Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

From vignettes to outlines to story lines

When It comes to outlines I often tell my students about The Chicken or the Egg. That is what comes first the outline or the storyline? I have read authors who claim to do it both ways. Remember in grammar school the teacher requiring you to write an outline first. My recollection of the experience was that my brain clutched. I was completely unable to write an outline about something I knew nothing about. So for me the story had to come first and to get to the story I have always written vignettes. From the vignettes the characters are birthed, the story world developed and the story line begins to suggest itself. In teaching my class The Exploratory Writing Workshop at New Horizons Academy at WDC I require the writing of six vignettes, a simple outline and then a Comprehensive outline.

There is nothing magical about the number six. In the current class I'm taking at HSP, Romantica the story line for the novel emerged after only four vignettes. In the process of writing the class requirements (Romance/Sensual Prose.) I made frequent forays into other backstory vignettes and finally into writing the outline. The Outline is a living, breathing document that contains all manner of useful stuff. When I was writing this one a thread came to me of a character who is Alonso's Cartel contact. I don't know at this point if it is a useful direction but I didn't want to lose it.

Anyway as my muse shares thoughts and ideas I do my level best to capture and organize them into some sort of coherent outline that I can later work using my faculties of reason. It provides the bite sized (vignette sized) chunks a writer can easily develop without being overwhelmed by the complexities of a novel that nobody I know can juggle and still come out with events and chapters that lead down the road to conclusion

At this point I have to mention my muse. My view on muses is different from conventional wisdom that speculates that the ideas we write about germinate in our minds. My view is that we are tied to a greater corporate reality and our muse is like a modem link to that reality. In other words we don't dredge up what we write from the bowels of our subconscious but rather grab onto the skirt of our muse who takes us into an external world. Rather than thinking it all up ourselves we dial into a whole new dimension. What happens as I write the vignettes is that I get a fire hose of ideas that might appear unrelated at first but will soon congeal. The challenge is to write madly capturing each thread as my muse delivers it onto the video screen of my imagination. If I don't get it down it all too soon disappears into the ether of lost thoughts and is forgotten. It is like waking up from a dream, which at first is so vivid and trying to remember it an hour later when it is all but lost to recollection.