Some years ago a topic here discussed the biographer Robert Caro's outline for his "The Years of Lyndon Johnson".

https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3934

Caro recently (April 2019) released a book discussing his experiences and methods, including research, interviews, note taking, outlining, writing and editing. After engaging in extensive research on a topic or event in a subject's life, Caro proceeds to his writing phase.

CARO: I can’t start writing a book until I’ve thought it through and can see it whole in my mind. So before I start writing, I boil the book down to three paragraphs, or two, or one—that’s when it comes into view. That process might take weeks. And then I turn those paragraphs into an outline of the whole book. That’s what you see up here on my wall now—twenty-seven typewritten pages. That’s the fifth volume. Then, with the whole book in mind, I go chapter by chapter. I sit down at the typewriter and type an outline of that chapter, let’s say if it’s a long chapter, seven pages—it’s really the chapter in brief, without any of the supporting evidence. Then, each chapter gets a notebook, which I fill with all the materials I want to use—quotations and facts pulled from all of the research I’ve done.

Caro, Robert A.. Working (p. 197). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

"Working" is an interesting read for anyone looking to understand Caro's methods.

Sounds similar to Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method, or Hemingway’s initial step, write the truest sentence you can.

My theory is every work starts with a thing often called an outline.

For some writers, it’s 40,000 words of prose, written as if leapfrogging unicorns by the seat of the pants, navigating on whim of inspiration. If I try that, I end up with lots to fix.

For other writers, that first thing is a storyboard. Some create traditional outlines.

I like anything that prototypes an idea in less than 40,000 words.

Outlining has a bad name. Part of that comes from the pain of looking at a hierarchical topology you’re sick of and morphing it into a sequential exposition.

It helps to do the hierarchical idea tree in a mind map and then outline a sequential presentation from there. That way the inventory of ideas doesn’t look like an inescapable plan and the outline evolves as chapter and scenes.

Of course, once I’m internationally recognized, I’ll be better prepared to say how I really did the job.

Rereading this, I regret putting “leapfrog,” “unicorns,” and “seat of the pants” in the same sentence. I meant no disrespect to mythical creatures or haberdashers.

Books about writers' methods intrigue me. At 190-odd pages, this doesn't sound typical of Caro's usual doorstops. One for the wish-list.

Fascinating - that early exchange (back in 2012, long before I joined the forum!) is also fascinating.

Yes, you can see why everybody gets so excited by VR/AR and so on. The infinite canvases one could, in principle, have if you used a mixture of both *could* be the perfect equivalent to the Caro paste-up method.

It's either that or back to Minority Report - and I suspect VR/AR would be a lot cheaper than great big swathes of electro-sensitive glass!

As it is, I'm saving diligently for one of those big curved monitors. Given that I already fill both of my monitors to overflowing (each has about 6 virtual desktops on it as well), I would have to coin a new data-related phrase: you can never have too much virtual space.

Bill, you (and Robert Caro of course) could benefit from the Surface Hub 2

https://blogs.windows.com/devices/2018/05/15/meet-surface-hub-2/

A bargain at $9K for each screen.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-hub-2

Curved biggish monitors can be found for cheaper than most think. 27", then 31 or 31.5 or 32 then 40/41/42". Prices dropping all the time.

As for walls of index cards or m3notes vs big monitors arguments here, both have their uses, separately or in conjunction, like books & ebooks. I know someone who put two hinged doors on a cork board, getting double the space or even triple considering. You don't need walls to sacrifice for bigger space either:

https://www.google.com/search?q=portable+room+dividers&tbm=isch

As for the actual topic of OP, there are many book planning methodologies, can recall a dozen, and also many books on them. Fiction and non, outlining being only one, as usual they're rarely mentioned here. Probably because any such interesting topic quickly goes off-topic if ever brought up, not that I recall offhand any. Each method has its prophets.

Most super gifted old school writers though just had some notes and their brain functioned as supercomputers or better yet super minds. That was before word processors. When it works like that, the results are magical, better than any meticulous planning or walls of notes or apps. You just get in the zone and everything magically interconnects in time. Almost mystical process within the neural nets and beyond, takes hold. Maybe that's why the really great works are all older.

washere wrote:

Most super gifted old school writers though just had some notes and
their brain functioned as supercomputers or better yet super minds. That
was before word processors. When it works like that, the results are
magical, better than any meticulous planning or walls of notes or apps.
You just get in the zone and everything magically interconnects in time.
Almost mystical process within the neural nets and beyond, takes hold.
Maybe that's why the really great works are all older.

Any "old school writers" you're thinking of in particular?

