{"id":571,"date":"2010-11-08T09:28:36","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T14:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=571"},"modified":"2011-02-17T08:17:34","modified_gmt":"2011-02-17T13:17:34","slug":"the-terror-and-the-trust-of-not-outlining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/the-terror-and-the-trust-of-not-outlining\/","title":{"rendered":"The Terror and the Trust of Not Outlining"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a seat-of-the-pantser.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done books using an outline before when I plotted out romances in ten chapters (major intimacy in Chapter 7) so I know it\u2019s possible, but that is not how I wrote Birthmarked<\/em>, and it is not working for the sequels.\u00a0 The main problem is that I have to be in the scene, imagining it, in order to live where it\u2019s going with Gaia.\u00a0 Since she can\u2019t see into the future, neither can I.\u00a0 If the reader is to be surprised, I must be, too.\u00a0 But that\u2019s a bit of a cop-out.\u00a0 The truth is that I don\u2019t outline for Gaia because I just can\u2019t.\u00a0 My mind isn\u2019t working that way.\u00a0 I have an idea of one scene I\u2019m heading towards with Book 3, like I had a scene I was writing toward with Birthmarked<\/em>, but it\u2019s still very open-ended, and I like the comfort of knowing it could go anywhere.\u00a0 Uncertainty helps me be creative.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Seat-of-the-Pantsing<\/p><\/div>\n

Uncertainty is also terrifying, because I\u2019ll go in plenty of wrong directions before I find what will work.\u00a0 I\u2019ve just had a rather torturous experience writing Prized<\/em>, where the first draft was 450 unwieldy pages long.\u00a0 For months, I kindly referred to it as \u201cdog rot.\u201d\u00a0 Yet I had to write it to discover what was going on.\u00a0 Nine drafts later, after lopping off 50-page sections left and right and writing dozens of new scenes, the novel now has a tight plot, and I\u2019m so happy with it that I relish the minute tinkering of the line-by-line and can hardly bear to give that up in order to work on the next book.<\/p>\n

It has been gently suggested to me that perhaps I could write a short first draft of Book 3 just to get the blocks in place before I embellish.\u00a0 Believe me.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to.\u00a0 I think it will help that I\u2019m writing full-time now, and not trying to keep the mental continuity going over 25-minute lunch breaks.\u00a0 But I also know that I just have to write a first draft, whatever its messy length, because once I get to the end, I\u2019ll be able to see the entire arc of the story, with all its surprises and holes.\u00a0 I trust that this seat-of-the-pants, butt-on-the-couch process will work for me.<\/p>\n

Just for kicks, here\u2019s an example of how the opening of Prized<\/em> changed.\u00a0 In the first draft, the opening lines were as follows:<\/p>\n

The infant took two weak, reflexive sucks on the bottle, and then her lips went slack.\u00a0 Gaia shifted closer to the firelight and watched the baby\u2019s chest for the swell that would confirm she was still breathing. <\/em><\/p>\n

Bad news, but quiet.\u00a0 Seven months and five drafts later, the opening became this:<\/p>\n

She grabbed the hilt of her knife and scrambled backward into the darkness, holding the baby close in her other arm.\u00a0 Beyond the fire, the wasteland was still, as if the wind and even the stones had frozen in the night to listen, and then she heard it again, a soft chink that could be metal or a boot adjusting against pebbles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Outlining, obviously, has nothing to do with how I write.\u00a0 Thank goodness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a seat-of-the-pantser.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done books using an outline before when I plotted out romances in ten chapters (major intimacy in Chapter 7) so I know it\u2019s possible, but that is not how I wrote Birthmarked, and it is not working for the sequels.\u00a0 The main problem is that I have to be in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3],"tags":[17,37],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prized","category-writing","tag-prized-2","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}