I agree with your outlining philosophy. Being creative is easy. Being an artist is all about discipline.
Nicely put. It explains why all my relatives ask me why there isn't a sitcom about "this" on the air, or a movie about "that." Truth is, the ideas are good, and coming up with them was easy. But that's where they stop and turn back to their day jobs.
Hi Roger, loved your post. I'm a huge fan of detailed outlining. I used to end up with first drafts that needed cutting by at least 10-15 pages, but since I started outlining, my first drafts come in at around 70-80 pages. Oh, the JOY of having room to expand! Rewriting is a lot more fun now. Once I've set the parameters for the story, characters, and scenes, then I can make it really sing.
Alexis
What a happy ending! To be honest, my only fear about "front-loading" is that the outlining process somehow drains some of the intense feeling out of the subsequent draft. Or in the case of humor, makes me pull back on more outrageous jokes. I'm hoping Wordsworth was right when he said that poetry (or in our case, prose) is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility.
Show business is, first and foremost, a business. It therefore shares many of the planning concepts employed in other businesses. Whether writing scripts, books, songs, documents or really good e-mails is a skill and requires a structure, which can better be exposed and achieved by a disciplined approach. We all know that creativity is the initial spark and it can range from epiphany to vomit, depending on the artist's personality and mind set, but the defined communication of that early "egg" does need substance developed in phases. Egg evolves to cells, which in turn evolve to skeleton and then to meat. Always consider the meat and then meet it.
Don't forget the skill it takes to craft a really good blog comment -- like the one above!
Commenting by HaloScan
