What does a ST Novel's Outline look like?

[chrinFinity]

I am very curious about the editorial process that authors go through when they prepare a new story for a novel.

Are there any outlines that have been published online for existing books, or any Trek Lit authors who would be willing to share their work as an example?

 

[SimpleLogic]

Good question I have sort of wondered where they get their ideas from and how they flesh it out, since I have never had that skill.

 

[Christopher]

What does a novel's outline look like?

Well, kind of a rectangle, I'd say.


...What?


But seriously, folks... Basically an outline is a chapter-by-chapter or scene-by-scene summary of the plot. It's basically the equivalent of what's called the "story" in film and television. It's how a writer works out what will happen in the tale, what the character arcs will be, etc., so there's a road map to follow for the actual writing, and so that you know that what you're writing will hold together and make sense as a whole. (I tried writing my latest spec novel with only a rough outline that I diverged from radically in manuscript without bothering to re-outline first, just trying to figure it out as I went, and that took me down a dead end. I wasn't able to get back on track until I thought through the whole thing more carefully and put together a new outline.) For tie-in work, it's additionally part of the approval process -- you have to get the full plot outline approved before you proceed to manuscript.

What it actually looks like depends on the writer. Some of us write fairly loose outlines, while others go into deeper detail. For instance, Dave Mack, influenced by his screenwriting background, works out intricately detailed chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene breakdowns of everything that's going to happen. I tend to be a little looser, and there are generally details I don't discover or figure out until the actual writing, but I'd say I'm about midrange in my level of detail, compared to other authors' outlines that I've seen.

 

[Greg Cox]

Mine tend to be about twelve to fifteen pages long. I don't do a chapter-by-chapter breakdown (unless the licensor specifically requests one) since I want to be able to tinker with the pacing, and maybe even move scenes around, when I finally get around to writing the actual book. Sometimes you just hit a natural scene break by accident, or realize that you need a scene you hadn't thought of before. ("Hey, I never gave So-and-So a chance to react to her sister's death . . . .")

I go back and forth on how detailed to make the outline, especially where complicated action sequences are concerned. On the one hand, working out all the beats and choreography in advance will save you precious time when you're trying to meet your deadline. On other hand, you don't want to spend days working out a sequence to the last detail, only to have the publisher or licensor veto the entire bit early on. ("We like the outline, but kill the fire-breathing gorilla.")

If it's a license I've never written before, like WAREHOUSE 13 or LEVERAGE, I may throw in some sample dialogue just to demonstrate that I've got the characters' voices down, but that's not really an issue with TREK at this point . . . .

Hope this helps!

Oh, one more thing. I sometimes do two versions of the outline: a streamlined, easy-to-follow version to sell the proposal, and a messier, more detailed version to help me actually write the book.

 

[JD]

I can't find it now, but when Storming Heaven came out David Mack posted the Vanguard series bible on his website. It's a little more complex than a single book outline would be, but I think it gives an idea of what they're probably like.

 

[Christopher]

No, I don't think a bible and an outline are much the same thing. A bible is more about defining the characters, the setting, the premise, etc. of a series with broad strokes about its overall arc, but without details about the individual installments because that needs to be left free for their writers to come up with. An outline is a step-by-step breakdown of the plot of a single installment. So they're kind of complementary.

 

[Greg Cox]

True confession: I plot my books out on legal pads and index cards first, then type up the outline once I've shuffled all the cards into what seems like the right order.

A typical card will read something like: "K. fights snake. Wins--How?"

Invariably, a few cards get tossed out because they just don't fit in anywhere. And I know it's time to start typing when the ideas start coming so fast that I start running out of room on the cards!

 

[Stevil2001]

When we outlined A Choice of Catastrophes, we outlined the ship and planet plots independently, not indicating how they would interweave, since we wanted the wiggle room. We then wrote each plot independently, keeping them separate until the second draft. Then I made a bunch of index cards, one for each scene, and layed them out on the floor to figure out the order the scenes would go in:

White are ship scenes, gold are planet scenes with Kirk, blue are planet scenes with Spock, red are flashbacks. It was an interesting challenge to juggle all the requirements: the same amount of time had to be passing in each plotline, no two sequential scenes with the same viewpoint character, certain characters dropped out of the narrative here and there, trying to build tension in how the narrative jumped from plot to plot.

