Some authors have a rough idea in their head of where their plot is going, while others like to fly by the seat of their pants. In the latter case, part of the pleasure of writing their story is not knowing themselves what happens. This can work well for some, but many writers like a road map that will guide them through their novel.
In this blog post I will look at three authors I worked with who used some sort of outline before they wrote their novel in full. At the end of the post, I have some book recommendations for anyone who wants to dig further into outlining and structuring their plot.
Case One
The first client I worked with who used an outline started with a summary of her plot, chapter by chapter, of only a few thousand words at most. She included character profiles as well. Although it wasn’t the novel itself, I still applied developmental editing to the manuscript. I read the outline a few times, leaving margin comments and also wrote up a report.
From this she was able to get her feedback without the cost of a full developmental edit, and her novel was written more speedily.
She did not return to me for an edit of the whole finished manuscript (though I did developmentally edit the opening chapters), but her novel (a comedy thriller) garnered good reviews on Amazon. I also went over the outline of her second novel the same way.
Case Two
The second client used the Save the Cat model of structuring a novel. He used it over a number of books and would send me the first draft as a rough outline with some scenes sketched out fully. These outlines could run to 15,000 words or so.
Again, I went over the manuscript several times, left margin comments, wrote a report, and also did a chapter-by-chapter breakdown in at least one edit.
Once he had expanded on his rough outlined draft, he sent me the full draft. I would then developmentally edit them with margin comments and a full report.
He also left his own comments in the margins for me to respond to – in relation to queries he had. I would respond back in the margins.
This method of working allowed the author to write and publish a number of books in a fairly short period of time. They all received high ratings on Amazon.
Not all writers would necessarily find this approach useful, but with a definite (in this case Save the Cat) structure that he used for each book, he had a roadmap for where important events should take place, and he never had unnecessary scenes. His novels were lean and the pacing was on point.
Case Three
The third client sent me a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline (close to 20K words) where she was summarising the plot, without sketching out scenes in more depth. She was focused on ensuring that every chapter served a purpose in advancing plot, character conflict, obstacles, etc. Her outline included her reasons for her choices.
As with the previous clients, I read the outline several times, wrote many margin comments, plus a full report.
As a consequence of her detailed road map, she was able to write out the whole novel of over 130,000 words or so in a relatively short period of time. Her scenes were written well and the quality of the writing was excellent. I later developmentally edited her full manuscript twice as per her request. She could have chosen one full edit, but a final check is always a good idea where possible.
Conclusion
So there you have it – 3 case studies on novel outlines. Not all writers want to plot out their novels in advance. They like to surprise themselves and they often like their characters to surprise them.
Of course, you can use an outline as a rough roadmap that you deviate from when appropriate. Having it acts like a safety net for some writers. They know it’s there if they get stuck.
Outlines can lead to faster writing, but this is partly because a lot of the work has been done up front in the planning and writing of the outline.
How long figuring out a plot will take is something that varies from author to author. Some will do a lot of the planning in their heads before they write anything down. Others will be jotting down ideas from the start and trying to organise them.
Want feedback on your novel outline?
If you’re interested in having your novel outline critiqued, you can contact me at karen@indiecateditorial.com and discuss your project with me. You can also check out my services pages here:
Some writers on a budget might opt only for a look at their outline, while those with a bit more money to spend will go for at least one developmental edit (or a manuscript critique which is lower in price).
Recommended Reading
There are other books on outlining which you can obviously check out. But here are some to get started with:
One of the mainstream published novels I read recently had far too much internal dialogue. Internal dialogue is the stream of thoughts, which can be in monologue or dialogue, that many people have in real life. Though, interestingly, not everyone experiences internal dialogue.
In fiction, showing a viewpoint character’s thoughts is an excellent way to strengthen characterisation. We can see the character’s changing emotions and thoughts, the questions they ask themself, their hopes and doubts.
Internal dialogue shows us the interior life of a character, adding an extra dimension to a story.
However, too much will interrupt scenes, cause lengthy breaks in external dialogue or action which can lead to readers struggling to pick up the story again. Too much will also slow down pacing.
Imagine a scene where a conversation is taking place, and the conversation is constantly interrupted by an extended section of internal dialogue. The character might ruminate over what’s being said, and that’s fine and good, but if it goes on too long the external scene becomes fragmented and hard to follow.
In the case of the gothic thriller I was reading, the internal dialogue also added far too much unnecessary word count.
I think part of the issue was that the author was often using internal dialogue to emphasise the stakes, as if they didn’t trust readers to work it out for themselves. But it would run on too long and become counterproductive.
