Updates: on outlining and party scenes

Outlining

While I’m generally not a “pantser” (that is, someone who tends to write stories “by the seat of their pants,” I’m not generally an outliner. With few exceptions, I do my story planning as freeform notes in a separate document. I start this brainstorming document before I start the first story draft; it has the beginning, ideas for the kind of story I want to tell, and usually (not always!) a fuzzy ending. I ask myself questions about the story and answer them in that document, building up the world and main characters organically. I keep adding to that document as I write the main story, noting down ideas and, eventually, thematic questions. (“The Perfect Secretary” started out just with the idea of a conservatively dressed, glasses-wearing predatory mouse girl; it wasn’t until it was well underway that I found a narrative thread of underestimating people due to prejudice.)

If you follow me on Twitter or Mastodon, you’ll see I’ve been approaching the screenplay differently: I’ve been outlining it.

In Save the Cat!, Blake Snyder’s version of the outline is “the board,” 40 index cards, each one a scene (or complete narrative bit), laid out in four rows of ten each. Despite Snyder’s neurotic insistence on precise numbers, 40 is just a rule of thumb; the idea is that each of those four sections should be about the same length and that same length should, on film, run about a half-hour.

I’ll admit that I thought strongly about doing this with actual, physical index cards, because it sounds fun! But I write in coffee shops and on lunch breaks, so it behooves me to find something that functions as a virtual version of this that works on both my desktop computer and my iPad.

I wrote Saida & Autumn in the cultish writing program Scrivener, which is less a word processor than a weirdo do-everything notebook. Writers either love it or hate it; I mostly love it, although I’ve lately been growing irritated with some of its implementation choices and, especially, its development pace. (That’s a different post, but if you’re a Windows user who’s been waiting for Scrivener 3.0 for a year and half, you get this.) It has an “index card” view I’ve used for a novel in the past—but the index card view doesn’t work on an iPad. It tries, but it’s awful.

After poking at a lot of different options, I came back to an old stalwart: OmniOutliner. A standalone outliner? Can’t you just do an outline in any ol’ word processor? Yes, but not as well. Outliners used to be big on the Mac, although they never took off on Windows the same way. (Ecco Pro was great, but you’ve never heard of it, have you?) Today it seems like there’s only OmniOutliner, and if you’re an Emacs guru, org mode. I love Emacs in theory, but in practice, I’ll stick with OmniOutliner, which works on both Mac and iPad.

All of those scenes have a paragraph or so of notes attached to them. Most of the titles are spoilery enough that I’ve redacted them; the unredacted ones toward the bottom are just placeholders. (“Dark Night of the Soul” and “All is Lost” are both Save the Cat!-isms.) The column labeled “Arc” ties back to Dramatica’s four throughlines: overall story arc, relationship arc, main character arc, and influence character arc. I’m keeping track of that as a balance check—each section should have at least two from each arc. Despite what the names suggest, all of them need to advance the overall story; they just have different focal points. This is a new strategy for me, and I haven’t decided if it’s more trouble than it’s worth. On the one hand, it’s an arbitrary forcing mechanism that occasionally has me second-guessing myself. On the other, sometimes second-guessing makes the story stronger.

This entire outline is about 3,700 words so far, and there’s still about a third left to fill in—and that’s not counting 5,400 words in a brainstorming document (literally titled “Brainstorming”) as well as another4,000 words or so scattered around other notes documents. So, like, I have been writing on this thing, I promise. But this kind of ritualized plot-it-out-first writing method is hard, y’all.

Typically, I figure some important things out as I work on the first draft: Oh, wait, I see this cool thing happening up here that brings lots of stuff together, I think, followed by, Although I need to drop a couple sentences back here to pull it off. Not being able to do that in Saida & Autumn was a challenge—some of it came down to “trust the muse,” i.e., add points to follow up later without knowing just what the follow-up will be. Now, those hey, this’ll work well up here if I plant seeds back here moments happen up front, along with all the “but if you want scene X, how do you make it happen logically” questions. And that’s good—but it feels so slow.

