Tree elements' formatting (Scrivener, "Aeon") - The Wolf!

Posted by 22111
Feb 27, 2023 at 07:56 PM

Explaining the outlining fallacy

When I write about “mesh”, I’m aware that’s a little bit approximate, and when I deride dedicated writers’ software, it’s the checkboxes, etc I’m criticizing: “eye color”, and all that, but also, “person x: childhood, etc., etc.” - within some creational work, those persons ain’t “atoms”, and for their precise size, we give a heck…

The outlining fallacy described above, is a a real one, and I for some time fell into that trap, as do all makers of writers’ electronic cork boards (Scrivener et others), and to say it all, the aforementioned “What Women Want”* specialist, not convinced the iterative model was the right one but saying writers, especially non-literary ones, should do some serious “outlining” - well: I now understand that by: “conceptional work” -, before starting to write, had made me further rethink my conceptions (which had already included, as said, what I call “mesh”, but which hadn’t yet made a very clear distinction between the two: “before outlining”, and then, that mythical “outline”).

(*=When someone has sold millions of books, I would be a fool to not listen to their “advice”: not to replace my own findings with theirs, but by reviewing mine even further… and without rejecting then any idea “coming from the outside”... since I always (!) give credit, “assimilation” with then telling people that had all my own idea, would appear as an obscenity to me.)

As you know, I had insisted on the need for tree formatting, even to to point of probably “going on the nerves” of some readers)... and I continue to do so…

but I have to better explain that “mesh”, and I have to correct myself by saying, be quite sure of your “outline”‘s content, before applying too much work to it… and a multiplication of “specially-formatted items, within your outline” (as I had, more or less, advocated here some months ago) is NOT “the” solution - thanks, again, to Tucker Max (and his thinking, motivating me to better distinguish among pre-outline and outline - or whatever you call those).

You’ll remember that some months ago, here - where I do “sketching” indeed, but some kind of “high-brow sketching” if I may say so -, I spoke about the “too much of a distance, between elements which belong together though, within a spreadsheet “outline”“: I said that some elements / columns could be adjoined, whilst other columns - and necessarily the elements within them - would then be too much “taken apart”, actively remoted from their “intimately-connected elements”...

Unfortunately, the same is true if you try to spread your “essence” (you’ll remember: I said, “construct your outline (principally) around your essence, not around the elements of a timeline” (all these citations of myself true to the “essence” (again!) of what I had said, not verbatim - which remains true, but cannot be but a second step -):

Spreading around your essence (into whatever) will, at the same (i.e. eo ipso) DISCONNECT those intimate connections of essence’s “atomic elements” - I also said, something like a “synopsis”, i.e. some pages of “description”, whatever, since they necessarily and already constitute some “result of ordering”, are counter-productive…

whilst what I called “mesh” is indeed to much of a “Bitches Brew”, in order to not become quickly unwieldy, i.e. when it will have become “too much of inscrutability” of its own…

Whilst on the other hand - I said that, too - those “cork boards” and similar devices are just another graphical form of an “outline”... of a timeline:

Since that’s what they are: they are timelines, and so, the essence is lost, or, at the very least, very deeply hidden… and thus, it very seriously risks to fray out… even into oblivion… and about 90 p.c. of (any time’s) novels, movies… bear witness of that loss.

So, yes, you have to put, at SOME time, even some order into your “mesh”, but beware of doing it the standardized way “writers’ software” invites you to do it: do NOT fill out forms of ANY kind: think again, and again, of any detail, of any “atom” within any element, AND of any “atom” within the connection of any (core) element to any other (core) element, and don’t be afraid to be redundant, to be inconsistent… but review and re-review your notes, and re-think the problems which arise, and in a constructive way: those (!) “problems” may be indications to “solutions”, to do it even better, indeed!

