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On Document Outlines: How to Use the Standard Outline Format

By Aaron Pogue on Tuesday, June 15, 2010

This week I’ve been talking about how you can use document outlines to visualize document structure. They really are a fantastic tool for prewriting and organization.

Yesterday I walked you through that process — starting with an idea (whether it’s for a book or a blog post), breaking it down into categories, ordering those categories, and populating them with actual points and subpoints.

It’s essentially just brainstorming, but I talked about how to use a rough outline format to capture the process. Once you’ve done that, though, it’s a short step to get from “rough outline” to “formal outline” — and a step with some real rewards.

The Standard Outline Format

All that’s really left at that point is adding some standard  labels, and maybe some description. As a general rule, I like to take an outline down to the heading level. In a blog post or five-paragraph essay, that’s probably just the Roman numerals, which would be the 2-5 section headings you’re going to use in the document. If you’re outlining a book, it might go one or two levels deeper (Volume | Chapter | Section). Then I’ll add one more level for brief notes as to what I’ll say beneath each  heading.

If it’s just for me, I might also have notes about notes, and notes about notes about notes (or, if I feel like the heading will be enough to spark my memory, I might leave out the notes altogether). The only goal here is to capture all the great ideas that spring to mind while I’m outlining, so I’ll still have them when I go to write the actual document.

For a more formal outline, though (like one for debate, say, or for a class assignment), it’s usually a good idea to pick a level of depth and get pretty close to the same depth in every group. There is also a common rule that says every level must contain multiple items, so you never have an A without at least a B, and never an i without an ii.

As I said, it’s the purpose of the outline that determines how hard you need to stick to that rule.

Do make a formal outline, though. There’s problems you’ll spot instantly when you try to label all your rows. You’ll also find out where you’re going to have to research or spend a while coming up with something to say, when you find some headings are harder than others to fill with notes.

So put your outline together. For a shorter document, it might look like this:

“How to Outline a Document”

I. Introduction

A. Debate story

B. How I learned the standard outline format

II. Spot the Relationships between Ideas

A. Outlines create a map of relationships between ideas

B. Use that map to make sure everything you say is on-topic

III. Group Your Ideas

A. Outlines are good for brainstorming (prewriting)

B. Start by taking everything you want to say and putting them in categories (Roman numerals)

IV. Organize Your ideas

A. The list of categories and ideas should reveal a good organization method

B. Try building a quick organization chart, and see how it will work out

V. The Standard Outline Format

A. Some rules of the formal outline format

B. Some examples of the formal outline format

For a longer one, it might look more like this:

How to Make an e-Book

I. Front Matter

A. Foreword

B. Table of Contents

. . .

II. Prewriting

A. Choose a Topic

. . .

D. Outline Your Book

1. Introduction

a. Debate story

b. How I learned the standard outline format

2. Spot the Relationships between Ideas

a. Outlines create a map of relationships between ideas

b. Use that map to make sure everything you say is on-topic

3. Group Your Ideas

a. Outlines are good for brainstorming (prewriting)

b. Start by taking everything you want to say and putting them in categories (Roman numerals)

. . .

Either way, fill it out and then analyze it. Read it, and imagine the document you’d wrap around that skeleton. Does it work? If so, run with it. If not, rework it. Keep going until you’ve got something clear.

And when you’re done, you’re done. Your document structure is solid, perfected and ready to stand. With a foundation like that, stacking on words is easy.

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On Document Outlines: Visualizing Underlying Structure

By Aaron Pogue on Monday, June 14, 2010

Yesterday I told a terrifying story about someone who used the outline format as a vicious weapon. Even without experiencing that trauma, many of us find outlines intimidating (or, at best, tedious).

When you learn how to use them, though — and if you only outline when you really need to — a good document outline can really improve the quality of your writing and make the whole process faster. How? More of that old magic I’m always talking about. An outline takes the invisible structure in your document and makes it visible.

As I said yesterday, a document outline is a map of the relationships between ideas. That’s incredibly valuable when you’re trying to perfect a document, because it lets you see how each piece of it is connected to the document’s purpose (and by how far removed).

If you’re working with an existing document (say, trying to trim it down), you should be able to plot every single sentence into an outline. It’s either a new idea, or supporting evidence for an idea you’ve already established. A good outline should show you how well the ideas and evidence flow, what’s out of order, and where you’re spending too many words on minor details.

Group Your Ideas

Most of the time, you’ll use an outline more for prewriting than for revision. In that case, your goal should be to build a balanced, effective structure from the ground up.

