outlining

I didn’t plan this

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I appear to be changing, please stop me.

Previously on William Gallagher, I was opposed to planning or outlining stories and scripts. It was better to dive in, start writing, see where you got, and accept or even relish how you had to be willing to throw away a lot of writing.

Only this week, I told someone that if I write 100,000 words and 90,000 of them are rubbish, that’s a bargain. I’ve got 10,000 words I like, and all it cost me was a hell of a lot of time.

I said that in a workshop and even as I said it, since this topic has come up before, I felt my polite brain prodding me to say one thing more. Which was was this: “Of course, everybody’s different, and whatever it takes to get you to the end result is fine.”

Not only did I also say this, I have also said it before, and not one single time have I convinced anyone that I mean it. I do, but I don’t. Not for me, anyway.

Except.

About 15 years ago now, I was in Hollywood – get me – interviewing a producer for Radio Times. On the wall behind him was a breakdown, a kind of basic outline, for the episode of Battlestar Galactica that he was then working on.

And he told me the one thing, the first thing, that made me think outlines and plans have a point. He said you can’t have a blank screen on Tuesday night’s TV, or whichever day it was. Writing to see where you go is fine, but it goes wrong and you have no possible way to guarantee that it will work at all, let alone in time. Outlining, planning, story breakdowns, they get you to the goal in the most reliable way.

Curiously, though, that producer/writer was Ronald D Moore and I can’t remember now whether he told me or I just read it somewhere else, but he had done exactly this thing of just writing to see what happened. But it was under one very specific and unusual circumstance.

Battlestar ran as a two-part miniseries in something like 2003 or 2004, I forget which, and it was an enormous success. Deservedly so: that show is remarkable. But even though its ratings success was so good –– uniquely, the second part’s ratings were higher than the first because everyone was talking about how great it was –– the decision to go to series hadn’t happened yet.

It was going to, there was no doubt, but it hadn’t happened yet. So he couldn’t hire staff, he couldn’t set anything up, and there was Christmas in the way.

So over that Christmas, Moore just wrote an episode by himself, start to finish, no outlining. When the show went to series, that script became the first episode. It’s called “33” and I’m sure you can watch it on some streaming service or other, but you can also read the script right here.

It is a superb piece of work. I remember, so vividly clearly, sitting in a corner of the Radio Times office with a VHS tape – VHS? then? – starting the episode on this tiny CRT television –– CRT? no flat screen? then? –– and wondering if it could possibly be any good. The mini-series was two feature-length episodes and it was all so rich and filmic that it was easy to imagine squeezing it down into a 42-minute episode would lose a lot.

Except it didn’t. I wish I’d written “33” and I’ve rewatched it, I’ve re-read it, many times.

You can tell that in my heart, I still believe in the writing to see where it goes. And you can tell that in my brain, I accept that there are circumstances where you can’t do it.

Only, about six weeks ago now, I finally outlined a radio play script that I’ve been piddling about with since at least 2017, and I did so because writer Alex Townley nudged me into it. And four weeks ago now, I finished the whole play. I don’t mean the outline, I mean the play.

And one week ago, I was struggling with a novel that I’ve been working on for at least a year, and this time it was me who said to writer Alex Townley that maybe I should outline it.

I don’t wanna.

But it’s a story that on the one hand is bleedin’ complicated, and which on the other hand needs the most enormous, huge, gigantic finish. Which I didn’t have. I was writing all this ominous stuff with no idea what I could ever do to pay it off. Until I was piddling about with the outline and I realised what this big ending could be.

Everybody’s different, and whatever it takes to get you to the end result is fine.

Nope, I’m still not convincing.

Fit and finish

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I’m not a planner. Well, I am with projects and I’ll plan writing so that I don’t miss deadlines. Also, when required to, I can outline a story or script. Plus, there have been times when I have had to plan a story just to get it clear in my head or knock it out fast enough for a producer. And I’ve planned hundreds of events, I’m a planner there even if I doubt any of those talks or workshops or sessions has ever stuck very closely to the plan.

But apart from all events and certain stories and every commission and most projects, I’m not a planner.

I prefer to just start writing and see where it takes me. Now, if you do this, if you are stupid enough to do this, you are obligated to know that you’ll be writing rubbish. You have to know that you will – and I have – written a hundred thousand words of which you then throw away ninety thousand.

