Forum: Writers


Subject: What's your creative paragdigm?

evilded777 opened this issue on Oct 31, 2014 · 14 posts


evilded777 posted Sat, 08 November 2014 at 9:55 AM

Heh, I just saw your question about outlines and 3 act stories...

I think outlines are unavoidable, but my approach is usually to just write myself out of a pickle.  I never come up with stories in a liner fashion: I often know the middle of a story before I know the beginning, and so I simply ask myself a series of questions and outline in my head...it's kinda like doing algebra and finding "x" or some boring thing like that, only algebra in real life is far more fun than in some stiff clasroom.  I'm more like Ursula K. LeGuin and Harlan Ellison (in terms of short fiction) in that I often just look around and listen for inspiration, which usually comes if I hear something wrong, or don't see something correctly.  Ursula K. LeGuin came up with the idea for her story: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" simply by seeing a highway sight for Salem Oregon in a rear-view mirror.  "regon" was cut off, and so all she saw was O melaS...and because of a rear view mirror speeding away from a highway sign, a great story was written, sans outline.  The same happened with Harlan Ellison's famous "Jefty is Five" which came from him mis-hearing a conversation.  Two people were talking about some guy named Jeffrey and one asked, "How's Jeffrey?"  the other person responded: "Oh, Jeffrey's fine...he's always fine."  Only Mr. Ellison mis-heard it as: "Oh, Jefty is five...he's always five..." and thus we have another brilliant story.  I suspect outlines really come in handy in terms of longer works.  Short works are often their own outlines.

Two of my most favorite writers in one post. Man I haven't read "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" in decades. I'm going to have to pull that out of somewhere and read it again.