Start by grouping your ideas. Come up with a handful of categories that can evenly contain everything you need to say. These are going to be the Roman numerals on your outline, the venues in which you’ll discuss your topic. Each of these categories should be directly related to your topic.

If you’re working on a blog post or a business memo, these are your section headings. If it’s a five-paragraph essay, these are paragraphs two through four. If it’s a book…these might be chapters, but they’re more likely to be “volumes.” In a three-act novel, for instance, I’d have Act I, Act II, and Act III as my Roman numerals. In a textbook about writing, I might have Prewriting, Writing, and Rewriting.

Once you’ve figured out your groups, start adding some ideas to them — actual things you want to say. Make sure each fits cleanly in one of your groups. If not, you might need to rethink the categories (or cut out that point).

Organize Your Ideas

Now it’s time to choose an organization method. Look at your ideas, look at the groups they fall into, and then look at your purpose (or topic). What’s the best way to organize these pieces to build the structure you really want?

The answer to that is your outline. Go ahead and start rearranging your groups (and ideas) into a nested format. You don’t have to start labeling the lines yet (your big Bs and little Cs), but start drawing the relationships, like so:

Introduction

My topic

Why it matters

Why you should listen to me

First category

How it’s related to the topic

Why it matters

What you should do about it

If they don’t work — say, for instance, you just can’t make one group fit cleanly anywhere — then that’s a problem you would have encountered in your writing, too. You would have been typing (or scribbling) happily along, expounding to your heart’s content, and then realized the next obvious thing to do would be to write your conclusion, but you’d left out a major part of your argument. And, even worse, you really can’t think of any clean place to cram it in. I know, I’ve been there.

It’s much easier to fix that sort of problem at the planning stage, because otherwise it’s going to involve some extensive rewriting. Maybe you need a new organization of your groups, or maybe you need to cut the awkward group after all. Maybe you need to redistribute your ideas, or go back to square one and make up all new categories. Trust me, even if it comes to that worst case, it’s still a lot less work than writing yourself into a corner before you ever know there’s a problem.

Making it Official — Using the Standard Outline Format

Once you’ve put in that much work, it’s worth going the final step and putting the whole thing into a formal outline. You’ve got your organization settled now, but a formal outline will force you to think through more detailed issues like the balance and depth of your arguments.

That’s often the step that people find most intimidating, but once you’ve got a category list and major ideas, it’s really just a little extra paperwork to finish it off. Come back tomorrow and I’ll review the rules (and benefits) of the standard outline format.

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On Document Outlines: My Great Debate

By Aaron Pogue on Sunday, June 13, 2010
The standard outline format shown on a printed page

Outline a document to perfect its structure.

I’ve talked a lot about my dad around here (and will again). Maybe I should just add him to my About page….

Anyway, he put himself through college on a debate scholarship, and he felt like the lessons learned from that program helped him in a lot more ways than just paying for his education. He learned how to win arguments, but more than that he learned how to really understand what someone else was saying, and how to help other people understand ideas he wanted to communicate.

He learned how to critically examine an idea or belief, to consider it from every angle and subject it to the rigorous demands of pure logic. He learned to think on his feet, to manage the stresses of performance and competition, to memorize and research and take notes like a professional.

I know all this, because he and I argued the topic again and again and again when I was in high school and he insisted that I enroll in at least one semester of debate.

I was arguing, in the first place, because I had no interest in public speaking. By my Freshman year I’d already dedicated my life to writing, and I liked writing. I liked having time to build a well-worded argument, to dictate the shape and pace of the conversation, to review my errors and fix my mistakes before sharing them with the world.

Dad’s philosophy was always that education is all about stretching beyond your comfort zone, and he won that debate (of course). And, of course, he was right. I got better at sound logic, strong research, and quick thinking. I picked up all those skills he’d mentioned — learned them so deeply that I never really had to try again — and among them one he’d never brought up. I learned how to write an outline.

Boy howdy.

I already knew how to take notes, to sketch an overview, but I didn’t usually “outline” per se. I didn’t even really learn the difference until I got to my first competition. I gave my big speech — carefully and beautifully structured — and then my counterpart on the other team stood up to respond. He took a deep breath, and launched into attack.

“Roman one, you talked about immigration controls, but your case focuses exclusively on emigration…. Big B, your cited source refers to a policy the U. S. has considered, but it has since been rejected…. Number 2 establishes a possible solution but it’s totally at odds with your assumptions in Roman three, big B, number 2, little C.”

I just stared at him, stunned. I didn’t have any big Bs or little Cs. I didn’t know what he was talking about!

Visualizing Underlying Structure

Of course, he was referring to the standard outline format, and I’ll get into that Tuesday. Outside of debate, though, nobody really uses the outline format as a reference structure (calling out points by their labels). That means you don’t need to worry too much about getting yours perfect.

