>> And the downfall of that, or the downside of that, if there is one,
is that you end up throwing away half of your pages.
>> Sure, sure. >> Right, so
in going back over a manuscript that I think in pages,
not word count particularly, but going back over a manuscript that was
about 300 pages turned into a novel that was about 120.
>> I see, I see.
>> So a lot of redundancies, but I think if you don't allow yourself that space
forward redundancy, you won't find the surprising stuff.
>> Okay.
Well let's say you have a writer that's never written an outline before.
What guidelines can you offer them to get them started?
>> I think it's not a bad idea to look at people that you yourself are impressed by.
Work that has particularly moved you and
to outline those stories themselves and then try to use that as a blueprint.
And see where the analogous spaces in your own work might be.
>> That's really interesting.
So I think that's a really good idea as Douglas is suggesting to take a story, or
a narrative, or a book that is a favorite of yours and just outline it out and
see where the beats are.
In this course that I'm teaching on plot, we talked a little bit about
Harry Potter and JK Rowling, who writes these famously long complicated books.
What she did is that she broke her outlines down into
little grid boxes chapter by chapter and Faulkner, I read,
he wrote broad ideas on the walls of his office.
If you over outline,
do you run the risk of shifting from a writer to a translator of your work?
Is there such a thing as too much outlining slowing the creative process?
>> Yeah, I think that I'm way more Faulkner than J.K.
Rowling to begin with and we should all have the liberty, the leisure,
and the space to be able to write on our walls.
>> Sure.
>> Right. >> [LAUGH]
>> I think that yeah you don't want to,
you don't want to back yourself into a corner, right.
So for me like an outline is always kind of like a big kind of bullet point.
And it's kind of like almost a title to a painting that you're meant to create.
>> Interesting.
>> Right? >> Yeah, I like that.
>> So, I can see the wall thing, I've done that myself.
This is this particular moment in time.
Then you can quite physically move in space [CROSSTALK].
>> Do you use different colored sheets or how would your wall look like?
>> Yeah, like different colored markers and
definitely part of me outline or finding the form within my lined,
writing manuscripts is color coding- >> Interesting, okay.
>> For sure and so then it's pulling together all of the things that have been
keyed to red for whatever reason.
And then to begin to just arrange those elements.