each section. For instance, I could put “too big to fit on city bus” in chapter two, but that doesn’t make sense because I haven’t address how people would react to my tiger yet. I’ve decided it makes the most sense to have my tiger make his full escape beginning in chapter two where we can begin to address the way people would react to seeing a tiger walking around the city. Both “people would run” and “people surprised he can talk” seem to fit together, so I’m going to inject both of them into chapter two.  As you can see, a person running away from my tiger before he’s escaped doesn’t add up. People won’t run away from a tiger who is securely behind zoo bars. So we need to brainstorm exactly how our tiger gets out which would be our next brainstorm before “people would run”. In addition, we need to connection that plot point to the next, which is “people surprised he can talk”.  Congrats! You now have two chapters outlined to start your novel. Tomorrow we will work on our other bubbles and how to inject those into the main plot. We will also work on problems in the outline and how/when to rearrange sequence. Homework Create the first 1-4 chapters of your novel idea using the advanced method while reviewing the bubble method you learned yesterday. Only focus on one question (the best one to focus on is the problems the character will face). You might find it more efficient to use Microsoft Word instead of paper to do your advance outline as I promise you’ll do plenty of arranging and rearranging. Let me know if you have any questions! No one has commented on this article. |
