That one big thing

And then what? This is what I ask myself over and over as I toil away at a book. Because that’s all a story is. Something happens, and then this happens, and then that happens. Word by word, line by line, scene by scene. So why is it so damn hard?
 
Writers spend a lot of time talking about outlines. Do you need one to begin writing? How do you write without one? Or does it hold you back if you have one? It’s a question I get asked a lot. Readers, it seems, like to know where an author sits on this issue. I would love to be the kind of writer that makes an outline so I can sit down every day and know exactly where the story is going. Somehow it doesn’t seem to work for me.
 
With my first two books, I knew the beginning and I knew the ending, but it was that giant sprawling middle that was so difficult. With my current book, I decided to take the time needed to create an outline. But now, I'm feeling stuck.
 
I have 40k words of one draft that I scrapped. Then I had 60k words of another draft that included two timelines, and I have decided to ditch one of those timelines and now I have 35k words of a good start. I feel like I know my characters and my setting and the general shape of the thing, but I'm worried what they do is not BIG enough. Maybe they need that one big thing.
 
Writers are told we need to have an elevator pitch to talk about our books - an Indiana Jones meets Muppet Babies kind of thing. When I can express something like that, some compelling way to talk about it, readers go ohhhhhhhhhh. And are likely to buy it.
 
I need that ohhhhhhhhh thing for the new book I'm working on, and I've been focusing on the plot to get me there. I like plots. I like plots of all kinds. I personally prefer more plot to less plot, as a writer and a reader.
 
So, now I feel like I need to drive a truck through the middle of my book. I told this is to a writer friend and they told me I was wrong. Or, more precisely, they told me what I had and what I was planning was enough and that if I just wrote the damn thing I would find that out. That if I got out of my own way and just wrote the thing, I could figure out if I still needed to drive that truck through it in the second draft. I didn't need an outline, they said, I just needed to play in this world.
 
I think when they said I didn't need an outline I shuddered. I knew I could do it faster and possibly with less editing required on the next draft if I planned it all out. I'm not against changing an outline if inspiration strikes along the way, and I'm not against editing–far from it!–but I've found that upfront planning really helps in the end.
 
Or it helped in the end for the last book. Maybe that's how the last book got written and this is how the new one is supposed to get written. That's the thing about writing: every book is different. You are a different writer every time you sit down to a new project. Every project needs something different than the one that came before it. This is normal. This happens to everyone. I just can’t believe it’s happening to me.
 
The point is that I'm trying to write this book just like the last book and this is not the last book. I've got to write it the way this one wants to be written, and, well, this one is telling me to just get the words on the page and see what happens.
 
Maybe it needs that one big thing, a giant truck driven through the middle, but maybe it doesn’t. I’ll try to get out of my way and just write the damn thing. Because that’s how a book gets written. Word after word after word.

And in the meantime, happy reading!
Joni

---