Pirouetting Between Draft and Outline
After last week's deep dive on outlining, somebody emailed back with a question. They wanted to know what to do when it felt like the book was tugging them off course from the outline that they had set.
They asked: “Is it okay to go back to the outlining phase? Or should you just keep writing and make it work?”
The way a lot of coaches talk about outlining can make it feel like it’s a discrete stage in the writing process—a box to tick off in your project management tool so you can move on to the drafting stage.
Once you have a solid outline, you're golden.
I find this attitude trips authors up for two reasons.
Cue the performance anxiety!
First, if you go into the outlining phase believing that you have one chance to come up with an amazing outline, it puts a lot of pressure on the process that doesn't need to be there.
Last week, a book coaching client told me she was nervous about committing her thoughts into an outline because she worried about getting it wrong.
And that's fair. There are a lot of artistic pursuits where taking a big step feels irreversible.
For example, I love to sew. Right now, I’m working on a red trench coat inspired by the one Emma Stone wears in the movie Bugonia.
I spent hours testing the pattern, ordering sample fabrics, buying the perfect organic cotton twill (hers is wool, but I wanted something lighter), prepping the fabric, and laying out the pattern pieces.
Then I stared at my cutting table a long, long time before I finally grabbed my scissors.
I needed to be absolutely certain of my planning process. If I'd made a mistake, I could end up ruining several yards of this expensive fabric.
The great thing about writing a book is that nothing is ever set in stone.
Until it’s sent to the printers and bound up between covers, everything can be moved and changed and reordered and fixed and improved. From the first few lines of the outline to the polish of the final draft, you can’t screw up your manuscript.
So, go ahead! Write down all your amazing ideas! Play! Get creative! Outlining should be fun, not constricting.
Stuck on the wrong trajectory
The second way writers get tripped up by this thinking is in the drafting process of the book.
In my experience, most books buck the outline at some point.
That’s absolutely okay! You learn more, you refine your argument, and you end up needing to make changes.
If you find yourself doggedly sticking to the outline when your book wants to veer right, you’ll run into trouble.
You might start losing the joy of the writing process. The book might start feeling stale and lackluster. You might start experiencing writer's block.
Whenever those signals pop up for me, I know that’s my subconscious' way of telling me that I've gone off track somewhere and need to re-evaluate.
Knowing when (and how) to pirouette
Personally, I tend to vacillate between the drafting and outlining process. This is especially true with fiction, but even with nonfiction projects, the act of actually writing the book teaches you so much about what the structure should be.
I’ve sent nearly every one of my ghostwriting clients an email (generally about halfway through the book) saying, "Hey, I took another look at the outline, and I think I’ve figured out a better direction. See attached."
So what do you do when you have an outline but you feel your book tugging you off course as you're drafting?
—> Read the rest on the Story Rebel blog.