Outlining Beasts of Burden

Outlining is important. There's no doubt about that. It provides a structure for your script or story the same way penciling out a comic page provides the structure for the finished inks. Some people can wing a plot breakdown pretty quickly, they have a sense of space and story beats and what goes where. I suck at it. 

I'm good with ideas, and bits of business, and my dialog isn't shabby. I suck at outlines. And all too often I fall into the trap of plotting and or/writing without first putting a solid outline together. I don't know what part of my lizard brain authorizes a full scale attack on the story before having a definite plan, but it happens a lot. I barrel ahead, afraid I'll forget something "important", or I become excited about the idea and start laying in details and character interaction that isn't necessary when I don't know how much space these sequences and details will take up. The plot is the thing, the structure aligns the plot to how many pages you have at your disposal, the fun stuff and the details and the dialog all fall into place along that outline. Sometimes I build half a bridge and then try to get to the other side without the foundational work, and it always leads to a story collapse. And then an emotional collapse, at least, back in the day. 

Sometimes I do things more or less correctly. Above is the basic outline for the Beasts of Burden story, "Grave Happenings" (the one about the resurrected warlock), which was the final issue of the first dedicated mini-series. 

Below is a good chunk of the story beats worked out for "Lost", the second issue from that series (the one about the missing puppies). The former is a better way to start things off, distilling very basic beats into the pages that can then be fleshed out from notes and further work. The latter is a big messy list of stuff that I thought might get into the issue. You can see it going off the rails as I started adding too much information and editing while writing, which is always a bad idea (and something I have to fight constantly, to this day).

I'm currently re-reading all the Beasts of Burden comics, all my notebooks and computer files to prepare to write the next series. The series changed from the original concept I had for it when I pitched it to Daniel Chabon, we were going to do something called Animal Tales, and have four unrelated solo stories featuring various members of the cast. I realized at a certain point that we needed to get back to Burden Hill exclusively after two Wise Dogs arcs, and concentrate on the main storyline and characters. So I shuffled out two stories (a holiday story and a Wise Dogs crossover with another creator's characters) and brought in a story spotlighting Ace. All the stories are separate but will keep a throughline regarding overall events developing in Burden Hill after the graveyard battle, the crow attack, and Ace nearly killing Paul, the human investigator (seen in The Presence of Others part 1-2). 

A lot of backstory needs to be boiled down since it's been a few years since we did the last Burden Hill issues. So pages from my first story are getting eaten up, and I have to make sure I cover everything necessary in the story in case anyone is coming to this series cold. Which I doubt, but, it's probably fair to everyone -- including the characters -- to provide some catch-up material and set things up properly.

Trust the process, do the outline. Most folks use the computer, I tend to start writing instead of outlining, it's a compulsion and the best way to avoid it is to stay off the computer at that stage. At least for me. But however you go about it, do the outline, it makes life easier. The building needs a foundation, the figure needs a skeleton, your story needs an outline. Hang the flesh on the bones in an orderly fashion and you'll have a happy little story golem in the works. You'll have to snip and tuck some of the flesh and lose a few pounds here and there, it's part of the editing-for-space process. But start slow, figure out the map, and follow it. Trust yourself to come up with good ideas to replace any you have to ditch because the outline only has so much room. Save the really solid ideas, they might come into play in another script. 

Outlining is important, however you get it done, get it done. It makes the actual writing a lot easier. Or a little easier, if you find writing difficult (like I do).   

Below: Another way to put an outline together when you're not good with computers. Sometimes I use index cards, with each card representing a page. A descriptive sentence for each card/page helps you set up a pacing breakdown, and then if you want you can further break things down into little layouts/beats. You can shuffle the cards around if you want to move scenes around. This card was done for the next Beasts of Burden story, but I think it's likely to be a false start. I'm probably going with a different opening scenario to get us into the backstory coverage.