Jeffrey Deaver would kill me for saying this. So would Ken Follett. Those brilliant authors are confirmed outliners, and would not write a book any other way. However. There is another way.
My way.
My wonderful editor once asked me—why can’t you send an outline? And I told her: because just like real life, I don’t know what happens until it happens. And it can’t happen until I write it.
My process? I get a good idea. I trust that it contains the weight to hold an entire novel. I open my computer. I type the words Chapter One. And then I see what happens.
Those who study thinking call this emergent design. Artists do it this way, don’t they? There’s no way to know exactly what a painting will look like until you paint it. Writers who use emergent design let the design of their book emerge as they’re writing.
With apologies to Jeffrey and Ken, here’s how a good idea can emerge into a fully formed novel even if you don’t have an outline.
First—and here’s the fun part. You actually already know a lot about your novel. For instance:
You’re writing a story, and you know how storytelling works. You’ve known that since someone put you on their lap and said, “Once upon a time….” Your book will have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You know it will start with an out-of-whack moment that propels the main character into action
You know that after about 100 pages a lot more things will happen. Complications, new characters, twists, reversals, subplots, and surprises.
You know that as the story winds down, there will be the dark night of the soul, a huge realization, a big confrontation, a climax with exciting page-turning action, and then your thematic coda, where the emotional loose ends of the book will all be tied up.
And more than that, you know you are writing a particular kind of a story: A spy thriller, a cozy, a psychological suspense, a noir. You understand the conventions and expectations for those genres—that the good guys win and the bad guys get what’s coming to them. That every loose end will be timed up. And there will be some kind of justice. And at every moment you’ll remember those conventions—because that’s what shapes your story.
So, no matter if you think you don’t have an outline? You do. You understand the structure of a novel. Now what? I’ve been a true crime reporter for 40 years. And now, in crime fiction, I still rely on who, what, when, where, and why.
First choose a main character, with a personality, and a time and location where your book takes place. Do you have a crusading reporter on the trail of a murder in contemporary Des Moines? A damaged private investigator who decides to take one last case in 1940s Los Angeles? A suburban mom in Darien who suspects the mysterious next-door neighbors? You need to understand who you’re on the story train with, and where their train station is located. Easy peasy: you’ve just chosen who, where, and when.
Now you need the what and the why.
For that, it’s helpful to have a log line. It’s the one gorgeous gem of an idea that set you on the path to write this story. For my novel The Wrong Girl: What if an adoption agency were reuniting birthparents with the wrong children? For Mother Daughter Sister Stranger: What if your beloved sister seemed to abandon her daughter—and left her with you?
And you write that book. Just that book. Though you have that log line, you don’t know the answer to the “what if.” And that’s exactly what you’re searching for as you write. Finding the answer to that “what if” is your constant goal.
Ask yourself: what happens to set my character on this journey? What surprising twist in their otherwise regular lives will start the dominoes falling? You could call it the inciting incident. At that moment, your character will set a goal. Your character will say: “I need to do this thing, because…” And that will set your story in motion.
After you decide that, ask yourself what happens next? What would really happen next, if this were real life? Because you are writing the real life of the book. There would be obstacles, and other people involved. There would be surprises, and action, and, most important: decision-making. Your main character has a goal, remember, and everything they do will propel your story forward toward that goal.
Because it’s crime fiction, they’re not going to be successful in that goal, not for about 385 pages at least. So what will happen is they will try something, right? And that attempt will have an outcome. The outcome will probably be surprising, and often it will result in the meeting of a new person, or having a new experience, or facing an obstacle.
When that happens, your character will have to do something. They will have to make a decision. And this is key. How a character makes a decision in facing an obstacle and what they do next not only propels the action of the story, but also reveals your character’s personality. Do they do the reasonable thing? Do they do a ridiculous thing? Do they do an illegal thing? An unexpected thing? Why?
See? You’re writing now. You are writing a journey of a person with a goal and a motivation.
As your story progresses, this sequence will be repeated: your character’s goal will change, their motivation will develop, and the conflicts will get even greater. The obstacles will be even more powerful. Your antagonists, if not by name but by action, will begin to be revealed. Remember, they have a goal, too.