I think that’s a bargain. You get ten thousand words you’re happy with and all it costs is ninety thousand you’re not. I’ll take those odds and I have, many times.

But I feel as if I’ve talked a lot with you about fairly bleak things lately and I want instead to tell you something about all this that makes me happy. Very happy.

This will take a sec.

Often – maybe always – you’re reaching the end of a script, a story or even an article and you know you need something. I think you know what I mean and I’m certain that I can’t define it any better than this. There is just something more you need. A moment, a character, a thought. Even a plot point. It’s something that, if you get it right, is the final part that turns a piece from a string of words into a story.

And the thing I so adore is that sometimes – just sometimes – you realise you’ve already got it.

Something you wrote earlier in the piece was clearly there solely so that you could call it back, so you could pick it up, so you could build on it, so it could create some kind of harmonic. You didn’t do it deliberately and you haven’t been working to make it fit the end but it’s so right that it is as if you did and you always knew it was the finish.

It’s crucial to me both that it can perfectly do this thing for the end but also that I set it up so thoroughly and completely unconsciously.

As I say, it only happens sometimes but it is inexpressibly wonderful when it does. I feel clever, I feel daft, I feel satisfied.

And the reason I’m telling you now is that I’ve had the biggest, greatest, most unexpected one of these.

I shouldn’t say it, really, since I haven’t yet written the end that so gave me this feeling. But I will. Because I can’t fail to tell you everything and because I have a collection of short stories coming out and I was looking at a tiny moment in one of the tales.

It’s really small. It is completely unimportant and it only keeps its place in the story because it’s what this particular character would say at that particular time.

I’ve easily re-read this part a hundred times during the preparation of the manuscript, quite likely more.

And yet this time when I read it, I knew.

He says this thing because it is also part of another story.

There wasn’t going to be another story, there are already ten in the set and they are long done but now there has to be another one. It is complete, or it will be, and it is of itself, you will not have to have read the first take.

But if you have, I think this incredibly small moment will make the book complete.

You will not be able to guess which story came first and you will not know that I didn’t do it deliberately. Plus I didn’t know this but the book would not have been complete with this tale which I am compelled to write, which demands to be in the collection.

‘Course, it could turn out rubbish and I could end up dropping it from the book.

I don’t plan these things.

Three iPhones

Appy days are here again

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Okay, I’m not sure where I’m going with this but bear with me for a sec.

So far this morning I’ve pitched for some work and got rejected. I read a Modern Family script. Experimented again with microwaving poached eggs. Checked all my appointments for the day, got train tickets, got bus tickets. Advised my sister-in-law about her smartphone. Read the news. Checked the weather for London where I’m going now.

On the train I’ll re-read all the documents for a meeting, I’ll write some notes. I need to do some banking bits so I’ll fit that in somewhere. I really need to write at least some of a theatre programme. I want to write part of a play.

And on my way home tonight I want to outline a non-fiction book but I’ll be knackered and I expect I’ll watch an episode or two of Frasier instead.

Here’s the thing, though. I expect I’ll take meeting notes on my iPad but everything else, I got from my phone.

That’s including the poached egg recipe which I’ve saved in an iPhone cookery app called Paprika. It doesn’t just include buying the train and bus tickets, it includes waving the phone at barriers and inspectors. I forgot to say that I figured out which bus to take by using Citymapper.

I like that I forgot. I am startled by how much our phones can do and how they are tightly knitted into our lives.

But what I like most is that I forgot I’d used my phone for that route planning and that I didn’t really notice I was using my phone for any of this until I stopped to think about you. Yes, I’m writing to you on my phone.

That we can have one teeny device that will do all these things is stunning. But the fact that we can do it, that I can think of you and immediately be talking with you, that I can need a ticket and get one, that’s wonderful.

Usually it’s nature that people tell me I am failing to appreciate. Just today, I’m choosing to appreciate our phones.

Except it’s 09:30 and my bloody battery is dying.

1) I’m wrong b) You’re right

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I deeply like and relish and appreciate having my mind changed. It is exciting. It’s also fun because I’m a man so if someone, especially a woman, does this to me then you get to see them blinking. Did he really just say aloud and in public that he’s wrong and I’m right? Where’s my diary? Can I get this on video?