Stakes should add to tension and pacing in more dramatic scenes, but stringing out the internal dialogue actually blows the pace. The author’s editor could have suggested cutting it back. I could see loads of places where cutting it back would boost not just pacing but the stakes by keeping things more focused.
I’ve read two books by this author and felt both were failed by the lack of proper developmental editing. There were also other issues including weak characterisation in relation to other characters. It was hard sometimes to tell the other characters apart. Less bloated sections of internal dialogue could have made room for better characters.
After I finished both novels, I checked the Amazon reviews and many other readers had the same issues.
Do you want feedback on your novel?
I’m currently open to new clients. And I’m adding a new version of my Opening Chapters Edit service. Previously this was always a developmental edit, featuring a report and comments in the margins of your manuscript. However, I’m also offering a manuscript critique version. This is basically just a report with no margin comments.
If you’re interested in either of these services, or a full developmental edit or manuscript critique, you can check out my services page here.
How editorial feedback changed Interview With The Vampire
Interview with the Vampire is one of the most famous vampire novels in history, easily ranking with Dracula and Carmilla as a milestone in the genre. It was a novel that not only changed the life of its author Anne Rice, but also the genre itself. This post looks at the background to the book, its writing, submission process, and how editorial feedback changed Interview with the Vampire, leading to Anne Rice switching to the ending readers know today.
WARNING for spoilers relating to the current ending of the novel versus the original ending. Anyone who has not read the book, seen the film, or heard the story should stop reading now.
It’s part of literary folklore (though also true) that Interview started as a short story. Anne reworked this story a few times and you can read a version of it in The Vampire Companion, listed in the reading material at the end of this post.
In late 1973, she returned to it, developing it further so that it became a novel she famously wrote in five weeks. She wrote long into the night, her husband learning to sleep with the light on. Sometimes he slept on the couch.
Rice wrote at night, researched at the library during the day, and also drank. She was still in the throes of grief after the death of her young daughter Michelle from leukaemia.
For most of her writing life, Anne would identify more with the villain of her first published novel – Lestat. But at this point in her life, she was more wedded to the dark pessimism, guilt and grief of Louis, who suffers the loss of his brother early on, the loss of his mortal life, and the loss of his daughter-companion later.
The novel’s frame narrative introduces the interview and the location – San Francisco. In fact, Anne had previously accompanied her poet husband Stan to a small radio station on Divisadero Street. Now the vampire would occupy such a space, telling the story of his life to an interviewer.
Though Anne lived in San Francisco at the time, through the novel she returned to the city of her childhood – New Orleans – richly describing climate, flora, streets, quarters, and the interiors of houses.
The novel tapped into her own history and recent bereavement, though she didn’t analyse it at the time.
Another influence on the novel was Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan, particularly in relation to Louis learning to become a vampire.
She read Carmilla but could not finish Dracula which showed vampires as more alien and animalistic. The 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter was more in line with her vision of vampires as tragic, with a conscience and the ability to suffer.
She broke with many of the usual genre tropes so that her vampires could see their own reflections, touch crucifixes, enter churches.
It was important that while they represented something magical in their immortality, the vampires themselves could see no evidence of something greater than themselves – namely, God or the Devil. This strengthens the existential angst for a character like Louis.
Finishing and submitting the first draft
After five weeks of furious writing, Anne finally finished the first draft of more than three hundred pages. In her diary she wrote:
It is just before four a.m. Monday morning, January 14 (1974), and I have just finished my vampire novel – 338 pages. Even as I write this the flaws occur to me. Perhaps I’ll go in and add something terribly essential. But right now I want to enjoy the moment of being finished… I am too excited about it to say anything humble or modest. I feel that even the writing of this entry is important. I dream, hope, imagine that this will be my first published work. I feel ashamed of nothing in it – not even what I know to be flaws. I feel solidly behind it as though Louis’ voice were my voice and I do not run the risk of being misunderstood.
Before she showed the manuscript to anyone, she sorted out the flaws in the ending. But that ending was very different from the present one.
In the meantime, she showed the novel to her husband. His first thought after finishing it was, “Our lives have changed.”
On the other hand, a writing group failed to appreciate the opening thirty pages, their comments unproductive.
When she sent the novel to someone who worked in film, he suggested she change the title. She didn’t take his advice.
She then sent the novel off to publishers and received many months of rejections.
Finally she ended up with two interested agents at the same time. She chose Phyllis Seidel and in October 1974 she received the news that Knopf would pay $12,000 for the hardback rights. This was six times the average for a first novel.
Anne’s new editor Victoria Wilson did want some changes – minor changes. She brought up something that is not uncommon in manuscripts.
