Outlining for Pantsers (and Plotters Too!)

As my writing buddies/critique partners/betas/people I complain to about projects know very well, I am not someone who writes outlines.  Ever.  I might write down a phrase or an event that should be included in the novel, but for the most part, I don't know for sure how a novel will end until I finish it (certain people, ahem Shayda and Salom, are rolling their eyes at this because sometimes even after I've "finished", I don't know how the novel should end).  I am not, generally speaking, helped by writing an outline before I start a novel; it makes me irritable and rebellious and resentful.

However.  When it comes to revision, I am all in favor of an outline.  For example, I'm currently revising The Brothers and Sisters of Interesting People, the beast written in a delirious two-week frenzy after it had been stewing (fermenting?) in my brain for five months.  As you may imagine, this book was not written to an outline.  It grew a bit like morning glory, flinging shoots willy-nilly out across sidewalks and fences until they were unceremoniously kicked out of the way.  Reading through it, I can see fifteen different places where new ideas occurred to me, or where character avenues abruptly dead-ended (heterosexual romance between two major characters, I'm lookin' at you).  When I, stuck in the Confidence stage of revision, protested to a friend that I had no idea where to start (secret code for "There's nothing wrong with this novel!  NOTHING!), she told me to outline it.

"It's already written," I told her.  "I don't need to outline."  She, very patiently, pointed out that perhaps writing an outline of the events in this already-written novel would help me recognize places where it moved slowly or needed some tightening, places where plot threads were dropped or abruptly started.  So, grudgingly, I opened up the 99,000-word document, whipped out a pad of square-rule paper and a pencil, and begin outlining.

Ten pages in, I sent her the following Gchat message: "I have just discovered...NOTHING HAPPENS FOR PAGES AND PAGES".  Oops.  I had, in my literary fiction-induced delirium, forgotten that at least some plot is required.  Writing an outline of the significant events in my novel, along with their corresponding page numbers, made me realize that the graph of narrative tension looked something like this:

(A totally unscientific representation)

The point is, creating an outline of the events helped me see that, in fact, I was not gradually building tension.  Instead, I was quite effectively boring the reader for the first 50-75 pages of the novel, at which point (as far as I remember the writing stages of this novel) I said "Whoa, this is kinda dull".  That first spike in my graph?  That is the point in my outline where I wrote, in the vulgar, "Shit gets real."

In summation: if you are stymied in your revision, or if you have convinced yourself that your novel is BRILLIANT and needs no editing...try boiling it down to the bare bones of plot progression.  It may reveal a few unpleasant truths.

Or you can just waste five minutes making a chart to describe your novel's narrative arc.  Killing time is not permitted in my house.