Only, I have a slight sticking point on one subject that I spend a foolish amount of time arguing both sides of. I don’t usually do this with you, this isn’t something I arm wrestle anyone about, but it’s something that I’ll sit here for an hour internally debating.

It’s this. In my heart, I am a writer who resists and even resents the entire notion of outlining. That’s something you have to do at school, it’s something you are required to do contractually when you’re scriptwriting, but it is wrong, it is just wrong.

There are writers who like planning out in this way and I’m not criticising those psycho nutters. It’s just that for me, outlines constrict instead of construct.

Except I chose that in-my-heart phrase carefully because my head has gone somewhere else and I don’t like it, except that I do. I swear that I remain religiously anti-outline but, hang on, let me check something, okay: the iPad I’m writing on now has near enough 300 outlines in it.

There’s only about a dozen that are stories, though. The rest are workshop plans, event notes, a lot of articles where the topic was complicated.

I’m surprised it’s only 300. Thinking about it, I did have a clear out about a year ago. So that’s 300 outlines in a year. Given that I wrote fewer than no outlines whatsoever between leaving school and starting Doctor Who, that’s surprising.

Except I’m not surprised. For its not that I’ve turned to a dark side, it’s not that I’ve fundamentally changed my views on writing and what works for me in that. You don’t need your diary yet.

It’s that a few years ago I was so enjoying the boon a To Do app called OmniFocus was making to my life that I looked to see what else that same app developer made. I liked OmniFocus so very much that I even downloaded a trial version of what’s called OmniOutliner. It’s an outlining app for God’s sake and it was also expensive. I mean, I’ll gladly spend a lot of cash on software if it helps me enough to be worth it, but I’m dabbling here, I’m only checking something out because it’s related to another app. I don’t need or want an outliner and as sure as eggs are eggs and Word will lose your work at a crucial point, I’m not paying a lot of money for an outlining app.

Before the first day of using this trial version was over, I bought the app.

And then never used it again.

But only because the morning after I’d bought OmniOutliner 3 for Mac, the company brought out OmniOutliner 4 and all recent buyers got the update for free.

I’m telling you this now because OmniOutliner 5 came out on Wednesday and it is very good. I’ve been using a pre-release version for a month or so and I’ve planned more events, I’ve sorted out things I need to do, I’ve written a dozen or more articles and pitches that at least used it a little.

But I’m also telling you this now because of one thing about one version of this software that came out. It’s called OmniOutliner Essentials and it’s only $10. (You’re best off buying it directly from the makers and they’re a US firm. I don’t know what the UK equivalent price is.) That is about a fifth of the price I paid before.

Now, it’s partly a fifth of the price because the company’s updated the app while also removing a lot of features but they weren’t ones I tended to use. Also, it’s a fifth of the price but you have to have a Mac. There’s no PC version and won’t be.

But nonetheless, this is a preposterously cheap price for something that changed my mind about outlining. It still hasn’t changed my heart but while I will continue to stride off into thousands of words of script or page just to see what happens, I doubt a day goes by that I don’t open OmniOutliner for something or other.

It’ll be that this something-or-other is complicated. Or that I know one thing I definitely want to do, to cover, to write about, and I’m really just making a note about that before I forget it. Then tomorrow I might come back and add another point that’s occurred to me. When I’ve got twenty or two hundred points like this, I’ve got an article or maybe I’ve even got a story. And away off I’ll go.

I said that I enjoy it when people blink at me. I want to make you blink now. Here I am recommending OmniOutliner Essentials to you but you will never under any circumstances catch me using it again.

For while this new version still hasn’t got my heart, it has got me mind, body and soul enough that I’ve upgraded to what’s called OmniOutliner Pro. It’s Essentials with a lot of bells on and they turn out to be bells that I like.

If you have a Mac, go get the trial of Essentials and then see if you can resist buying it, see if you can manage to not splash out that whole ten dollars. I am as certain that you’ll like it as I am that I can never explain why it’s great yet Word’s outlining feature is a whole kennel of dogs.

If you have an iPad and iPhone instead, you could buy OmniOutliner for those and have a very good time but there’s a version of Essentials coming for it at some point.

If you don’t have a Mac, iPad or iPhone, then write in your diary that I said outlining apps are all rubbish, okay?