The editorial feedback
In her editorial letter, Vicky Wilson wrote, “I think you were tired at the end. The end sort of peters out.” While other people who read the novel didn’t feel the same way, Anne felt that Vicky was right. The story calls for a tragic ending, and her energy had given out before she could properly conclude it.
It’s not uncommon for authors to be exhausted by the end of a draft. This can mean the ending is weaker or ends in the wrong place. The beginning can often be stronger because the author has more energy and motivation at that point. They are only at the beginning of the long marathon of writing a novel.
But what was the original ending?
The original ending
The novel up to Louis and Claudia going to Paris is pretty much the same as the published draft. But there is no Theatre of the Vampires. There is no climactic fire. There is no Madeleine. Lestat never appears, suggesting he likely died in the fire in New Orleans.
Instead, the Paris vampires live in an old mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain where they throw balls, recite Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, and drink animal blood in crystal glasses, served from a cauldron. Elderly human servants attend to them, humans who hope to become vampires one day.
Louis assumes the vampires are Satanic, leading him to hope they might have some answers to his existential questions. But Armand, the oldest of them, has no knowledge of either God or the Devil. This discussion still essentially exists in the published novel.
There are other scenes that don’t appear in the final draft, or which have been adapted. A girl is feasted on at the house in the early draft, while this takes place in the Theatre of the Vampires in the final version.
There’s a scene where Armand and Louis look out from a tower room to the Paris skyline beyond. Louis still suffers despair. He cannot stay with the Paris coven. They are too conformist and rigid in their rules. In Armand, he finds “the vampire of my dreams” and they go off together to wander the world. They’re still together by the time of the interview.
Meanwhile Claudia has embraced the Paris coven, fitting in where Louis does not. While the truth comes out about her attacking and likely killing Lestat, the other vampires decide he deserved it. The punishment in the final version leads to a dramatic climax. In this earlier version, Claudia is welcomed and joins with other vampire children to terrorize the priests and population of Paris.
There is more to this older draft, and you can find an outline of it in Katherine Ramsland’s The Vampire Companion, which is listed in the reading material at the end.
The attraction of the first draft’s ending might be evident to anyone who understands that in the child vampire Claudia, Anne Rice had immortalised her own daughter. “Claudia” was Michelle’s nickname. In granting Claudia a happier ending, she might have left her alive at the end of the book, but the overall happy ending wasn’t what the book needed.
According to Anne, “The ending wasn’t right. It just didn’t reach its cathartic pitch. In fact it didn’t really have an ending, so I went back and rewrote it, and then it had a horrendously different ending.”
The rewrite
Anne admits she didn’t really re-read the first half, only skimming it. Instead, she threw out the last hundred pages and spent ten weeks writing the new scenes and researching new material. She worked twelve hours a day. The novel’s world was growing and expanding and she was swept up in it once more.
This brought the manuscript up to 530 pages. It was far more than what her editor had asked for.
With the novel now having new scenes, plot twists, and a different tone and ending, the risk was that the publisher might not like it.
It was no longer the manuscript they’d bought.
But Vicky Wilson was delighted.
Later, Vicky and the editor-in-chief at Knopf told Anne that when authors are asked to revise, they don’t usually address most of the feedback. Some things are revised, but “they get very little back. There isn’t much more an author can do, and they know that.” (This was the mid-70s.)
Lessons from Interview with the Vampire
It is absolutely true that authors can run out of steam before they reach the end of their book. I have seen numerous manuscripts where the ending petered out.
But this is fixable.
It’s worth remembering that Anne Rice sent off an early draft. Some writers take longer and write a few before they submit it anywhere.
It’s certainly better to polish a manuscript over time, taking break periods where necessary.
It’s important to recuperate and return to the manuscript with more energy and objectivity.
Feedback from others also helps. For some, this will be writing groups.
Anne Rice didn’t find her contact with writers in this scenario as helpful. She had a poet husband who was supportive, but ultimately her own instincts told her to hold to her vision where necessary.
That same instinctual understanding of her characters and story told her how to fix the ending.
Her novel went on to become a classic of the genre. One that would change the vampire novel forever.
Whether you’re a beginner writer or you have more experience, editorial feedback offers a fresh insight into your characters, plot, story structure and more.
There are different levels of feedback. I offer an Opening Chapters Developmental edit, a Manuscript Critique, a Beta Critique (a bit shorter and cheaper than a Manuscript Critique), or a full Developmental Edit.
