How to Write a Book Without Outlining
It's all about talking to yourself.
I’ve mentioned this in a few interviews for CRYBABY, but I haven’t fully outlined a book since I started writing full-length works during math class in middle school. I know this will give many writers hives, but for me, the outline itself is a restrictive thing that makes me allergic to drafting. Instead, I employ a deranged method of talking to myself and many, many, notes.
I’m working on two main book projects right now. One is seen above: the second book in the series I’m building around The Boat Eater, from Annie’s POV. The other is a creative nonfiction manuscript about board games and my mental health journey. Board games have taught me how to be me, and how to listen, and much more! I am excited to share more about that project as I continue drafting. For both of these books, I have no formal outline, and in fact, I tried to outline the board game book and it made me sweat so much I ended up avoiding the project for days.
There are a ton of virtues to outlining, and I encourage everyone who wants to write a book-length work to ignore everything I’m saying here and just be an adult and outline their book. For me, the outline is my nemesis. I learn by doing. The outline is stale data and I feel compelled to keep it updated while I also work on my draft, and now I’m doing double-work, and now I feel like I’m at work, and that’s no fun.
For Annie’s Book, which does have a tentative title I’m not entirely sold on quite yet, and for The Boat Eater, I began by asking myself a few key questions: What is my character scared of? What is my character’s greatest hope? What happens when fear and hope intersect? These questions helped me figure out the most critical scenes I’d need to include to tell a complete story. I do write these down for future reference as simple bullet points.
After that, I just start writing. I think of books as applied mathematics games. You know, those puzzles where you need to trace an object without going over your lines? I think of every sentence, every paragraph, every scene, every chapter, as facilitating the presence of the next move. In practice, I write at least a scene a day. That helps keep me from getting overwhelmed by the prospect of writing an entire book. I learned from CRYBABY to limit my re-reading and early revising. With The Boat Eater and Annie’s Book, I’ve scaled back to only going to the top of the manuscript when I’ve completed a major story arc, and to only read top to bottom for clarity.
So, sure, no outline and I write on a scene-by-scene basis, and I ask a few questions. How do I make sure I don’t miss something major? How do I keep things logical? I talk to myself about my story after every writing session. I have mentioned this method a ton, but I find that verbalizing what you’re doing in your draft reveals the plot holes straight away. If it’s not adding up while you’re saying it out loud, something needs to be fixed. That’s what I write down in my notes.
I check on these notes with regularity and they can get pretty long, but they keep me honest, and I do have to figure out what’s up with the coal. The coal is a major story seed and I just kind of abandoned it in the first 10,000 words, and that’s not gonna cut it! This system gives me space to play and learn about myself and my story and my characters, but there are also some guardrails in place so I don’t entirely lose the plot. Writers who crank out thousands of words of robust outlines are amazing, and I envy them, and crucially, I am not them. I have tried and failed, and have grown comfortable in said failure.
These tactics work just as well for nonfiction. For my third music book that’s currently on sub, I did a ton of writing and sketching before I even knew what central narrative would emerge. This makes sense because of the nature of the book and how it came to be, but it’s also true that in my nonfiction practice overall, I have to get to the finish line before I can revisit the starting line. For the board game book, I tried to scuttle about a structure and essay headings, and it made me so itchy I audibly said, “Forget this, just start writing.” That, by the way, is my best advice for anyone struggling to do anything at their writing desk: Forget this, just start writing.
To summarize, the actual best way to complete a book is the way that keeps you writing over a long period of time. For me, writing a book boils down to: asking key questions, starting a draft, talking to myself after each scene, pausing every 20,000 words, rereading what I’ve got, making notes about what’s loose, and trusting in myself that I’ll figure it out soon. That last bit is maybe the unsung hero of my process: trust.
I’ve been a professional writer for a decade. I’ve been writing since I could grip a pencil. I’ve been thinking about books since I realized geometry just isn’t my thing. I am confident you have a similar story. We have to trust ourselves to figure out our projects. We don’t have to solve everything in Draft 0, Draft 1, or even Draft 2. If you’re writing, you will eventually figure out what’s up with the coal. A lot of this process does come down to learned intuition. Writing is a matter of delirium and self-belief, and the sooner you surrender to that, the easier it will be.
That’s all from me this week. If you love outlines, I envy you from afar. If you hate outlines, I understand you. Hope everyone finds some joy this week. Until next time.