ErinLaing.com

The thing about outlining; some people do it, some people don’t.

In Canada, in order to get a grant from a federal or provincial agency you have to hand in a treatment or a step outline of the film you intend to write. It only makes sense. The treatment (story outline) is anywhere between 25 - 40 pages, detailing what is going to happen in the film and how it is going to happen. Basically the script without dialog.

This makes perfect sense from the agencies point of view. How else could they determine who should get money and who should not? I’m not against the idea of outlining for this purpose, it’s necessary, but from a creative perspective it doesn’t feel right.

Having to outline means that everything is predetermined. The plot worked out before a single line of dialog written. Everything you write or think about writing has to conform to the pre-made box you’ve created.

I find it paralyzing. Not only will the writing be of lesser quality, but you’re stifling that creative process that will naturally want to take your story in any given direction - not necessarily the one that was planned out.

I’ve realised that you don’t know where your story and your characters are headed until they are brought to life. And they are only brought to life once they start to speak. If you know where your story is headed before you begin to write, your audience will know as well, and there is nothing worse than patronizing your audience.

I’ve been reading and listening to interviews with many writers who I greatly admire, and the one thing they have in common is that they don’t outline - all of them for similar reasons: It stifles the creative process.

I decided to put my outline away and start from the beginning. I have a clear idea of what my story is about, what the premise is, and what some of the themes are, and so when I’m stuck I just ask myself “what’s this about” and then I can continue on.

I think those key structural elements will fall into place naturally, either through experience (15 scripts later) or by understanding the basics of what makes a story interesting.