Outline in progress… or not

Last Thursday I was feeling pretty good about an outline I was developing, then Friday rolled around and I discovered that I was in deeper shit than I realized. I made the classic rookie mistake. I didn’t know my story. I thought I did, and kept trying to tell myself I did, but deep down, I knew I didn’t. I started feeling it when I began to struggle with the concept. Ideas should flow freely at the researching/outlining stage. I began to second guess myself if what I was writing was funny or not. I ended my writing on Friday not feeling great about my new concept, which was trying to merge two comic ideas into a larger story, a mashup. You see, I had written an article previous that was quite humorous and lots of research had already gone into it. When I tried to merge this with another idea, it wouldn’t mix. It wasn’t funny. It was oil and water.

I spent the entire weekend going through it over and over in my head, when it dawned on me that I really didn’t know how my story was going to end. I had my beginning and my act one break, but it started to fall apart at the act two break and the end. Luckily I caught it at the outline stage. Can you imagine how much time would have been wasted if I had continued onwards and written a script? Not only that, I would have been left with a comedy script that wasn’t funny.

I went back to my lengthy and well researched article to see if I could create a story with a beginning, act one break, act two break and an ending. Suddenly the ideas began to fly and everything started to feel right. It’s good to know where you’re going, especially with an outline since it will become the spine of the story. You need a strong spine to hang all the dramatic or comedic muscle on.

I am going to have to start the whole process over again and formulate a new story. With the beginning, act one break, act two break and ending known, I think it will be a lot easier to construct an outline that works.

Kneel down and praise the almighty outline. Thank you for telling me to stop this piece of crap and start on something I’d be proud to show to friends and family.