The value of a well-made outline, though, is keeping you on topic. An outline isn’t just a summary, it’s a structure, a map of the relationships between ideas. Come back tomorrow, and I’ll help you understand what a document outline really does for you (and why it’s worth the effort).

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Serial Fiction: How to Write a Serial Novel

By Aaron Pogue on Saturday, June 12, 2010

By now you know what serial fiction is, and if you’re anything like the commenters we heard from Thursday, you’re anxious to write some (or already enjoying it). As I demonstrated yesterday, I’ve got some advice from personal experience on how to get the most out of it.

I’ve already introduced you to the Creative Copy Challenge, and even mentioned the serial novel I’m writing over there, The Girl Who Stayed the Same.

Last week the “serial” bit tripped me up pretty badly. I wanted to put my main character on a train to Chicago to land a lucrative ad deal, so in that Monday’s post I had a friend stop by and invite her to Chicago. Then on Thursday I wrote the scene where he explained why they were going, and I remembered I’d already said something about the ad agency.

So I flipped back in my draft to double-check it, see if maybe it had a name, and discovered to my chagrin that the ad agency was in New York. The art gallery was in Chicago.

Since I’ve been posting each scene as I write it, I can’t just go back and change that minor detail. I’ve got a dozen readers who would be really confused (or at least disappointed) at my changing the world around willy-nilly.

I can handle that, though. Remember Thursday’s story? Remember what I said about flexibility? It messed me up in Sleeping Kings, as I told you yesterday, but I learned from that.

Sure, my story has changed. Instead of following my carefully-written plot outline and repeating the client meeting I’ve had scripted for a month, I’ve spent this whole week riffing — and discovering a whole new (and, as it turns out, quite exciting) direction for Kelly’s budding career.

Constant Motion

I’ve talked a lot this week about the lessons you can learn from serial publication’s hardships, but the biggest benefit is much more direct, and more concrete. The way I’m writing this book generates constant motion.

That motion takes several forms. One is regular progress. We should all be striving for daily writing, but none of us can really keep that up. (Right? Please tell me it’s not just me!) With the CCC, though, I’ve got a twice-weekly commitment and regular readers waiting to know what happens next. That’s a powerful motivational force.

When you’re in the midst of a long novel with no deadline, it can be hard to find motivation to work on it on any given day. It’s just too big. This way, I do have a deadline (two a week).

And I’ve got discrete chunks, too. Instead of a To Do list item of

Make progress on the novel this month.

it’s

Write 1,000 words for CCC today.

That just feels a lot more manageable.

It also helps you keep the editing beast at bay. You’re not “working on your book” (with the constant temptation to fix everything that’s broken), you’re just writing this scene.

That makes it a lot easier to spend your time where you’re supposed to be spending it — telling the story. Rewrites and revision can wait until it’s done.

Constant Feedback

Serial publication also keeps you in direct, regular contact with your readers. Traditional publishing can create a vast gulf there, between a writer building a story in isolation, polishing a draft through several revisions (and over several months) before shopping it for who knows how long, and then after it’s accepted there’s typesetting and printing and distribution all on the publisher’s schedule.

With all that to consider, by the time a story reaches readers (and starts generating feedback) it might be years since the writer last engaged with the story in any kind of creative way (which severely limits how useful any feedback can be).

That’s one of the reasons you need to get some good test readers who’ll be willing to comment on your drafts. Another solution, though, is to incubate the story in rich feedback from the very first scene.

For one thing, you’ll get a lot more feedback, because it’s easier to find something to say about a three-page scene than to find a hundred things to say about a big honkin’ book. But what’s really surprised me this time (and what I’m loving best about the CCC) is finding people anxious to read every new scene.

Knowing that’s happening leaves me looking forward to my next entry, and it compels me to make every single scene worth that level of reader attention. In a way none of my other books do (even books with much more exciting plots), every single page pops.

The lovely Kelley, writing at a coffee shopBlog a Book (Creative Writing Exercise)

Does that sound like something you’d like to see in your own writing? What about the promise of constant feedback? Would you like some lightly structured writing time (without the frenetic insanity of NaNoWriMo)? Or what about just trying something new?

If any of that appeals to you, I’d recommend you give it a try. The best artists never stop experimenting, and even if serial publication doesn’t turn out to be “your thing,” I guarantee you’ll grow from the experience.

It’s easy to do, too. You can join us at the CCC on Monday (or go back to last Thursday’s if you’re ready to start now). You can add a regular series to your existing blog, like Justin does with his Fiction Saturday. Or you can start a new blog just for this project (that’s what I did with Sleeping Kings).