If you have any custom requests, feel free to contact me at karen@indiecateditorial.com or you can check my services page link below:
When Scott Fitzgerald heard his first novel This Side of Paradise was accepted, he immediately quit his job (repairing the roofs of railroad cars), and ran down the streets, stopping automobiles and friends to tell them the news.
His novel had been accepted by the traditionally conservative New York publishing house Charles Scribner’s Sons. And although Scott had sent previous drafts of the novel to Maxwell Perkins there, acceptance of This Side of Paradise marked the beginning of a professional relationship that would last for two decades.
Soon F. Scott Fitzgerald would become the voice of a generation – forever associated with the Jazz Age and flappers.
And Maxwell Perkins would go on to work with Thomas Wolfe and Ernest Hemingway, making him possibly the most famous and influential fiction editor in history.
Scott’s last letter to his editor, Max Perkins, was dated December 13th 1940. Scott died later that month from a heart attack. His final novel, The Last Tycoon, was left unfinished.
The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous novel. It was preceded by This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned and followed by Tender is the Night. Additionally, his Jazz Age short stories solidified his reputation.
Maxwell Perkins
Perkins was exceedingly gifted at inspiring an author to produce their best work. While he could help with structure, think up plots and titles where needed, Perkins had a credo: “The book belongs to the author.”
He also long avoided the spotlight believing that editors should be invisible, both for the benefit of the author and the public. To be visible could erode trust in the work or the writer involved.
If you have a Mark Twain, he said, don’t try to make him into a Shakespeare.
But in Fitzgerald Max Perkins was dealing with a perfectionist. Consequently, there was less advice needed compared to some others. Nevertheless, as well as dishing out support, cheques against future earnings, and exchanges on other up and coming authors, Perkins would also give editorial feedback.
In this blog post, I’ll specifically deal with his editorial commentary on the original draft he saw of Gatsby. Perkins would later say of the novel, his favourite Fitzgerald novel, that it was “as perfect a thing as I ever had any share in publishing.’“
What to call the third novel?
Correspondence between Perkins and Fitzgerald shows Scott trying out different titles for the book. Some of these titles seem distinctly odd now: Trimalchio in West Egg is perhaps one of the least strange. Other suggestions included:
Trimalchio
Among the Ash-Heaps and Millionaires
On the Road to West Egg
Gold-hatted Gatsby
Gatsby
The High-bouncing Lover
Under the Red, White and Blue
While Scott worried over the title and was still fond of Trimalchio, this choice did not go down well with most of those at Scribner’s. And although The Great Gatsby ultimately won out, Scott felt the title wanting in some way.
The editorial feedback
There is a Cambridge edition of the early Gatsby manuscript, titled Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby. It also contains notes and two letters from Perkins. The value of this draft of Gatsby is in seeing what differs from the final version.
For anyone particularly familiar with Gatsby, there will be obvious changes. However, the novel that most people know is still very much there.
Previously, the novel Fitzgerald was writing was far longer, but he removed a lot of material. There is a long story called Absolution that was cut from the Gatsby narrative. By the time the first draft arrived on Perkins’ desk, the manuscript (Trimalchio) was very similar to the end product.
Maxwell wrote back to Fitzgerald full of enthusiasm. Dear Scott, he wrote, I think the novel is a wonder. He goes on to say it has vitality and glamour.
He brought up the issue of the title, which no one at the publisher liked but him. This letter was brief since he intended to take the novel home and read it again, before writing his impressions in full.
His second letter was a bit longer, but it did not amount to what might be a modern manuscript critique. This is partly because Fitzgerald had already cut a lot out of his novel and shaped it before sending Perkins the first draft he saw. This was Scott’s third novel, so he knew what he was doing and was already a perfectionist.
Perkins opens the second letter with, “I think you have every kind of right to be proud of this book.” He goes on to praise the use of a spectator narrator in Nick Carraway, which gives the readers more perspective on what is happening than the characters at the heart of the book. The eyes of Dr Eckleberg also look down on events.
When it comes to actual criticisms, Perkins makes only a few points. He was not a very hands-on editor with Fitzgerald. He never wanted to impose his own vision and he was dealing with an exceptionally talented writer.
The criticisms make perfect sense and while tiny in number, they do make an important difference.
First of all Scott had worried that there was a slight sagging in chapters six and seven. Perkins agreed with him but didn’t offer a suggestion other than to say he knew Scott would come up with something to fix the pacing.
Describing Gatsby
One major difference between the first draft Perkins saw and the published version relates to the scene where Nick first finds himself looking at Gatsby.
