Thanks for sharing a bit of your writing process.

While many of my short stories aren’t told in sequential order, I almost always write them “in order” front to back as they appear in print I don’t, however, really do what most people would consider outlining, though.

I almost always have a very specific ending in mind that I work towards — I usually know the exact ending lines (down to the words) of a story before I write it.

What little outlining I do is to more akin to movie storyboarding than anything else.

I plan specific scenes that need to do such-and-such in the story … convey a certain emotion, give reader specific information, or get a certain point across. I write the scenes down in brief one-line descriptions in a plain TXT file. The lines are not much more than mnuemonic triggering devices for the mental planning.

The scenes may not be appear in my outline notes in the same order they appear in the story. I’ll shuffle them around until the story sequence works.

I went through some of my notes and here is the “plot outline” I made to plan my short story “Hymnal” published a few years ago in an anthology called BONES OF THE WORLD:

———————-

death of earth/pluto station/ulyssess

alizhimer’s/drug/flee

boomers alone

tennyson: crossing the bar/ perfect poem/ nurseevery delusionary pantheon charon, ra, christ

god told you how to reverse entropy/maybe he has/how, where/ i don’t know/yet

godhood= ability to reverseentropy

atheistic in a foxhole/in the end you’ll drag us all in church to pray

———————-

Makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? :)

Actually, if you read the story each of those events are major events. Some of them I moved offstage into the backstory, and I juggled their order around, but they all appear in the story.

For one of my plot outlines, that one was actually a bit long-winded. “Hymnal” was a somwhat complicated story. Usually my notes are much shorter.

Here’s my outline planning notes (typos and all) for “Find a Penny, Pick It Up!”, an 8=pg comic book script that appeared in MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #8 (Image Comics) last year:

———————-

Where’s waldo?

old guy kitten in tree

scientific arguement

coin shop

lanudromat

manhana

solve this one, dr. flem!

end page

———————-

This time my scenes correspond to a comic page. Again, they’re a bit out of order, but they’re all there, as folks who have read the story can attest.

This is how I work on short form fiction. Long form fiction, I have a bit more stringent planning process that probably wouldn’t make any sense to anyone else but me.

– Lee Allred

Perhaps us time for all to just accept that there is something wrong with you?

When I’m looking at a catalog, I start at the back.

Very often I read the end of a book first.

Say I have an overwhelmingly long list of songs whose information I need to edit in Media Player (or similar “housekeeping” task). I’ll work backwards.

If I’m embroidering/cross stitching/needlepointing a pattern that’s enormous, I start at the bottom.

I don’t know why I do this, but I’ve done it as long as I can remember.

I could have written Jonathan’s post, but I don’t call it writing in mosaic. I call it writing in mile markers.

I write scenes. Not in order. I know roughly where they go in the story. They may change or disappear completely, but they give me a frame of reference for characterization, plot, motivations, and timelines. I keep asking “Why did they do that?” and “What’s the logical outcome of X action?” and work backwards.

I work out timelines and stuff on paper and tack them on my wall. I do it mostly in pencil, a lot of times color-coded. Never typewritten. I cut out magazine pictures and print out pictures I save from the computer, go take pictures of places, make collages and tack them on my wall so I can see what I’m describing if I’m not intimately familiar with it. I never set a story in a place I’ve never been and have at least a passing familiarity with.

Ex 1. My husband and I sat down to work out why Female Protag #2’s company was failing and how to get it back on track. It took us a while, but it ended up being a flowchart that I tacked on my wall.

Ex 2. The bombshell Female Protag #2 drops wasn’t planned. She dropped it on me as I was writing the scene, so I had to go back and very carefully (I think) slip in the clues.

I rough in the characters. I rough in their larger circumstance and where they live and what they do. Then I let them do the work. I follow them through their journey and see what they do and let them tell me why, and write down what I think is important to them.

I had a whole bunch of other examples here, but you’re the only one who’s read the book and I didn’t want it to be a giant promo.

I used Male Protag #3 for my final senior project in college lo! these many years ago. My adviser didn’t really care about the first 150 pages of the novel itself. What she wanted me to write about was my creative process.

I didn’t know then and I still don’t–color me chagrined–but I don’t waste time trying to figure it out because it’s simply not important. My way works.

I’m surprised you don’t do something akin to outlining, Mojo. How do you keep track of all your stuff?

I’m like you. I like the outlining process because it facilitates a lot of thinking. My fiction is so bad that I cringe every time I send it somewhere . . .I’m not actually sure why I send it out. To get used to rejection? Maybe outlining would help my fiction :)

Novellas: Started one; wrote an outline; haven’t worked on it for awhile because of some short stories (one was accepted for publication; now working on one for Irreantum contest)

Short Stories: I skip around a lot. Never an outline, but plenty of notes. I usually write the beginning and ending first and then have problems with the middle. I need to work on my middles.