Whichever route you go, you’ll find lots of encouragement among our commenters here. Let us know where to find your story, because we’d all love to see it. And if you run into any problems, if you have any questions…we’ve got lots of old pros hanging around, too. Just ask, and we’ll do our best to guide you through the process.

Chances are, you’ll love it.

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Serial Fiction: A Brief History

By Aaron Pogue on Friday, June 11, 2010

Yesterday I started talking about serial publication. “Serial publication” may be a new concept to you, but if you’ve been around for a while, you probably remember I’ve tried it out before, writing (and publishing) a novel as a blog.

You probably don’t know that, for  a while, I was working on making a business out of the idea. I wanted to build a website, aNewMyth.com, dedicated to serial publication projects. The plan was to enlist quality writers to provide free, ongoing stories for readers’ entertainment (ad-supported, of course), and pass that wealth along to the writers.

That model is actually a really good one for writers and, as I said yesterday, one like it gave rise to some of the most famous works in Western Literature. Back then it wasn’t blogs that carried the weekly chapters, of course, but newspapers and periodicals.

Learning from the Greats

Yesterday I talked about Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. The way I’d originally heard that story, it was the result of a fan outcry at the death of Athelstane when Scott published that chapter (albeit a fan outcry strongly supported by a grief-stricken editor). It just made sense, then, that Ivanhoe was a serial novel. I try to do at least rudimentary fact-checking before sharing my brilliance with you, though, and if Ivanhoe was serial fiction, Wikipedia doesn’t know about it.

Regardless, I could name countless other authors who did find their fame (or at least a significant portion of it) in serial format — authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas. The latter wrote one of my all-time favorite series, The Three Musketeers, as a long-running serial. Most people have heard of The Man in the Iron Mask but many don’t realize it was (for all intents and purposes) the series finale of a story that had run through seven full seasons (1844-1850).

Many of the authors who made their names in serial publication are famous not only for the quality but also for the quantity of their work. That’s not a coincidence. Serial publication (whether you’re writing a novel or just blogging) teaches you to put words on paper, and to think of yourself as a productive writer all the time. It’s a great way to become prolific.

In addition, it helps you avoid one of the biggest challenges of storytelling in the novel format — bounding your story. You don’t have to guess where to start your story. Just start where you want, and go back after the fact to pull together scenes to make a manuscript.

Does that sound familiar? It’s the foundation of the stories blogbook (and one of the principles in my recent guide, How to Build an e-Book.

A lot of authors balk at the idea, wondering why an audience would buy a book that’s just a compilation of previously-published posts. Buyers have been doing just that for hundreds of years, though. If they hadn’t, you probably would never have heard the name Sherlock Holmes.

Learning from Mistakes

Of course, sometimes it doesn’t work out. My first big attempt at serialized fiction, Sleeping Kings, was deliberately meant to become a novel (or, actually, a series of four or five), but it was slow to get started, and over time it became a different kind of story than it started out.

I’ve spent years since then trying to shape a novel or two out of the nearly 200,000 words I wrote on that blog, but it just doesn’t work. I’ve got a compelling story trapped in there, and another 120,000-word sequel already finished (with a third fully outlined). Even with all that to lose, I’ve spent the last couple months realizing Sleeping Kings is a lost cause.

That doesn’t mean it was a waste of time, though. It was a profound learning experience, yielding lessons I’ve applied directly in the design and structure of every novel I’ve written since then, and even some serial-specific practices that I’m using to great effect in my newest project, The Girl Who Stayed the Same.

Among other things, I’ve learned the noble art of the retcon. I talked about that a little bit yesterday, with Athelstane’s unlikely resurrection, but I’ve painted myself into similar corners more than once.

During Josh’s story in Sleeping Kings, I introduced a character, Henson, who showed up with a really badass toy. Or possibly not. Here’s how I explained it in my post-mortem review of the writing process:

Probably more confusing was the issue of Henson’s helicopter. The first time Josh shows up at Wright-Patt, the general offers him a helicopter crew. Then Josh leaves heading toward the crazy governor near Pennsylvania, but the helicopter isn’t quite prepped yet, so it’s going to catch up to them on the road. When it shows up, it’s a big deal. Josh’s convoy is getting fired on by some thugs up on an overpass. Suddenly Henson arrives to save the day.

If you go back to that story, it says something like: “Josh had expected some lunky helicopter, maybe with a deck-mounted machinegun in the back, but this was something altogether cooler. It was a gunship, with heavy machineguns on both sides, and it made short work of the bad guys.”

