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Fiction Debut Author Roundtable
1.
AOTW: Did you outline before you began your book, or did you let the story evolve on its own? Whether you outlined, or not, did the story end up the way you planned?
Terrence Cheng: I had an outline of about the first half of the book, but I didn't write one sentence because I had never visited China or Beijing before and didn't want to write about a place I didn't truly feel and know. After two years of research and planning, I went to Beijing in 1999 to do research in terms of experiencing the atmosphere, the environment. When I got back, I started writing, often according to the outline (which was more historical points and some scenes I'd imagined). But, the outline of scenes and dramatic moments I wanted to create changed dramatically as my characters fleshed out and circumstances presented themselves that I hadn't envisioned before. The book turned out not so much as I had planned it, but as I had hoped it would. I didn't plan a final scene, a final confrontation, but in the end, the book --- as a whole --- affected me the way I had hoped, so I was confident that it would have a similar affect on most readers.
Masha Hamilton: I did not outline Staircase. Rather than structure, I need a certain messiness in the early drafts, a little boiling over of the soup. I need to let the characters evolve. This does lead to some shocks. For instance, I knew the story was building to a tragedy in Staircase. I didn't know it would involve my favorite character. I felt breathless and even sick to my stomach when I finally understood where the story was taking me, and all the more distressed as I wrote it. I also didn't foresee the disastrous events that would follow.
Jill Bialosky: I'm not an outliner. Oh god, no. Maybe because I come to writing through poetry. The novel began more impressionistically. It began with a mental picture, of a house in Ohio, buried under snow. Then I imagined the family inside, the atmosphere, the characters, the situation. It is about a widow with three young daughters in the 1960s and 1970s in Ohio. The story turns on the dilemma of the mother character, Lilly, who defines herself as a wife and mother and then her husband dies and all that she imagined for herself is turned on its head. I had to figure out from whose point of view I could best tell the story. I knew I didn't want to be in Lilly's head. So I chose to tell it from Anna Crane's point of view, one of the daughter's looking back. Then I had to figure out the drama. The emotional center of the book ended up the way I planned, but I was not prepared for what Lilly would ultimately do. I wanted to write about a character who remains a tragic figure, and how those around her, particularly her children, must ultimately come to terms with what they can't change. I was interested in resurrecting the lost women caught before the feminist movement took hold.
David Benioff: I did write a very rough outline, but the story changed dramatically as it progressed. Before I started I knew the beginning and the ending, but the middle was a mystery.
Ad Hudler: I had no outline for Househusband, and it caused me great grief and lots of extra work. In the end, I had to rewrite my book three times because I initially had no clear vision about plot. My second book, which is due to my editor in October, is fairly well spelled out in an outline, and the writing is much easier --- though I'm trying to be careful not to be completely ruled by this outline; you always should leave wiggle room for creative tangents.
Michael Redhill: I started Martin Sloane with a sense of what the center of the story was (a man's disappearance), but I never had a plan for the novel. The lack of this lead to some serious problems in composition, but I think it was the right approach because the novel grew organically. To this end, I can't say if the story ended up the way I planned because it was a novel that defied planning. I am, however, and for the most part, satisfied that it reflects its inspiration.
Jill A. Davis: I had a sense of what would happen, and a general sense of a beginning, a middle and an end. One of the many interesting things about writing is that as you write, you learn more about yourself and the characters. To that extent the story seems to be constantly evolving, and you find yourself sort of struggling to not edit things in a different direction to avoid being revealing.
David Rosenfelt: I didn't outline; I just had a rough idea of where the story was going. That changed periodically, and the story did not end up the way I had planned. Anyone that says they figured out who the murderer was on page 100 is truly prescient, since I didn't know until page 250.
Ali Smith: It evolved on its own terms, more than any other book I've written [editor's note: Hotel World is Smith's American novel debut]. The outline I'd imagined was still pretty much there in the end, but the book topped and tailed itself with the unexpected, and undercut what I wanted to do, and drove itself, which kept me awake many nights worrying and arguing; in the end I gave in and let it go its own way. It was hell to do, and hard to trust, but I had no choice, and I think this is best --- in the end the writer and the written are always in a kind of live dialogue, live negotiation --- and that's what makes it alive for a reader.
Stella Pope Duarte: I had an outline before I started the book, mostly focused on descriptions of characters. No, the story did not end up as I had thought. The ending took an amazing twist.
Karen V. Siplin: I always outline before I begin a new project, yet my novels never end up the way I plan them. I keep huge chunks of blank space on every page of my outline so I have the freedom to add new thoughts as the work progresses. His Insignificant Other had a few different endings, and there are scenes that I loved but deleted because they no longer had a place in the final manuscript.
Gary Shteyngart: I did not outline before I began the book. Although it ended up where I wanted it. The twists and turns along the way --- as well as the emotional development of the novel's hero --- were a pleasant surprise to me.
Anahita Firouz: I did not outline my novel either before or while writing it. I only knew how the book would begin and how it would end. The story evolved on its own and the characters took over, and the plot revealed itself only as I wrote the novel. But writing is all about contradictions. So while I wasn't consciously aware of how each chapter would proceed or how the characters would tell the story, I was spending a great deal of time --- in what seemed a random sort of way --- mulling over the book. And so it did emerge perfectly structured and organized. Also, I did know how it would all end, because I wrote the epilogue right after writing the first chapter.
Steve Almond: I wrote a story collection and the way I wrote each story was different. Certain stories just sort of reeled out from inside me. I had to bang away at others, one graph at a time. Most of the time, I have a pretty clear idea of where a story's headed. It's the journey of the sentences along the way, the deep rough of language, where the surprises reside.
Kate Manning: I just started writing into the fog of the story, with an idea about a crime and marriage. I wanted to explain the crime in the context of a love story. But there was no outline at the beginning. Toward the middle of writing, I made a timeline and various plot diagrams and stuck up little notes all over the wall to keep track of who did what when, and what color eyes the characters had. I was humbled, as a first novelist, to discover that what I'd heard was true: the characters take over. They do or say things seemingly on their own, and then you have to resolve their actions somehow in the end. For me, Whitegirl was a long surprise.
Jay Nussbaum: I always have at least a working outline because I find it liberating. To worry over whether I might be painting myself into a corner is distracting, and it introduces an impurity into what should be a sacred process. But as psychologically important the outline is, it's more important to know when to ignore it. To cling to preconceptions in the face of a more intriguing choice makes no sense. As a writer, I know that my success depends on my willingness to follow dark paths and to exceed my own upbringing --- as Hemingway said, to row away from the shore. It was a major step in my development as a writer when I stopped asking, "What do I need him to do now?" and started asking, "What would he do now?" So I outline, then write, then go back and change the outline to accommodate the writing, then repeat that process again and again. Blue Road to Atlantis did end up the way I thought it would, in that I knew what the fish's fate must be. But I genuinely didn't know what the impact of that fate would be, on the reader or the other characters. It was a great relief to me when it ended as it did, like when I'm putting together a new toy for one of my children and the final piece actually does click into place like the directions say it should.
Arthur Phillips: I don't think it matters one way or the other. Either you outline at the beginning or you shape your evolved improvisations at the end, or you do both, and ideally a reader won't be able to tell which you did. That said, Prague was composed very improvisationally, with some periods of total blindness, and others where I needed outlines, sketches, chronologies, etc. Sometimes I could see 60 pages into the future, other times I couldn't see three lines. Obviously, as I didn't really have a plan at the beginning (other than sit down and write, no matter what), the story ended up surprising me a great deal.
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