Visual Outlines
And Why YOU Need One For Your Novel
Step One. What Is A Visual Outline?
"An outline. This is only your second post and you are already plaguing us with the forsaken, forbidden, foredoomed: outlines?!" Yes. I am. But this one is fun, I promise. The first thing I will tell you is that I call the so-named 'Visual Outline' 'The Guts Outline'. This is because all of my thirty-or-so outlines I use depending on my chosen stories-in-writing are named after... death.
Think of it like this:
The Blood Outline (for tracking characters throughout a novel)
The Skin Outline (the basic chapter-by-chapter outline)
The Skeleton Outline (the villain outline, beyond his or her character description)
The Dead Outline (for magic systems, species and races, and other stuff)
and so on.
I named my outlines like this because a) I made most of them up with the help of a thousand writing YouTube videos and writing-help books. And b) most outlines seem to kill their writers in the use of them, so I thought it might be an ironic choice. But enough about the name. This specific "Guts Outline" is my favorite outline of the bunch and it is the first outline I will talk about here on the blog.
It is the supposed art outline. For describing the settings, characters, and the storyline of our stories through vivid pictures.
Step Two. How Do I Make One?
Because I am an artist and an organizer, I will generally draw all the pictures in my Guts Outline from baseline zero: a miniature empty sketchbook from a crafts store. I will decorate the cover and the inside with things from my upcoming novel as I outline the more serious outlines. But first, I will make a planner document for it.
In the planner, I will have a heading: The Hunger Games, for example. Then, a subheading or two: Settings, Characters, Items. After that, I will list as many possible ideas for pictures as I can beneath those subheadings. It will end up looking a bit like this:
The Hunger Games
Settings
District 13
District 1
District 2 (and so on)
The Arena (and areas in it)
The Capitol
The Train
The Victor's Village (and so on)
Characters
Katniss Everdeen
Peeta Mellark
Gale (and so on)
I will try to fill this list as much as possible. Each item, I will end up making its own full page within my Guts Outline [the sketchbook]. So overdoing the lists is not a bad thing. I can always staple in a pocket or add extra pages afterward if I am feeling super inspired.
Step Three. What About It?
Something to note about The Guts Outline: you do not have to be an artist to do it. And it is completely optional as an outline piece. While I enjoy drawing each page, starting with maps and settings and moving onward, it is just as simple to paste stickers and collages and magnets in a journal as it is to draw a picture. Any medium works. It is like a giant storyboard. Additionally, the size of the sketchbook is preferential. The sketchbook itself is also optional. If I wanted to use a journal, or a massive sketchbook for the story, or watercolors for heck's sake, I could. It all depends on my mood and investment in [and ideas for] the story.
In the end: The Guts Outline is completely optional in the outlining process, as I stated before. But I do not use it as a time-wasting resource. It has helped me stay out of writer's block with my other more serious outlines. It can become tiring to complete character outline after character outline, or outline chapter after chapter. This outline is the outline I return to when I get fed up with the thought that my stupid, ugly main character is just not doing what I want her to do in my story. As an added bonus, it looks pretty sweet when everything starts coming together.
Your pictures in the outline can be as simple or as tacky as glued together magazine articles or hours-long drawings. As an example, here is my latest completed page for my newest novel-in-progress:
Guts Outlines, however, do take time. Longer than snapping together an online document. And they look best, at least in my experience, on physical paper. So prepare for art supplies and copious amounts of time to slip through your fingers!
Step Four. Why Do I Need One? How Do I Decide?
It is a personal preference, whether you want to create a Guts Outline or not. But it is refreshing to make one of these puppies and call it your own. It gives you an idea what you want the world to look like in physical reality. It puts real images behind your imagination [no matter how far away they may seem from what is in your head]. And they give you an idea of where you might improve: where your imagination might be straying a little too close to "unrealistic fever dream" instead of lingering near "fiction is reality."
Guts Outlines put your hypothetical world in perspective and give you something to aim for during the actual writing process. You draw it: you can better describe it. You have it in front of you: it's easier to write about.
But again, it's all up to the writer. I wrote for years without doing these Guts Outlines and I would like to think I did not turn out too horrendous.
Use it. Try it. Experiment with it.
Friends and writers,
...until I write again...
End
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