But (since you’ve been reading the end of the novel, you’ll remember this), by the end of the book, I’m making a clear distinction between Henson’s helicopter, and “the gunships” which refers to the other two that they picked up (on their return trip through Wright-Patt, if I remember correctly).

There’s a simple reason for that. Henson was never planned, and air support was never really intended for Josh. It just sort of happened. When I had the helicopter show up, I immediately thought how badass it would be, in the movie, to have a Blackhawk or Apache or whatever suddenly crest the bridge from behind and blow the baddies away. Sweet! So I wrote that scene in.

Then, a couple pages later, Josh and his crew are trapped in the crazy governor’s military base, and need to make an escape, and the most expedient way to do that is for them to pile into the helicopter and fly away. Unfortunately, that means that Josh was wrong back at the bridge — it was a big clunky passenger transport helicopter with a machinegun mounted in the cargo section. *Sigh*

So I made the change. And, wouldn’t you know it, Josh’s air support became a major plot element for the rest of the story. As a result, I got to spend a lot of time in the blog’s comment section, for the rest of the story, explaining that, no, Henson wasn’t in the gunships. I’d changed that.

Making Something Great

I learned from that experience, though. And this week I found myself stuck in a similar position with this new project, but I’m prepared to handle it a lot better this time around.

It’s not just about learning to avoid the special difficulties of serial writing, though. The lessons I’ve learned help me in all my writing. I’m better at conceptualizing large plot constructs, at pacing scenes and planning volumes, at managing the careful balance between research and rough-drafting.

Yes, it’s got some difficulties of its own, but writing like this gives you opportunities to grow as a writer that are hard to find anywhere else. Come back tomorrow, when I’ll explain how to use serial writing to improve your fiction.

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On Serial Fiction: Unkilling Athelstane

By Aaron Pogue on Thursday, June 10, 2010

Lately I’ve been thinking about a funny story that has to do with the writing of Ivanhoe — a novel I just finished reading. “Funny” isn’t really a word usually associated with Ivanhoe, but the book does have its moments and one of its most reliable sources of levity is a character named Athelstane.

Athelstane was a really minor character who had a major impact on the plot. He didn’t do much, but his existence provided one of the key sources of conflict that drove the story. In order for the plot to work, he needed to be around until the climax, and then die. Simple, straightforward storytelling.

The problem Scott ran into was keeping Athelstane around — giving his character a purpose, scene to scene, so that he could continue driving the plot without boring the readers. Scott solved that problem using one of our go-to writing tools.

Athelstane became the comic relief.

He was a funny guy, too. Laid back, cool to a fault, a little bit slow but always willing to weigh in on the fiery events going on around him. He really started to shine when, kidnapped and thrown in a dungeon to be held for ransom, his cool finally shattered — not at the danger or the physical abuse or even the indignity to his person, but at having to miss his lunch.

Shortly after that came his moment of glory, his plot-essential role. Freed from his cell, the castle under assault and vicious battle all around him, he finally found his courage and rushed into the fray. He faced down the story’s villain wearing just his nightclothes, a busted chair leg his only weapon.

And, as had to happen, he was cut down. Scott wasn’t subtle about it, either. The villain, a knight in full armor and mounted on a warhorse, charged the hapless Athelstane and swung a battle axe at his naked head. It connected. The blade split Athelstane’s head from the top, cleaving it through to the teeth. That’s dead.

When he sent that chapter to his editor, it became a big problem. Turns out Scott had done such a good job with the comic relief that Athelstane was his editor’s favorite character. Scott went right on telling his story as it needed to unfold, but he started getting letters from his editor demanding that he undo Athelstane’s death scene.

In the end, his editor won out. Three chapters later Scott finally swallowed his pride, retconned like the best of them, and gave his readers a classic soap opera resurrection scene.

He found ways to explain it away (if awkwardly). He patched together his plot so it still worked. And, most importantly, he told a really great story start to finish, even if it did stumble a bit at places.

The History of Serial Publication

That sort of flexibility is an important trait in writers. I’ve had to exercise it more than once in my own writing career, and the number one thing that’s helped me develop it is my experience with several serial fiction projects.

With its special challenges and unique experience, serial publication teaches lessons like that, often in ways you can’t get elsewhere. Writers have known that for a long time, too. In fact, some of the great classics of Western Literature were written and published as serial novels.

This week I’d like to talk a little bit about the difficulties and the benefits of writing serial fiction, and encourage you to try it for yourself. So come back tomorrow for an introduction to serial fiction, and Saturday for some advice on actually writing serial fiction (and dealing with the worst of its pitfalls).

Photo credit pete-astn.

