STEVE JACKOWSKI

fr.stevejackowski.com (site en Français)

  • Life & Work
  • Novels
    • The Swimmer
    • The Misogynist
    • The 15th Juror
    • The Shadow of God
    • The Silicon Lathe
    • L'Ombre de Dieu
    • Ethics
  • Blog
    • Electric Vehicles (EVs)
    • France
    • Personal
    • Sports
    • Startups
    • Work in Progress
    • Writing
  • Reviews
    • The Misogynist
    • The Shadow of God
    • The Silicon Lathe
  • Picture Gallery
  • Contact
  • Work in Progress

Why I Outline My Novels

3/10/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Writing a novel is supposed to be creative and cathartic.  It's the ultimate expression of great stories through your ideas, emotions, and deep thoughts framed with human drama and moments of humor.  But getting from that first blank page to a work of 300 or more pages is intimidating, even if you've done it before.

When I started my first novel,  The Silicon Lathe, I knew I wanted to tell a semi-autobiographical tale of my life as a young entrepreneur starting out in the Silicon Valley.  After a long career filled with my experiences  of  innovation, creativity, and altruism confronting ambition, greed, manipulation, and downright evil, I knew I had more than enough material for a novel, probably several.  Wherever there's money to be made you will find the best and the worst in people. 

And I was lucky.  Since the novel is about the history of the Silicon Valley, I could just start at the beginning of my career and finish at the end.  To bring the proper context to the reader, I took the logical approach of opening each section with the year's global events.  It was easy to put together a simple outline for the book. 

When I wanted to add sections about extreme sports and juxtapose them with the challenges, successes and failures, all I had to do was insert them in the proper places. 

My second novel, Ethics (unpublished), was a cathartic book.  I started by writing the first and last chapters, then worked from back to front to fill in an outline.   I poured my heart into the novel  and often found myself writing long emotional diatribes.  My early readers pointed out that I'd gone a little far with most of these and suggested some trimming or perhaps more accurately, some serious clear cutting.  But with the outline, this clean up was easy to do and Ethics is arguably my best work to date. 

With The Shadow of God, an outline was essential.  This was my first foray into the mystery/psychological thriller genre.  Imagery was a key part to very subtle foreshadowing as were the clues that I dropped in each section.  As the San Francisco Book Reviewer said:

"Jackowski lays out the information in such a way that everything is in place long before you discover it. This is a very smart book, perfect for both readers who like to try to solve the crime before the characters do and readers who love to reread mysteries to see all the hints early on."

The outline enabled me to decide where to put the clues and even to move them around when I made organizational revisions.   Even better, when I was well into the book and wrote something that required corresponding changes earlier on, those places in the book were easier to find using the outline - certainly easier than searching for key words or reading for situations whose locations I couldn't quite remember months later. 

Unfortunately, in my latest novel, I decided to try to write it without an outline.  It hasn't gone well.  I've written sections to introduce each of the main characters, have set up several ominous situations, have laid down hints to start leading the reader astray, but the fact is, since I'm not sure where I'm going, it's kind of hard to bring the reader along.  I find that I have too many options.  I start down a path, then backtrack or second guess myself.  It has taken me far longer to get less than 25% done than it did to write an entire outlined novel.  I'm starting over with an outline and will refine it to a couple of levels before I start continue writing this book. 

What I've learned is that outlining is not just an organizational tool.  It forces you to think through your story and to make decisions so that when you're heads down, you know where you've got to get to.  Even better, when you hit a block on a particular subject or character, you can just decide to write a different section and come back to the difficult one when you're ready.  

Unlike a building, where you need to lay the foundation before getting into the heavy construction, as a writer, if you have an outline as your plan, you have the freedom to construct the story and then to come back to lay that foundation with clues and foreshadowing.  

For me, the outline is my safety net.  I won't write without one again.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Steve Jackowski

    Writer, extreme sports enthusiast, serial entrepreneur, technologist.

     
    Check out my latest novel!
    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Electric Vehicles (EVs)
    France
    Personal
    Sports
    Startups
    Work In Progress
    Writing

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    September 2022
    June 2022
    October 2021
    June 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    May 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    June 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    December 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013



Proudly powered by Weebly

BACK TO TOP

Plain & Simple Web Design © 2013