Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Fluidity in an Outline

Fluidity in an Outline

As I shadow take the Exploratory Writing Workshop (EWW) I see the dynamics of what the students are going through much more clearly than if I had not. It is one thing to see an issue developing in a paper you are reviewing and quite another to see it rear its head on your own.

I use the evolution of an unanticipated Central Character (CC) as an example; however there are many more that I could choose. For example the evolution of an unexpected Dramatic Premise (DP) that profoundly affects the nature of the story. Allow me to follow these threads and explain more fully.

First, despite the fact that he is the classic Hero, Rindar begins to fade as a person of interest once the bloodletting is done. He lacks the amperage to take the story where it needs to go. Volusia, who is more central, who has a spiritual connection with the Gods, who is the smarter and launches her man on the right path supersedes Rindar after the first crisis. The story gains momentum in the first crisis as she journeys to the spirit world to petition the Gods then picks up steam when she finds herself unable to kill Lord Marcutti as he lays vulnerable and finally Prince Koltar returns In need of his son Moogy…

Koltar begins casting about trying to get a grip on what has happened and is drawn towards the Buffalo village where the natives are waiting in anticipation of the Wardarian wrath. The complexity of the story has deepened and in the exploratory process it has gone from linear to multidimensional. This is possible because the constraint equations we come up with to box the story window are not allowed to set up and narrow the outcome to what the writer originally had in mind.

This is huge! Our minds are not big enough to embrace the fullness of a larger work and if we reach too far to fast we have to brush aside too many things in order to stay focused. Keeping the assumptions fluid and malleable allows them to serve as place holders that stick ideas to the story web without drawing it down into a limiting structure.

The writer comes back to the question….how do I write an outline if I don’t know what the full story is? The answer is that you have to have an outline but that outline does not have to be written before you start doing the vignettes. The vignettes allow the writer to explore and coax the fullness of the story from the genesis of an idea into an outline that blossoms as the parts emerge and are adhered to the structure.

Most of my students had a story that was already written prior to taking the course and the structure had set and they were frustrated by having to change or scrap it. The lesson learned is that a writer should not start to write seriously until the outline appears in some semblance of a final form.