I’m hoping to have more actual story to share soon.

Party, party, party

One thing you can see from the outline is that—assuming this stays in place—it starts at a party. I’ve had more than one story in the past start this way, and I’ve realized I’m fascinated by parties. I don’t mean “get shit-faced on cheap booze while loud music is playing” college parties, and definitely don’t mean “snort coke off the bathroom counter” parties. I mean elegant parties, cocktail parties. Gatsby parties.

The fascination might come from memories of my grandmother throwing parties like that in her Sarasota, Florida home. It might come from having discovered, as an adult, that the kinds of social spaces I gravitate to are modern reincarnations of tiki bars and speakeasies, not sports bars and lounges: better drinks, (somewhat) quieter, (usually) better crowd behavior. I like that culture, that vibe. Yet I know if I were at a Gatsby-esque party today, I’d be much like Russell at the party that opens Goddess, trying to find a quiet space to retreat to.

What’s interesting as a writer about more Gatsby-esque parties is how much they often aren’t about convivial drinking. They’re about social status. How lavish can the hosts make the setting? Who’s invited? Who isn’t? Who do you see there? Who are you seen with? What connections can you make?

This can all sound dreadful, and in a sense it is—but in another sense, it’s a funhouse mirror reflection of the best storytelling principles. Every scene in a story that advances the plot has a subtext of status and power: who thinks they have the power coming into the scene, who actually has the power (sometimes the same person, but not always), how that status changes based on what happens in the scene. The most memorable moments in stories—and often the most quotable lines—almost always come from sudden, unexpected shifts in status. (At least, unexpected to the character who thinks they’re on top and suddenly realizes they aren’t.)

Having a party as an opener also lets you introduce a lot of characters quickly. In Goddess we meet Russell (protagonist/main character), Kailani (influence character), Marvin (sidekick and “obstacle character,” complicating things for the protagonist without being in opposition to them), and Cornelius Bennett (antagonist) all in the first few pages. What’s more, we get an immediate sense of who these people are and what they’re like: characterization comes out quickly through interaction.

Likewise, the party in Red Savina is more about efficient introduction than gamesmanship. I’ve written a little bit of that opening scene already—this is very rough-draft, mind you—and we get a pretty good sense of the two main characters from the first words they speak to each other. Gabrielle Underwood is a vixen and the party’s elegant thirty-something hostess; Mirasol Drake is a younger coyote woman, dressed just a bit too casually for such a party.

GABRIELLE
Harry seems rather taken with you.

MIRASOL
You sound surprised.

GABRIELLE
No. My nephew’s always had an eye for beauty.

MIRASOL
But I’m not a socialite, like him. Or you.

Gabrielle looks uncomfortable. The coyote woman’s right, but it’s not something one comes right out and says.

MIRASOL
He’s good at parties. I’m not. All the excess, the hypocrisy…
(looking away)
I’m not very good at small talk, either.

The coyote woman looks judgmental, not apologetic. Gabrielle counters with a wide, transparently insincere smile.

GABRIELLE
Practice does make perfect. If you’ll excuse me, Miss Drake.

The vixen heads from the patio toward the main house, grabbing a wine glass off a servant’s tray as she does so.

Just a half-dozen lines of dialogue, but there’s a lot about both women in there. It’s possible you may not like either one (yet), but you’re already forming opinions.

By the way, that’s the best representation of screenplay format that I think I can do in posts; Patreon has dismally limited formatting capabilities. (Getting just that bit right was an exercise in frustration.) For the record, this is what that section looks like properly formatted:

Oh, hey, I used “coyote woman” twice in a row there and should fix that, shouldn't I? Anyway, back to the word mines. I’ll report back soon, and hopefully have things to share about backer rewards (thank you for being patient)!