For my part, I'm generally skeptical of any suggestion that the writing process is, or ever was, magical. And I think that romanticized accounts of creativity and book-writing, even if true in some cases, are generally unhelpful to aspiring writers.

Given that I am an unrepentant CRIMPer (long-time reader/observer of this forum) and a diligent note-taker/planner/outliner, I found that I appreciated Charles Dickens and his novels far more after I learned about his exhaustive note-taking, outlining, planning, and drafting processes for his novels (see Manfred Kuehn's notes on Dickens' "Plan Sheets": http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2011/12/charles-dickens-plan-sheets.html ).

It seems that, until somewhat recently, the romanticization of book-writing is something that writers themselves were eager to perpetuate, perhaps as a way of preserving the mystique of their craft or establishing a kind of mythical standing for themselves. For example, William Faulkner claimed to have written _As I Lay Dying_ in six weeks without changing a word—"Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall." (By chance I was able to see the typescripts at a library once and I was pleased to find that there were quite a lot of edits on them.:)

So, I really appreciate recent efforts by writers and creative workers to demystify their own creative processes—like Robert Caro's _Working_, John McPhee's _Draft No. 4_, as well as the Paris Review interview series. I guess I'm just pleased to find out tha tmy favorite writers and creators, from any time period, are just as human as I am, and that their works are not the result of magic, but a result of learning, study, diligent effort, trial-and-error, and, oftentimes, outlining. :)

While I'm at it, I'll just quickly note a few other favorite resources on process that might be of interest to others on the forum. Two books: Annie Dillard's _Writing Life_ and Anne Lamott's _Bird by Bird_. Two podcasts: "Longform" (interviews with journalists about the nitty-gritty details of their writing long non-fiction articles) and a new one by the musicians Aimee Mann and Ted Leo called "The Art of Process," where they interview creative people of all kinds about how they work. Two films about painting: _Gerhard Richter Painting_ and _Tim's Vermeer_. (It is well worth watching even just the trailers for both films.)

I agree with the points you make, Argonsnorts. And if it's your first post, welcome.

For people who would never know how any neural net architecture works NVM simulating them and only understand party magicians or claim we're getting a few young Faulkners or even new Shakespeares every year regularly, I'd say sure why not. BTW there were great non fiction writers such as historians naturalists philosophers etc too. I got to go find some podcast by some new Dostoyevsky or Nietzsche who just graduated in Kansas or Kiev now. I'll be gone some time you understand.

It's always interesting to know how writers work. The great C. S. Lewis (yes, I know it's fashionable to knock him nowadays, but just read "Out of the Silent Planet" or "Till We Have Faces" and tell me he can't write stuff that's complex, many-layered and extraordinarily insightful) used to write in huge bursts, apparently, with very little preparation at all - he was what you might call a visionary writer, someone who sees very clearly, in a kind of vision, exactly what s/he wants to write and how. Most of us don't do that, unfortunately; my son used to, when he was little (he insisted on telling me bed-time stories, rather than the other way round!), but he's gradually lost the ability as he's grown older.

How Tinderbox or any other software tool could aid this process, I don't pretend to know...

However, as a CRIMPer, I can assure Paul that if I had the money, I'd have several Hubs sitting on my desk right now! Regardless of how much real work they helped me do.

Cheers!
Bill

Paul Korm wrote:

Some years ago a topic here discussed the biographer Robert Caro's
outline for his "The Years of Lyndon Johnson".

https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3934

Caro recently (April 2019) released a book discussing his experiences
and methods, including research, interviews, note taking, outlining,
writing and editing. After engaging in extensive research on a topic
or event in a subject's life, Caro proceeds to his writing phase.

CARO: I can’t start writing a book until I’ve thought it
through and can see it whole in my mind. So before I start writing, I
boil the book down to three paragraphs, or two, or
one—that’s when it comes into view. That process might take
weeks. And then I turn those paragraphs into an outline of the whole
book. That’s what you see up here on my wall
now—twenty-seven typewritten pages. That’s the fifth volume.
Then, with the whole book in mind, I go chapter by chapter. I sit down
at the typewriter and type an outline of that chapter, let’s say
if it’s a long chapter, seven pages—it’s really the
chapter in brief, without any of the supporting evidence. Then, each
chapter gets a notebook, which I fill with all the materials I want to
use—quotations and facts pulled from all of the research
I’ve done.

Caro, Robert A.. Working (p. 197). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

"Working" is an interesting read for anyone looking to understand Caro's
methods.

Just came across this Caro quote in my Zettelkasten, and it blew my mind again, this time even more profoundly. What an amazing method! And yet it's so simple and logical. Thanks for posting it.