Do I just start writing?

Do I just start writing?

Hi Everyone:

          I hope you keep checkingt my website because as soon as I figure out how to create and upload a PDF file I intend to post a very special short story. It’s one of my favorites; I wrote it to help celebrate the holiday season. It’s called The Man in the Ironed Suit. Just go to the Short Story page at http://joshswritingroom.com

 

Perhaps you have an idea for a story; it’s because of something you experienced, or it’s just an idea that came to you as you were completing a household chore. You say to yourself, gee, this would make a darn good story.

Perhaps you relate it to a friend or to your spouse and the reaction you get is,

          “Yeah, you’re right; it’s a good idea, why don’t you write it?”

          You open your big mouth and say, “Maybe I will.”  

          You are hooked and you think, I can do that, but what do I do first? Do I just start writing my story? Don’t I need to write an outline or something?

          The answer to these questions plagues a lot of writers. The quick answer is YES. Both ways work. It is really up to you.

 Either way, you will need to create a beginning, middle, and end. Most writers, who develop a story without an outline, do at least; have a strong idea of its beginning and a tentative ending. As they create the story and its main characters, and thrust them into the conflict they envision, they often ask themselves, what’s the worst thing that can happen now? Creating that horrendous event, and immersing characters in it, may propel the story in unexpected directions. This is exciting and perfectly okay as long as it moves the story forward. Authors, who only know the beginning and end, frequently rely on frequent crucial events to help bridge the tricky middle ground of their story. I suspect that a lot of stories that never get finished are gathering dust because the writer failed to ask and act on the answer to that critical question; what’s the worst thing that can happen now?

You may decide that you will be more comfortable writing your story if you first develop an outline. If you take the time to develop the story with most of its twists and turns from exciting beginning to climactic end, you will probably avoid those tricky middle sections. It may take weeks to outline a novel and some parts of it may be sketchy, but when you finish you will have a roadmap to use in guiding you from one end of the story to the other, thus avoiding writer’s block.

 You still need to ask yourself the same critical question as shown above. And if you intend to write a mystery or a story with mysterious circumstances, as you are about to reveal a clue, ask yourself; does my reader need to know this now?

I doubt that Charles Dickens or Mark Twain ever wrote an outline but I once heard that Mario Puzo had a huge message board that he used to diagram the structure of his mafia gangs for The Godfather. I think a large number of modern writers plot out their stories. Write an outline, use three by five index cards, make diagrams, do whatever works. I’ve tried it both ways. For me, storytelling is easier and quicker with the outline, but it’s much more fun to write by the seat of my pants.

Don’t worry about it—just write it. The real art of writing is in the re-write. As a character states in my recent novel, Alex—Peanut Butter—And Me, “Remember, you can always edit crap, but you can’t edit a blank page.”

Mark Twain, once said; “There are few stories that have anything superlatively good in them except the idea—and that is always bettered by transplanting.”