Friday, March 15, 2013

How I Wrote a Novel Without an Outline

Posted: 03/14/2013 Huff Post -  - Writer


At the 2012 Miami Book Fair I had a chance to ask Pulitzer Prize winning author Jeffrey Eugenides whether he writes linearly and if he uses an outline. He remarked that he doesn't use an outline, nor does he write linearly, that he often doesn't know what is going to come next in his work. He also indicated that if he knew exactly what would happen next, so might the reader, therefore becoming predicable.

My first novel, The Nexus, came to me in furious rushes of story and I wrote it without an outline. Aimee, the leading female character came first, the setting in medieval England rushed right in to swallow her. The idea of a smart, educated, feminist thrust back into a patriarchal culture without computers, or automobiles, or tampons intrigued me. Some of those who have read The Nexus compare it to Diana Gabaldon's Outlander because it features a 20th century woman who is transported back in time. I haven't read Outlander, and frankly, if I had, I probably would not have written The Nexus. The similarity however ends there. The device that thrusts Aimee back to the past is a metaphysical transference, rather than physical.
Before I even sat down to write, the first scene appeared in my mind: Aimee waking up confused in the middle of a forest, with a man wearing a knight's armor attending to her. When I sat down to write that scene, I was unprepared for the rush of story that poured forth. While I knew that Aimee was a professor of medieval history, I knew little about the knight. While the first chapter flowed in third person from Aimee's point of view, the second chapter appeared from the Knight's point of view. He was a Knight Templar returning in disgrace from a tournament. Finding this raving woman wearing only shreds of clothing both fascinated and repulsed him.

After I wrote those two scenes in one early morning writing session, I changed into my other work hat planning an educational meeting for a client. The story brewed in my head all day. I realized I needed a plot -- somewhere for the story to go with these two characters. Laying Aimee's course in the 12th century posed many potential plot points, but I knew that Aimee's confliction between her two lives would drive the story: Aimee desperately wants to get back to her teenage children in the 20th century, yet she is fascinated with the living diorama of history in which she finds herself. How or if she ever returns was unknown.

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