The Book of Masks Homepage

Outlining Surprise

This is the "Book of Masks Homepage," so I'll put the update at the top of the entry. Background: Will is trying to steal Sydney McGlynn away from Caleb, and to that end has disguised himself as Caleb in order to meet her for a tutoring session. He arrives early at the coffee shop in his own face, and spots Sydney ducking into Arnholm's Used Books. You guys voted for Will to spy on her in the bookstore. What happens if he proceeds directly to the coffee shop? Read about it here: "Coffee Date of Doom"  (public) + "Coffee Date of Doom"  (interactive).

BTW, I am not actually publishing all the chapters that I wrote and held back. Some of them just aren't very interesting. A few weeks ago, rugal without meaning to jumped in and pre-empted one such chapters by writing his own, and I liked his contribution a lot more than the placeholder I was holding in reserve. So if I think a chapter doesn't lead anywhere too interesting, I'm not going to publish it, in case someone comes up with something better.

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Yesterday I spent another six solid hours on sketching and outlining "Spider-Man" ideas, and on assigning pivot points and climaxes to various episodes. I think I've got all the major points pinned down, and a lot of the minor ones too, and the stuff I haven't got pinned down would probably be better fixed when I start writing actual treatments, which will be my assignment for today.

This has been a very strange experience for me. I am not by temperament an outliner, and I've always found outlining an unrewarding chore. I get most of my ideas by improvising them in the course of writing a story, and outlining I've always found an arid and frustrating exercise.

But outlining this material hasn't just been easy (relatively!) but exhilarating and surprising, and I find myself constantly discovering new motivations, new complications, new echoes or ironies as I tear the cartoon's continuity apart and piece it back together. It is the complete opposite of my usual experience.

I suppose mostly it's because I'm working with material where most of the story elements have already been crafted: the characters, their goals and conflicts; some very specific plot elements; and a couple of climaxes to work toward. With those in hand, it's easier to get new invention by moving the pieces into new combinations, whereupon you see new possibilities inside the new pattern.

There are still places where I'm going to have to come up with entirely new stuff, either on my own or by drawing inspiration from some of the original comics. For those treatments -- and there's about 15 of them that will need mostly-from-scratch writing -- I will probably have to write something like a story and then condense and abstract it down to a treatment. But we'll see.