He was only a little older than me – somehow I had expected a florid and corpulent person in his middle years – yet he was somehow not a young man at all. There was a stiff dignity about him, and a formality of speech that just missed being absurd, that always trembled on the verge of absurdity until you wondered why you didn’t laugh. I got the distinct impression that he was picking his words with care.
After that, Gatsby is distracted by his butler and leaves.
Readers familiar with Gatsby will remember a more memorable description that more clearly outlines his youth. Perkins pointed out that Tom Buchanan was so well described that he’d know him if he met him on the street. By contrast, “Gatsby is somewhat vague. The reader’s eyes can never quite focus upon him, his outlines are dim.”
While much about Gatsby is a mystery, Perkins felt that he should be described in as much detail as the others.
Perkins adds that two people at the publishing house thought Gatsby was older than he was, even with the statement that the man was only a little older than Nick.
In a later response to Perkins, Scott admitted that he himself didn’t know what Gatsby looked like or was engaged in (the nature of his business). He’d originally thought this was okay, but it was of course one of the problems Perkins picked up on.
Here is the final version that Scott came up with:
He smiled understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.Precisely at that point it vanished – and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.
Gatsby’s business
Another point Perkins made related to the mysterious nature of Gatsby’s business. He clearly had a business relationship with Wolfsheim but the reader would still be puzzled by all his wealth.
It wasn’t that Perkins wanted Fitzgerald to go into detail about the source of his money. But he thought the reader would wonder about it and that it would make sense to drop in hints here and there “that would suggest he was in some active way mysteriously engaged.“
Perkins went on to say that the total lack of an explanation “through so large a part of the story does seem to me a defect.” Even the suggestion of an explanation would do. The details of what Gatsby is engaged in didn’t need to be outlined, including whether he was an innocent tool of someone else or not. But there did need to be more evidence of his activities.
In his response letter (which can be read in Dear Scott/Dear Max), Scott said, “Gatsby’s business affairs I can fix. I get your point about them.“
And indeed in the next draft he does drop in more evidence of mysterious business activities that do not in any way undermine the mystery of Gatsby himself. The reader can fill in some of the remaining gaps themself.
In a later letter Perkins (in Dear Scott/Dear Max) brought the subject up again, referring to the fact Gatsby was supposed to be a bootlegger – a little bit here and there about the bootlegging might be what’s needed.
Gatsby’s biography
In the earlier draft, the story of Gatsby’s background appears in chapter eight. Perkins felt that the way it was given to the narrator departs from the narrative technique in the rest of the book. Elsewhere, “everything is told, and beautifully told, in the regular flow of it, – in the succession of events or in accompaniment with them.” Dumping the backstory where it appears in the earlier draft interrupts the flow of the novel. Perkins thought it better to sprinkle the information bit by bit through the course of the narrative.
In a later letter to Max, Scott listed his changes – that he’d brought Gatsby to life, accounted for his money, fixed up the two weak chapters (six and seven), improved his first party, and broken up the long narrative relating to Gatsby’s history.
The outcome
Although Scott still dithered over the title of the book – mentioning Gold-hatted Gatsby in a March 1925 letter – he also felt that Trimalchio might have been best after all. But it was The Great Gatsby that appeared in bookstores on April 10th 1925.
Scott’s letters to Perkins show his nervousness, fear, and foreboding. He worried women wouldn’t like the book because it had no important woman in it. And he thought the critics wouldn’t like it because it dealt with the rich and “had no peasants borrowed out of Tess and sent to work in Idaho.”
He also worried that he wouldn’t sell enough to cover his debt to Scribner’s since they had often loaned him money in advance.
Even on the day of the release, Scott was picking over the faults he could still see in the novel. Nevertheless, he considered the first five chapters and parts of the seventh and eighth to be the best things he’d ever done.
Unfortunately, sales did not take off as hoped. The fact the book was around 50,000 words and therefore shorter than what the trade preferred did not help. At least two big distributors reduced their orders considerably at the last minute.
Scott reflected that the title was only fair, “rather bad than good“. And he still considered the lack of an important woman character to be an issue since “women control the fiction market at present.”
In the end, the book would establish itself as one of the greats of modern American literature and cement Fitzgerald’s reputation. But it didn’t happen overnight.
Whether you’re a beginner writer like Fitzgerald once was, or you have more experience, editorial feedback offers a fresh insight into your characters, plot, story structure and more.
There are different levels of feedback. I offer an Opening Chapters Developmental edit, a Manuscript Critique, a Beta Critique (a bit shorter and cheaper than a Manuscript Critique), or a full Developmental Edit.
If you have any custom requests, feel free to contact me at karen@indiecateditorial.com or you can check my services page link below:
