One of the biggest obstacles many writers face when trying to finish their memoirs is a lack of a plan. The spine of a plan is an outline. Whether you’re feeling lost, struggling to keep up momentum because you’re not sure where to go next, or just don’t have a cohesive structure for your book, a strong outline can solve a lot of these problems. Many writers, when approaching outlining, find a new roadblock in worrying on whether or not it’s “right.” We hope it will be a comfort to know that while there are undoubtedly more right ways to outline a book than there are wrong ways, we can share four outlining mistakes to avoid.
Before we get into today’s post, we wanted to ask—do you have a plan for actually finishing your memoir? If not, we know you aren’t making the progress you hoped for. That’s why we developed The Memoir Method Checklist. This free guide (and video training!) will take you through every single step you need from idea to published marketable book. Grab it now at https://pageandpodium.com/checklist
Building an outline that serves your audience
Outlines are tricky little documents. For one, their purpose is to make sure your full manuscript serves your audience, and yet, it’s not intended to be read by your full audience. Outlines are working documents, only intended to be read by you and those few, well-chosen people who will give you feedback and responses to help you make sure your plan is clear, help you publish your book, or help you define marketing strageties. An outline should also serve you as a clear plan so you always have a sense of where you’re headed. You may start out confident that you can’t get lost in your own story, but it happens to so many writers. In building a strong working outline, it’s possible to have both too much information on how outlines can be developed and also too little information.
Too little information and guidance
It’s understandable to want to avoid being influenced by other writers entirely—after all you are unique and so is your story. It’s partly a good instinct to want to preserve the uniqueness of your voice and perspective, but it’s a mistake to completely disregard story structure standards. That is because your audiences have some basic expectations when it comes to narrative storytelling, and if a book doesn’t meet those expectations, it’s unlikely that audiences will keep reading.
Also, it’s tempting to just sit down, write, and see what comes out. For one, that sounds more fun. This is a practice we do sometimes encourage—but it’s called journaling. This isn’t the same process as drafting. If you journal and journal and journal—it won’t magically become a book when it’s book length. You can develop journal materials into a memoir, but considering structure is part of this process, and the work involved is not just editing, but significant rewriting and structural revisions.
You might have a specific structure in mind. Perhaps each chapter will be based on a song from your teenage years, or each chapter will be developed on a certain recipe. Awesome! We love an experimental play on structure—but it also has to fulfill the promises of narrative as well, meaning that the two structures will need to work together to make a cohesive whole. That requires the big picture view of an outline.
Too much information and guidance
And then there is the flip side. Once you know you need an outline, the natural step is to go looking for guidance and potentially a template. Hero’s Journey, Save the Cat, 90-Day Memoir, Oh my! It can very quickly get overwhelming. When you dig into the details of the details of these “structures,” the harder it can see how your life story fits. Many of these structures were originally developed not as how-to’s, but as descriptive analyses of patterns in fiction. So not only were they not meant to be step-by-step guides, they were also not developed with memoirs in mind. You can’t invent a mentor to meet in stage four if you didn’t have one, so some of these prescriptive structures simply will not work for you. The more ornate the outline template, the less likely it will work for every writer and every story. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should throw the baby of structure out with the bathwater of templates.
4 Outlining Mistakes to Avoid
Falling into the “right vs wrong” mindset about standard story structure
There is a secret behind all the story-telling structures, templates, and guides out there: they are all based on the same basic principles, they’re just packaged differently. If you diagrammed them all on the kind of transparencies used for old-school overhead projectors and stacked them one on top of the other, a common line would appear. They all have structures that lead gradually upwards towards a peak and then a falling off into a new and fundamentally changed status quo. When you understand and can see those core principles, you can realize that the needs of an outline might be simpler and more fundamental that some of these complex ways of describing structure might lead you to believe. There are many ‘right’ ways to approach story structure. The problems mostly arise when you don’t consider structure at all.
Stopping at your internal outline
If you’ve been thinking about your book for a long time, it may feel alive and whole and complete in your head, already structured and ready to go—only thing to do is start typing your draft. That may be partly true, but drafting a book takes a long time and you’ll likely lose some clarity of that internal outline if you try to follow it on a months-long journey. So many writers stop writing because they lose their way. Creating an internal outline is a good start, but it also may not be enough of a map to get you all the way to the end. An internal outline is an outline based on key words or bullet points. It’s a great start because it forces you to focus on big-picture perspective, but often these bullet points lack enough context to be a full plan. It is also very difficult for an second pair of eyes to read and fully understand an internal outline, which brings us to our next mistake.
Skipping the feedback and revision stage for your outline
In the Memoir Method, we recommend developing an outward-facing outline with chapter summaries of about 100-200 words each for the purpose of clarifying each chapter’s scope and purpose, both for your drafting journey and for sharing to get feedback. Getting feedback at this stage, especially from someone with experience reading outlines and understanding their potential relationship to finished books, can be so beneficial to making sure you meeting those core expectations of structure. Your outline, of course, will not be as complex or nuanced as your full book. However, with that nuance and complexity pared back, there should be clear conflicts, change, and unifying themes that make it feel whole and cohesive.
Assuming the outline will be obvious in the finished, published book
Outlines are revised often, sometimes even as you go through the draft. They are plans, and plans can be altered and still make the same destination. As you draft, each chapter will gain its own shape, feeling, tone, and nuance. You will in fact be adding so much depth and detail to your structure that it will likely become largely invisible to most readers.
Consider building a house. You want your house to have a solid structure, so it will stand strong and weather the test of time and elements. But you’d be fairly upset if you could still see the studs when it was finished. You wouldn’t consider it ready to live in if the lines between drywall sheeting were still visible. A trained eye—someone who builds many houses—could probably “see” the underlying structure, know where to look for those studs, and could reverse-engineer the building plans with a little time and analysis. Even then, it might be somewhat different than the original builder’s plans.
The more you write, the more you can read with an eye for structure and see the many, many different strategies authors use to fulfill the expectations of the reader while also staying true to the special uniqueness each narrative has to offer. However, most readers don’t look for these bones as they read, they simply explore the home to get to know and enjoy it.
PS. Searching the internet for writing, publishing, and book marketing advice can be exhausting to say the least! If you’re ready for hands on, one-on-one support for your memoir, check out The Memoir Method. We’d love to welcome you into this nine-month group program specially designed for women writing their first memoirs. And don’t forget, if you’d like to chat with Amanda about the program (or any other services we offer), you can book a free consult any time!