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What I Learned about Writing this Week…from Cause and Effect, Redux

By Courtney Cantrell on Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Or: The Story of How I Acquired a Most Cramazing Hat

This past weekend, the husband and I went on a float trip with friends. Our destination was the Illinois River near Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Ed had Friday off, and he drove over to Tahlequah Thursday evening, so as to finalize some paperwork for our purchase of a new-to-us vehicle. I had a doctor’s appointment early Friday morning, so the plan was for me to hitch a ride with fellow floaters Friday evening.

I hope you’re with me so far, because it’s about to get complicated.

Part of the plan was for my parents to feed our cat while we were gone. Since my mom was going to be in the vicinity of my doctor’s office Friday morning, we agreed to meet up after my appointment, so I could give her Ed’s house key. I would need my own key later on whilst going in and out of the apartment during my get-ready-for-floating preparations.

This, of course, necessitated my relieving Ed of his key before he left on Thursday.

Which, of course, I neglected to do.

So. It’s Friday morning, Ed’s in Tahlequah, I have one house key to my name, and I need it later, so I cannot give it to my mother. What’s a girl to do?

A girl tells her mother that she will tape the house key to the underside of the blue bicycle on the porch, that’s what a girl does. Go-Go-Gadget Plan B!

Five-thirty on Friday afternoon saw me putting the finishing touches on my getting-readiness, when my friend Celia arrived to pick me up. One of the last things I thought of before I started collecting my various bags and bundles was, “Don’t forget your hat.” Then, in the shuffle of juggling bags and taping the key to the underside of the dusty, not-wanting-to-be-adhered-to bike seat, I forgot my hat.

Fast forward to Saturday morning in Tahlequah. The whole group is ready to go. We’re bedecked in swimsuits, tank tops, and shorts; we’re besunscreened in SPFs out the wazoo. There’s good-natured jostling and last-minute chatter concerning who’s taking a canoe and who’s taking a raft. And I am bemoaning my frustration at having let the key-taping business make me forget my hat–without which my cracker-white scalp is going to end up a not-so-nice shade of crimson.

That’s when I spy the assortment of protective cranial equipment in the window of the resort store. Dragging the husband after me, I haul rear into said store and start ogling. I don’t have much time, because at any moment, our group might be called to climb aboard the bus that will take us to our cast-off point. And there are a lot of different hats on these shelves. If you know anything at all about me, dear inklings, you already know that I wear a lot of hats, both literally and figuratively. As I stand there, staring at the wealth of noggin covers before me, I know I don’t have the luxury of being as picky as I usually am.

There! Way up on the top shelf, I see them. I reach up, pluck the frontmost from its perch, and clutch it excitedly to my bosom. (Okay, not really. I didn’t clutch; I just wanted to say bosom.) Anyway, I turn the hat over in my hands, examining. It’s straw, it’s got wire in the brim, it’s got a band with beads on it, it’s completely hokey, and it’s different from any hat I’ve ever owned. It’s perfect. I’m in love with it even before I plop it onto my head and squint at my barely-there reflection in the window of the ice machine.

Of course, I bought it. The hat, not the ice machine. In front of me in line was a woman with four kids, all of whom wanted popsiclecandykeychainringpop, and I thought that if our group got the bus call before I paid for this hat, I might just commit my first ever act of shoplifting. Okay, not really. But I did feel a gut-tightening sense of doom as I watched the gaggle of (absolutely adorable) kids clamoring for their gimmes–a seemingly insurmountable obstacle between me and true ownership of my precious (hat).

This story has a happy ending. I got my hat, and I didn’t even have to submerge my gangrel body in a superheated pool of lava to do it. I boarded the bus with my friends, and we launched our various craft onto the river with much joyous hullabaloo. My new hat protected my head smashingly, and it even survived my falling overboard once and the canoe’s capsizing once. I came away with some lovely purple bruises, but my new hat retained its perfect splendor.

I am so glad I forgot to get the key from Ed.

Play With Reality

You see? Aha! Now we come to the whole point of this story. I wasn’t trying to wow you with my memoir writing skills. I wasn’t just trying to regale you with a witty anecdote about Courtney’s Swiss Cheese Brain Adventures. This whole sordid story illustrates a point: I wouldn’t have gotten my cramazing new hat (effect) if I hadn’t forgotten to ask Ed for his key (cause). For had I gotten Ed’s key, I wouldn’t have been stressed about taping mine to the bike, and I would have remembered to take my green ballcap, which isn’t nearly as much fun as my beaded, wire-brimmed, hokey new straw hat, which makes me smile every time I look at it.