In other words: Real creativity is best preserved within some, yeah, “mesh”, “when it all clings together”, instead of “it being spread all over the place”, e.g. some hundred “scenes” and two hundred “items”, BUT you’ll have to “preserve track”, too, and that’s why I advocate, from my own experience, some

~pre-outline~

or whatever you call it, not really an outline that is, NOT trying to “bring order” into your ideas, since at this stage, that would be far more than just “counterproductive”, it would literally kill your inspiration: Try to “hold it simple”, create perhaps a dozen, 15, certainly not more, “items”, so as “to know where to look it up” when you want to review, to add, to “correct”: don’t have it all within some ancient paper roll, but try to “resize” your “pages” so that you can switch between them on screen, without much scrolling: group them perhaps, by “themes” - thus the aforementioned “risk” - necessity even, to some degree! - of being “redundant”, but then, it’s this seeming “redundancy” where you will probably get stuck, in order to “resolve” problems, not only real problems, of incoherence, but also that “first world’s writers’” “problem” of not having been “good enough” up to then, of having allowed “facility”...

This being said, it’s obvious that even in this stage, you will be tempted to write / “write out” some “scenes”, etc: why not… IF you’re willing to later on sacrifice them if the above-described “essence” which will have crystallized in-between, “tells” you “otherwise”?

You will remember that some months ago, I told you about - and linked to - some writer’s STACKS of file cards, spread over their table - that writer (of which I don’t remember the name anymore) very probably was aware that a simple spread-out of index-cards highly risks to sell out the “essence”, and thus they probably tried to integrate much more than just the “scene”, the “timeline element”, into every one of their “file card”, making it a stack instead…

and technically speaking, it’s obvious that those “writers’ software” could do some “expansion” of their “card board” cards, for such additional, “side car” elements of their cards - as well as in any outline as we know outlines, from our software, we could have level 1, and then, all those “additional considerations”, on level 2, every item with its own, precise, immediate “family”...

And yes, thus, those “additional considerations” (which in effect are the “essence”) are not “very visible”, and that’s why I had had the idea - and had seriously tried - to spread those all over the outline, not hiding them into level 2, but retaining them on level 1… well, that’s not entirely true, since tried to resolve the “endless-list-then” probleme by just retaining “chapters”, “sequences” on level 1, BUT then, relegating from level 2 just discarded items, and even making those “essence” items “stand out” from their “illustrations”, i.e. from the “timeline”, the outline, by special, bold, colored formatting…

And then, there’s no way out: “Visibility” is one thing (and that’s better indeed that those aforementioned stacks of cards on that table you could admire if you followed my link here some months ago), but for

it all to hold together

it has to stay together, hence that sort of “advanced mesh” in which, yes, you will have to find your way even when your concept(ion) grows in complexity (hence several “pages” instead of just one long “page”, quickly becoming too long indeed), but which retains its “compactness”, it’s “immediate family” character, so spreading it all over the place, be it all over the (vertically outlined) timeline, be it over multiple cards, even stacks of cards, be them physical or electronic: That’s not a viable solution…

And neither is, here (sic!), transclusion, since of course, you could try to multiply to “occurrences” of your ideas, but even that action - whilst it will not even do any good btw - will fray out (again!) that “essence”, while you’re trying to gather it: it will melt away from your hands…

and at the end of the day, I think you have to respect the glue that holds it all together - IF you let it do it’s work: What’s intimately together in your writing, then before your eyes, then, by reading, re-reading, editing, re-editing, will crave its nest within your head, your “thinking” (I don’t like this term at all, in our context!), your “free-flowing”, your “Erleben” (again no equivalent in lesser languages…) -

that super-glue’s your friend, since it does MORE than just adhesing those elements: it INTEGRATES them…

well: if you do your work, too, but we’re speaking of optimizing your chances.

And yes, then you “write out” that, “put it into words”: You do “illustrations-by-numbers”*, by anything you put into the timeline: ANY element in there will be just the optimized expression of what will have been “already there”...

We’ve got to the secret of writing now: “Put it into words”, I said, but that’s the stage in writing which many a times, and with the help of outliner software of the “writers’ software”, where you fill out forms or not, but then “put into scenes”, instead of first “putting into words”, then illustrate them… is butchered:

You feel, you devise, you plan, then you write out scenes… having left out the “put it into words” stage, and he were are again: Many of the best writing teachers are unanimous: Write short stories…

Since, they may have added, in a perfect short story, essence, and writing out, become one.

*=Wait: That draughting-by-numbers’ll be by yours then.