As your character advances through the story, they will begin to see clues about why the inciting incident happened, and who might have caused it, and why, and what their ultimate goal is.
At this point in the writing you should be just as excited to see what happens as the reader is. Of course you don’t know, because you’re still exploring the story. Just like a journalist working on an investigation, or a detective with a case, or anyone with a goal, you are seeking the answers to what really happened. As an author, you don’t need to know the ending.
And I think it’s better if you don’t know the ending! If you know the ending, your subconscious will compel you to telegraph that in ways you won’t realize at the time. But if you as the author honestly don’t know, then your book will be purely and seamlessly surprising. So trust yourself here, just keep going: you are creating the mystery, and soon you will solve it.
Warning: About a third or more of the way in, you will start to fret. Oh, no, you’ll think. Whose idea was this? I have no idea where this book is going. Don’t worry. That’s one of the momentary pitfalls of “writing without an outline.”
It’s fine. Just as in real life, you don’t know what will happen next until it does. So at these points in writing, ask yourself the key questions again: what does my character want, how far will they go to get it, why would they do that, why would they make that decision? Who is going to try to stop them? Why would they do that? What will happen as a result?
Sometimes when I hit that point, I stop and simply make a list, on paper, of all the things that could possibly happen. Stream of consciousness. Your brain will start coming up with realities. Someone gives them an envelope. What could be in it? A list, a note, a recipe, a will, a summons, a photo from the past…
When you start considering all the possibilities of what could happen, there will be one that your brain will choose. It just will. Keep writing. See what happens.
Now. Because you understand story structure, you know that at about halfway through, something huge and tectonic will happen. A massive reversal, a betrayal, a horrible mistake that your character has made, a stranger comes to town, someone leaves, something explodes or blows up or somebody dies or someone you thought was good turns into being bad. Hooray, this is what you want.
At this point, the process of “what your character wants and how far they’ll go to get it and what they need to do” is going to amplify.
And also at this point, the bad guy begins to realize that the good guy is after them, and their focus changes from pursuing their dastardly project to preventing the main character from stopping them. Conflict is the engine that powers your story, so mine that territory.
The conflicts are different now, right? Because now not only does the good guy have to pursue their goal, they have to fight the bad guy in some way, whether it is physically or psychologically or emotionally or however the tone of your book requires.
Now your story is developing. Now you have your good guy in pursuit of something, and the bad guy trying to stop them, and all kinds of conflict and twists and emotional subtext and subplots. Something has to happen. Your characters will take action, have reactions to what others do, make decisions. And they’ll all take action again.
Remember, your book requires forward motion. Ask yourself: how can I advance this story? What’s the most interesting thing that could happen? What’s the worst thing? What’s the most surprising but inevitable thing?
But now comes the tough part. Eventually you have to begin deciding what will finally happen in the end. Whodunnit, and why. And you’ll consciously put your book on that one path.
How? I’ve written 17 going on 18 novels of suspense now, and at this point in every one, I think: Oh my goodness, I have no idea. I’ve created a crime I cannot solve.
Let your mind release itself from the fear of not knowing what will happen next. You don’t know. Just like in your life you don’t know. Allow yourself the power to see what happens, discover what people want, and why, then let it unfold, line by line and scene by scene.
It can be scary! Usually I figure out what really happened when I am about seven-eighths of the way through. It’s what Sue Grafton used to call “the magic.”
Somehow, at that point, my brain connects the puzzle pieces in a way I’ve never seen before, and the outcome will present itself.
Trust me. It will happen. That’s when you’ll see the end. And when you realize what you’ve created, you will power forward to tell how it ends. At this point of the book, I am writing so fast that I hardly even realize I’m typing.
Yes, this takes a certain confidence. And a certain conviction that you know how to tell a story. But as you push forward, sentence by sentence, the story you are searching for will emerge. (In Mother Daughter Sister Stranger, I will confess, I figured out the ending the day before the deadline.)
And in the end, here’s the joy: you will surprise yourself. You have created a unique and original and realistic story you never expected. And the reader will share that excitement.
It will work—just keep going. Trust the process. And trust your imagination.