Cause and effect, my dears. Look for it in your own lives. Of course, there are deeper implications in the concept, but for our purposes here, I’m keeping it simple. What are some effects in your life, good and bad? What are their causes? Where does frustration turn into serendipity? You can use these moments and these event sequences in your writing.

Sometimes, your real life experiences will make the story. Sometimes, you can take the real end of your personal story and fabricate a wild tale leading up to it. (Maybe I bought the hat because I was on the lam from the law and needed a quick disguise. Maybe I slipped in with that group of twenty-somethings, so as to use them and their good nature as the perfect cover…) Sometimes, you can take the real catalyst and change the effects. (Maybe a strange, ethereal child found my key before my mother did. Maybe when my mother arrived, she found the apartment door unlocked, and when she went in, the child was in there, and it was glowing….)

Once again, I’m encouraging you to play. Forget what really happened; change cause and effect to suit yourself, to suit your story, to suit your characters. For the love of gobstoppers, have fun! And don’t forget your hat!

And that’s WILAWriTWe.

Photo credit Ed Cantrell.

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Researching Your Writing

By Aaron Pogue on Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Okay, it’s taken two days to get here, but I’ve promised to tell you how to ace A. P. exams (and how to improve your writing research in the process).

Yesterday I explained everything needed for good research: analyzing the information you find for relevance to your topic, dangerous bias, and ultimate implications. The problem with all that, though, is that it takes too much time.

Especially when you’re on a deadline, and we’re all on a deadline.

Take a Stand

My A. P. teachers understood that, too, and they taught me how to get around it. It’s the most valuable lesson they ever taught me, too.

For a full semester they let us all try the test our way, banging our heads against the time limits again and again while we tried to evaluate our source materials, and every time we were stuck with something unsatisfactory when the buzzer went off.

Some of my classmates tried studying harder, memorizing everything, but there were too many topics, too many angles that could be presented in the tests. That was never a solution (and it’s certainly not one I would have tried).

No, the answer was a lot simpler than that. About halfway through the class, they finally taught us the trick.

Take a stand.

That’s it. Easiest thing in the world. Stop relying on all that readily-available information, and take a risk. Pick a side — the questions always required it anyway — figure out exactly what you want to say, and then start looking at the resources you’ve got.

We practiced that for weeks. Every class we’d get a question, and an info packet, but we were required to outline an entire five-paragraph essay before we were allowed to open the envelope. It was definitely a little bit daunting, wondering if I really understood the question, wondering if my opinion would sound stupid (or unsupportable, anyway) once I found out all the facts.

Defending Your Position

And you know what? Sometimes it did. Sometimes I had to trash 2/3 of my outline once I was confronted with the facts. Sometimes I just added a “not” to every claim I’d planned to make. It didn’t matter, though. Even with those necessary adjustments, I was able to finish in time.

Instead of blundering blindly into the implications of the data, or getting paralyzed by the tedious process of evaluating it, now I was spending most of my time writing. I was spending most of my attention on building an argument, taking a stance. Then, when I went to the evidence, I already knew what I needed.

Instead of evaluating each piece on its own merits, I evaluated how it fit into my message. That was not only a faster evaluation, it was also a much better one.

Using Your Voice

So how does that apply to you? It’s the answer to your deadline problem. It’s the answer to your information problem. It might even be the answer to your purpose problem.

Carlos inspired this post with one of the first of his Sunday Shorts, “Singing in the Shower.” He talked about that hesitation we all feel when it comes to blogging on any given topic. After all, everything we have to say…it’s all been said before, tons of times, often by people better than us. Right?

And the answer is yes. The answer was yes when I was writing essays for the College Board, the answer was yes when I was writing personal blog posts about religion and politics, and the answer is yes for everything I do here at Unstressed Syllables. You can get writing advice all over the internet.

The only thing that’s different here, is me — my voice, my perspective, my life experience and my opinions. And you know what? People keep coming back for more of it.

That’s the lesson I learned, those many years ago, toiling through a couple really hard high school classes. The testmakers aren’t looking for the truth. The testmakers aren’t looking for the right answer. They’re looking for your ability to express yourself. It takes good form and it takes a minimum level of understanding, but more than anything else, it takes you.

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The Right Way to Do Research

By Aaron Pogue on Monday, June 7, 2010

No matter what kind of writing you do, from time to time you’re going to have to do research. Maybe that involves backing up a claim that is central to your argument or making sure the plot you’re developing is even remotely believable.

There are several elements that go into great research. If you want to get it right, it takes a little more than typing a question into Google or browsing Wikipedia. Not a lot more — and not a lot more effort, once you know what you’re doing — but it takes a special focus.

