CHAPTER 30

MAP YOUR NOVEL

BY N.M. KELBY

We can all benefit from a sense of organization. I like to think of a novel outline as the bones of a story. As a child, your bones grow to the place where they’ll support who you are meant to be on this planet. If your genes determine that you’re tall, your bones will form that foundation, and your flesh will grow accordingly. As you grow older, you need calcium, and bones provide it to the point where they become brittle and can easily break.

This is the same with outlines. You need to create the basic framework for your story to grow on, but not so much that it takes away the energy from the work.

So where do you begin? Arthur Miller once said, “If I see an ending, I can work backward.” So start with the end.

KNOW YOUR ENDING BEFORE YOU START

If you start with the end of the story, the ending won’t be set in concrete; it can change. But starting with what you think is the end allows you to have a firm idea of where you are going when you begin a journey with 60,000 to 80,000 words in tow. And you’ll need that. Once you decide on your ending, everything in the book will be shaped to arrive there. None of your characters should be superfluous, nor should your scenes. It’s all about bones.

Of course, the most difficult part of writing any story, long or short, is ending it.

In order to write your ending, you have to ask yourself what action you want to set forth in the start. But be careful not to create a “purse-string” ending—with all the elements brought together in a tidy bundle. At the end of your story, you don’t want to give readers the sense that all there is to know is already known. You really just want to give them a whisper and a dream, and send them on their way.

Once your ending is in place, you can weave your tale. Novelist Tony Earley always says, “A story is about a thing and another thing.” So it’s your job to plan your story so that you give your reader the satisfaction of getting closure from one “thing,” the most obvious thing, but keep the mystery of the other “thing” intact.

A good example of this can be found in Sherman Alexie’s “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” the short story about a homeless Spokane Indian’s circular attempts to raise $1,000 to redeem his grandmother’s powwow regalia from a pawnshop. The shop owner would like to give it back, but he paid $1,000 for it himself. So he gives the homeless man $5 as seed money and twenty-four hours to raise the rest of the cash.

In the first paragraph, Alexie gives the reader notice and sets up the ending of his story:

One day you have a home and the next you don’t, but I’m not going to tell you my particular reasons for being homeless, because it’s my secret story, and Indians have to work hard to keep secrets from hungry white folks.

The idea of a “secret story” is the key to the ending. While the protagonist does manage to earn money, he drinks, gambles, or gives it away. After twenty-four hours, the money has not been raised, but the pawnbroker gives him the regalia anyway. The last paragraph of the story is this:

Outside, I wrapped myself in my grandmother’s regalia and breathed her in. I stepped off the sidewalk and into the intersection. Pedestrians stopped. Cars stopped. The city stopped. They all watched me dance with my grandmother. I was my grandmother, dancing.

Because the regalia is given back, the story does seem to tie itself up (that would be the first “thing”), but this really isn’t about getting a stolen dress back. It’s about the struggle to regain one’s spirit—and that could be seen as the “secret” story (or the other thing) wrapped in this tall tale.

The ending that satisfies the reader, or ties things up, is never the real ending of the story. We discover that the grandmother’s regalia is returned, and yet the story continued on for a moment to put the act into context. Alexie left the readers with a whisper and a dream and sent them on their way.

OUTLINE YOUR STORY SIMPLY AND BRIEFLY

There is no set amount of pages in an outline because it all depends on how large a story you’re going to tell. The story of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix had thirty-eight chapters that spanned 870 pages. Its table of contents provides an interesting look at the bones of an outline. It begins: One: Dudley Demented; Two: A Peck of Owls; Three: The Advance Guard.

If you were J.K. Rowling, and this was your outline, all you’d have to do is write a short summary paragraph after the title of each chapter. In the first chapter, you would tell us why Dudley is demented and make sure that there are bits in your description that set the action of the book in play. Then move on to the next chapter.

To build the bones of your own outline, begin by writing a short description of what happens in the last chapter, and then move to the first chapter. After that’s done, divide the rest of Act 1 into as many chapters as it takes to properly introduce your protagonist and the conflict—the “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where” of the tale.

Move on to Act 2 and, again, create as many chapters as it takes to explain the crisis, complications, and obstacles that present themselves on the protagonist’s way to the climax. Make note of the emotional challenges that he faces.

Once you’ve written the climax, it’s time to create as many chapters as you’ll need to lead to the final chapter.

Try not to get too fancy with the writing. If your agent is going to pitch your outline, he’s going to take fifty pages of the draft with him, so you don’t need to show any style in the outline. This is all about bones.

GIVE YOUR STORY IDEA A LITMUS TEST

Find out if you can turn your initial story idea into a real novel.

Step One: Answer these questions to the best of your ability. There are no wrong answers, but there are answers that inspire you to write on … and that’s what you’re looking for.

1. What about the idea draws you in? What’s the most important element of it to you?

2. Who could the players be? Not just the people who inspired you to follow your idea, but the supporting characters. Who are the friends? Who are the enemies? Create a quick biography of each. Explore their relationships to one another and to the protagonist. Add physical descriptions, what they sound like, their aspirations, and any other details you “know.”

3. Where and when does the story take place? Keep in mind that the details that sparked you may not be where you choose to set your novel. Whatever you do, make the setting as concrete as possible.

4. What are the possibilities for conflict? Now that you have a chance to imagine this idea in a more fleshed-out manner, ask yourself what could happen given who the characters you’ve created are, in addition to where they are in this world that you’ve made.

Step Two: Write. This is the difficult part. Begin with what you think is the first chapter. Or, just write a couple of chapters out of sequence. When you reach fifty pages, try to write your outline. If you can’t, keep writing until you can’t any more, and then try again.

You’re not looking for publishable pages, you’re just looking to unlock the possibility of story and give yourself an understanding of the depth of the project.

  N.M. KELBY (nmkelby.com) is a novelist and the author of The Constant Art of Being a Writer and the story collection A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts.