Outlining x Quilting

Outlining versus Quilting

One of my favorite authors, José Saramago, didn’t believe in Outlining. He had an idea and started writing, moving forward two pages a day, from beginning to end of a work. He didn’t like revisions either. In an interview to Paris Review from 1998 he stated that 90% of his complete manuscripts remained as he had initially written; meaning 10% of revised material from first draft to finished work. That’s impressive. I used to write like that, minus the revision percentages though. For shorter pieces, I still do, but I developed an appreciation for outlining. Albeit my outlines aren’t very detailed for I don’t wish to make my writing process too rigid. I also learned to appreciate the freedom of writing scenes and dialogues that seem to be loose then start coming together in a “quilting” process. That usually happens on ongoing projects. I may be writing a short story and suddenly have an idea for dialogue; I type and reserve it on a file of bits and pieces. At any given time I’m in between outlining and quilting, depending on the project.

What is outlining exactly?

For some writers it’s a synopsis of a fictional or non-fictional work, for others it’s a list of events. To me it’s a sequence of sentences in chronological order that I use to lay down the first idea I have for a longer project.

Let’s use a very simple story line as an example:

1. Mary’s mother gets sick.
2. She goes to the doctor and it’s serious.
3. She needs surgery.
4. The family can’t afford the surgery that would save her.
5. For Christmas, Mary wishes for her mother to be cured.
6. She writes a letter to Santa.
7. She doesn’t receive what she wishes for; she receives a bicycle instead.
8. She isn’t unhappy about it, but her mother isn’t getting any better.
9. Someone in the mail service that answers the letters to Santa in the city by sending them a Christmas card reads the letter and starts a campaign online to raise funds for Mary’s mother.
10. The fundraiser is a success.
11. Mary’s mother gets the surgery.
12. Everyone lives happily ever after.

This is a very straight forward story. If we develop it in this chronological sequence it can be a little dull though. Now, if we start from the Christmas eve and show her unhappiness when she sees the bike, then maybe she could tell her dog that although she likes her present she would rather have her mother sharing the festivities instead of being in bed; and from there we could do a flashback-like process parallel to what’s happening in the Santa’s room in the mail office; then we would have a more interesting sequence to use on a first draft by rearranging the sentences.

The new pre-draft sequence would be something like this:

1. Mary doesn’t receive what she wishes for; she receives a bicycle instead.
2. She isn’t unhappy about it, but her mother is so sick she can’t even have dinner with the family.
3. Maybe she didn’t explain everything well enough in her letter to Santa.
4. Santa’s Helpers, the mail service that answers the letters to Santa in the city by sending them a Christmas card, reads the letter.
5. The content of the letter sends the story into a flashback.
6. Mary’s mother gets sick.
7. She goes to the doctor and it’s serious.
8. She needs surgery.
9. The family can’t afford the surgery that would save her.
10. The Santa’s Helpers start a campaign online to raise funds for Mary’s mother.
11. The fundraiser is a success.
12. Mary is hugging her dog when it starts barking and runs to the door.
13. Her father opens the door and the Santa’s Helpers sing Christmas caroling and give them a gift.
14. They close the door and leave the gift on the coffee table.
15. Mary go tell her mother about the carolers and her dog brings the box in his mouth.
16. She opens it and sees a check in her mother’s name.
17. Mary’s mother gets the surgery.
18. Everyone lives happily ever after.
19. Mary becomes a Santa’s Helper.

The interesting aspect of this choice is that just by resequencing the outline we go about adding details and the plot takes flight.

What is quilting?

It’s the opposite of outlining. It’s when we have an idea for a scene, or a situation, or a confrontation, or a setting, and we write that down. Then we start working around it loosely until we have enough material to put together the skeleton of a piece. I once wrote a poem like this. A couple of sentence popped up in my mind in the middle of the night and I wrote them down. As I looked through my journal I found a pattern and started quilting a draft. We may have this dialogue and from that we envision the characters and what brought them to that conversation, etc.

More often than not I use a mix of both methods. I strongly recommend exercising both and exploring the one that doesn’t come easier as a thought provoking process.

Happy Writing!

Tags: outline, outlining