Not everything stayed quite that way. As I assembled the combined chapter documents, I realized some things worked better in different sequences, and I also decided that I wanted every chapter with a flashback to start with the flashback, so they got moved slightly. And then with rewrites, some new scenes got added into the fourth draft.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Oh, one more thing. I sometimes do two versions of the outline: a streamlined, easy-to-follow version to sell the proposal, and a messier, more detailed version to help me actually write the book.

I always do it this way, and always have done.

The pitch is usually about four to six pages, and then I'll do a chapter by chapter one that has bullet-points for all the important stuff that happens in each chapter. That usually runs about a dozen pages.

Since the Trek people ask for a more detailed breakdown as part of the contract anyway, having the two versions seems to work out well.

 

[chrinFinity]

Thank you all so very much, this was very enlightening. Precisely the kind of information I was hoping for.

 

[Greg Cox]

It's funny. I honestly can't brainstorm a book (or a chapter or scene) without a legal pad in my hands. I've tried to get some serious plotting done while mowing the lawn or walking the dog or whatever, but it doesn't work; my brain just goes around in circles, getting nowhere.

Something about scribbling ideas down on a pad focuses me . . . .

 

[Idran]

This might be too much to ask, but is there any chance any of you could post one of your original outlines for one of your books? I'd be really interested in seeing that, you guys are great writers and I think it'd be a cool learning experience to see how some of your works started out. Something that's already been published of course, not asking you to give away anything for books still in progress or anything.

 

[Greg Cox]

This might be too much to ask, but is there any chance any of you could post one of your original outlines for one of your books? I'd be really interested in seeing that, you guys are great writers and I think it'd be a cool learning experience to see how some of your works started out. Something that's already been published of course, not asking you to give away anything for books still in progress or anything.

Not a bad idea. Maybe when I get around to upgrading my website . . . .

 

[rahullak]

True confession: I plot my books out on legal pads and index cards first, then type up the outline once I've shuffled all the cards into what seems like the right order.

A typical card will read something like: "K. fights snake. Wins--How?"

Invariably, a few cards get tossed out because they just don't fit in anywhere. And I know it's time to start typing when the ideas start coming so fast that I start running out of room on the cards!

Fascinating! I wonder if there is any software that allows us to write stories/outlines using this index card approach.

 

[Sho]

^ Yes, absolutely. One of the most popular is Scrivener, which has a virtual corkboard to sort index cards on, in addition to a more traditional outliner. I've used Scrivener myself a lot for my fan fiction, but obviously its primary market is professional writers (some might find the testimonial by Star Trek's Mike Sussmann interesting). It's lovely software.

 

[Dark Gilligan]

Software? A pen and a pad of paper, young ones. That's all you need.

 

[Greg Cox]

Software? A pen and a pad of paper, young ones. That's all you need.

I admit I'm old enough to wonder why you need a high-tech, electronic, digital version of index cards? Why not just scribble notes on convenient pieces of paper? And bind them together with rubber bands?

Been working for me for over twenty years now . . . .

(Not that I miss typewriters, White-Out, and correction tape at all. I'm not a total Luddite.)

 

[PPatters]

I admit I'm old enough to wonder why you need a high-tech, electronic, digital version of index cards? Why not just scribble notes on convenient pieces of paper? And bind them together with rubber bands?

Been working for me for over twenty years now . . . .

(Not that I miss typewriters, White-Out, and correction tape at all. I'm not a total Luddite.)

Not that I'm a writer, but I can understand the other perspective. While writing on index cards has worked for you for over twenty years, the fact is -- for some people (myself included) -- we've grown up for so long with technology, that writing on a computer has worked well for us for over twenty years (and writing on pen and paper is awkward/sometimes unnatural/weird sometimes). From the perspective of what comes natural, for some -- it is electronic index cards haha

 

[Greg Cox]

Oh, I'm sure it's a generational thing. These days kid are probably using computers before they hit kindergarten, whereas I never actually touched one until well after my college years. Hell, when I first started working in publishing, all the editors and assistants at Arbor House and William Morrow were still using electric typewriters; as I recall, there was exactly one computer in the editorial offices and it was stuck in a storage closet because nobody had any use for it. (I wrote my first published novel on it in the evenings after everybody went home.)

Tor, on the other hand, was a bit ahead of the curve. That was the first office I ever worked at where the editors actually had computers and an internet connection, which was all very new and strange to me. (I resisted email for years before I finally gave in and accepted that you couldn't do business without it anymore.)

Meawhile, Richard Matheson is still writing his books by hand--and doesn't have an email address. Which makes me seem like an early adopter by comparison!

 

[Lonemagpie]

AIUI Stephen King still writes his first drafts longhand as well.