The best way for me to explain it is to show you. So I’ll pick up where I left off yesterday, with the story of my high school English and History teachers who taught me how to ace A. P. tests.

Learning the Rules

See…one of the hardest parts of those A. P. tests is the essay portion. The testmakers provide you with a topic — a question that forces you to take a stance — and then a big packet of information — articles and news clips and book excerpts like you might have found with some really dedicated research.

Then your job is to write an essay answering the question and using the research packet as supporting evidence. On first glance it seems easy, because they give you all the information you need to answer the question!

The problem is that the testmakers, when they’re building the information packet, work aggressively to trick you. So some of the information in the packet is relevant, and some isn’t. Much of it is contradictory, too, but often in ways that aren’t obvious at all.

Many, many students have failed those essay tests by building their essays on two really compelling articles, getting halfway done, and only then discovering that their thesis makes no sense because of the implications of the two articles they used.

That might sound cruel (and we certainly thought it was when Mr. Davis first explained it to us). It’s actually an ingenious representation of real life, though. The information we have access to is complicated, and it can absolutely be deceptive.

Learning to master those tests taught us early on to look for the hidden bias, to figure out what this selection of facts implies about the truth from which those facts were selected. We learned how to evaluate the significance of a given piece of material, and how to effectively connect an important but poorly-worded bit of information into our essays.

Writing to a Deadline

Those are all important research and writing skills, but the final exam was going to be timed. So as we got further into the semester, both professors started insisting that we practice going through the process faster and faster and faster.

Eventually, it became quite clear that good research principles take too much time. There was no way to evaluate all of the evidence, figure out the right thing to say, and then craft a decent document in the time we were given.

Does that sound familiar to you? It’s what the rest of the world calls a “deadline.” Whether you’re writing blog posts or whitepapers or maintenance handbooks, there’s just too much information available for us to ever hope to find, understand, and synthesize every single bit of relevant info. It’s a beautiful sentiment, but it doesn’t work in the real world.

Researching Your Writing

That’s the problem: information overload. And what’s the answer? It’s a tantalizingly simple process, but I’m out of time for today. It’s time for me to close the book and put down my pencil. Still, come back tomorrow, and I’ll tell you exactly how to do effective, efficient research to improve your writing.

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The Right Way to Learn

By Aaron Pogue on Sunday, June 6, 2010
A high school campus

Never stop learning.

I’ve got a few good stories from high school, most of which don’t make me look like a really great student. I’ve been repeating one in particular lately that’s all about skipping classes (lots of classes) and claiming with certainty that, as a writer, I didn’t need school.

I was wrong — that’s the punchline of that particular story — but the impression that story gives is wrong, too. I always excelled in school. I have a knack for tests and (as you’ve seen) a deep appreciation for the essay form.

I also love learning. Always have. I just got tremendously bored whenever I was stuck sitting in classes not learning.

Those were mostly just the General Ed classes, though. I loved my language classes (English, French, Latin, Spanish, Biblical Greek, and Russian, in that order), and of course I always showed up for creative writing, but when it came to learning, nothing ever beat A. P.

My high school offered a ton of Advanced Placement courses — high school classes that could count for college credit, if you learned enough to pass the final exam. Of course, the lion’s share of the A. P. classes were sciences and maths, and I didn’t want to work that hard on something I wouldn’t be pursuing.

The ones that appealed to me were English Lit. and U. S. History. Mr. Davis taught English, and Mrs. Davis taught History. Husband and wife, they taught those two classes with a powerful synergy.

For two straight semesters, their sole focus was to teach us how to ace A. P. tests. Don’t mistake that for any kind of shortcut, though.

From day one they flooded us with information, and then required us to demonstrate a total understanding of all of it. Every class period felt like an A. P. Exam. It was brutal, but when the actual exam rolled around, it felt old hat.

I worked harder in those two classes than in any other class I’ve ever taken. I learned more, too — not just facts and theories, but life skills. I showed up, I paid attention, and even if it was only for fifty minutes at a time, I sure looked like a really great student in there.

The Right Way to Do Research

One of the best skills I learned in those classes was the right way to do research. I’d been using the school library to support essays for years, and by that point (1997) I was getting pretty good at finding information on this crazy World Wide Web thing.

There’s more to good research than just finding information, though. Especially when you’re writing to a deadline.

That was a critical lesson for me when I was preparing to take the A. P. exams, and it’s just as valuable for you now, whether you’re trying to find time to pack extra relevance into your weekly blog posts or hoping to finish your final pass revision on your novel with a little bit of fact-checking.

Come back tomorrow, and I’ll tell you what I learned about doing research to improve my writing under pressure.

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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