Scene Outline
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m using a method suggested by Robert McKee in his book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (HarperEntertainment, 1997) to outline scenes. He recommends outlining a story (novel, screenplay) with one- to three-sentence scene descriptions on index cards before writing anything.
Plan Scenes, But Don’t Write Them (Yet)
McKee suggests that its far easier to evaluate and decide which you really need if they’re outlined this way–it’s easy to toss an index card, not so easy to toss a scene you’ve written and grown attached to.
And he points out that once we’ve written a scene, we tend to consider revising or moving that scene rather than simply discarding it if it’s not contributing to the story.
We also tend to stop imagining other scenes that might better convey the outcome we need.
Based on the failure of my last novel, I think he’s right. I wrote scenes and got invested in them. And then I could no longer see the story for the scenes.
Permission to Imagine
I like having permission to imagine any old scene. It doesn’t matter if it is later useful or not. The same wouldn’t be true if I’d written (and fallen a little in love with) a scene that ultimately won’t serve my story. I have a much easier time tossing an index card.
This form of outlining has done something I never would have believed an outline could: It has opened my imagination to a much wider, more detailed story world.
Some of the scenes outlined on my index cards may never be written. Others will be written and discarded because they don’t contribute directly enough to the story arc.
But the ones that get written and make the cut as a draft comes together will be stronger, and will be grounded in a deeper knowledge of my story world and my characters’ back stories.
I’ve tried various forms of outlining in the past, and failed miserably every time. Outlines feel deceptively linear to me. But this stack of index cards, which can easily be ordered and re-ordered, feels much more useful for both right-brain and left-brain processes.