Writing into the Dark: How to Write a Novel Without an Outline: WMG Writer's Guides, #6
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
With more than a hundred published novels and more than seventeen million copies of his books in print, USA Today bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith knows how to outline. And he knows how to write a novel without an outline.
In this WMG Writer's Guide, Dean takes you step-by-step through the process of writing without an outline and explains why not having an outline boosts your creative voice and keeps you more interested in your writing.
Want to enjoy your writing more and entertain yourself? Then toss away your outline and Write into the Dark.
"Dean Wesley Smith's blog gives both a slightly different view of the publishing world than I'd seen before and detailed hands-on "here's how to get from A to B" instruction."
— Erin M. Hartshorn, Vision: A Resource for Writers
Dean Wesley Smith
Dean Wesley Smith is the bestselling author of over ninety novels under many names. He has written books and comics for Marvel, DC Comics, and Dark Horse, as well as scripts for Hollywood. Over his career, he also worked as an editor and publisher for Pulphouse Publishing and Pocket Books. Currently, he writes thrillers and mysteries under one of his many pseudonyms.
Read more from Dean Wesley Smith
The Old Girlfriend of Doom: A Poker Boy story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5By the Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Smith's Monthly #13 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Luck Be A Lady: A Poker Boy story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDead To Me Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSmith's Monthly #3 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Thunder Mountain Series Reading Order Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCall Me Unfixable: A Bryant Street Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSmith's Monthly #1 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Case of Pilgrim Hugh: Five Strange Detective Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThrough the Jukebox: Five Jukebox Science Fiction Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Easy Shot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Slots of Saturn: A Poker Boy Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gift of a Dream Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSmith's Monthly #8 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Twist of a Knife: Mystery Stories from Pulphouse Fiction Magazine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWrong Turn: A Bryant Street Short Story: Bryant Street Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSmith's Monthly #20 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Smith's Monthly #6 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The End Might Be Interesting After All Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Christmas Gift Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Smith's Monthly #16 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Smith's Monthly #9 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Smith's Monthly #4 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Smith's Monthly #7 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Smith's Monthly #12 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Smith's Monthly #10 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Smith's Monthly #11 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Smith's Monthly #19 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Smith's Monthly #5 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Writing into the Dark
Titles in the series (26)
Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing: WMG Writer's Guides, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Pursuit of Perfection: WMG Writer's Guides, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKilling the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing: WMG Writer's Guides, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDiscoverability: WMG Writer's Guides, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClosing the Deal...on Your Terms: WMG Writer's Guides, #12 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Write Fiction Sales Copy: WMG Writer's Guides, #9 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heinlein's Rules: Five Simple Business Rules for Writing: WMG Writer's Guides, #10 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Writing into the Dark: How to Write a Novel Without an Outline: WMG Writer's Guides, #6 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stages of a Fiction Writer: Know Where You Stand on the Path to Writing: WMG Writer's Guides, #8 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Write a Novel in Ten Days: WMG Writer's Guides, #3 Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Write Attitude: WMG Writer's Guides, #7 Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Writing a Novel in Five Days While Traveling: WMG Writer's Guides, #14 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Writing a Novel in Seven Days: WMG Writer's Guides, #11 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Magic Bakery: Copyright in the Modern World of Fiction Publishing: WMG Writer's Guides, #13 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bundle on Craft: A WMG Writer's Guide: WMG Writer's Guides, #19 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Writing with Chronic Illness: WMG Writer's Guides, #16 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Creating Your Author Brand: WMG Writer's Guides, #15 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBundle on Industry: A WMG Writer's Guide: WMG Writer's Guides, #22 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bundle on Marketing: A WMG Writer's Guide: WMG Writer's Guides, #20 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRethinking the Writing Business: A WMG Writer's Guide: WMG Writer's Guides, #17 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bundle on Business: A WMG Writer's Guide: WMG Writer's Guides, #18 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBundle on Productivity: A WMG Writer's Guide: WMG Writer's Guides, #21 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTips about the Film/TV Industry for Novelists: WMG Writer's Guides Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Write a Novel in Half a Month: WMG Writer's Guides Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lessons from the Writing of the Fey: WMG Writer's Guides Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How Writers Fail: Analysis and Solutions: WMG Writer's Guides Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related ebooks
How To Write A Novel The Easy Way Using The Pulp Fiction Method To Write Better Novels: How To Write, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Write A Novel In 3 Days Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How To Write a Novel: Books For Writers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fiction Writing: How to Write Your First Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Creating Character: Bringing Your Story to Life: Red Sneaker Writers Books, #2 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Write Structure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Outline Your Novel: The How To Guide for Structuring and Outlining Your Novel: Writer to Author, #3 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Pocket Guide to Pantsing: Author Level Up, #13 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stages of a Fiction Writer: Know Where You Stand on the Path to Writing: WMG Writer's Guides, #8 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Write Novels Fast: Writing Faster With Art Journaling: Write Novels Fast, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Write a Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Story Method: Writing Scenes: Three Story Method Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Write a Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books And How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish With Confidence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storytelling for Pantsers: How to Write and Revise Your Novel Without an Outline Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWriting Myths: The Write Mindset, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings30 Days to The End Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Busy Writer's Tips on Writing Mystery, Crime & Suspense: The Busy Writer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInternal Dialogue: A Busy Writer's Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWriting a Novel in Seven Days: WMG Writer's Guides, #11 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fiction Formula Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScenes and Sequels: How to Write Page-Turning Fiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Conquering Writer's Block and Summoning Inspiration: Learn to Nurture a Lifestyle of Creativity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Write Your First Novel: The Stress-Free Guide to Writing Fiction for Beginners: Author Level Up, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Be a Writing Machine: Author Level Up, #3 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fast Fiction: A Guide to Outlining and Writing a First-Draft Novel in Thirty Days Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/52k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Immediate Fiction: A Complete Writing Course Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Language Arts & Discipline For You
Speed Reading: How to Read a Book a Day - Simple Tricks to Explode Your Reading Speed and Comprehension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5500 Beautiful Words You Should Know Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Show, Don't Tell: How to Write Vivid Descriptions, Handle Backstory, and Describe Your Characters’ Emotions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Craft of Research, Fourth Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chicago Manual Of Style Guidelines: Quickstudy Digital Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow To Write A Children’s Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lost Art of Handwriting: Rediscover the Beauty and Power of Penmanship Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Grammar 101: From Split Infinitives to Dangling Participles, an Essential Guide to Understanding Grammar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barron's American Sign Language: A Comprehensive Guide to ASL 1 and 2 with Online Video Practice Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Easy Spanish Stories For Beginners: 5 Spanish Short Stories For Beginners (With Audio) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Get to the Point!: Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Public Speaking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's the Way You Say It: Becoming Articulate, Well-spoken, and Clear Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Talk Dirty Spanish: Beyond Mierda: The curses, slang, and street lingo you need to Know when you speak espanol Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLearn Sign Language in a Hurry: Grasp the Basics of American Sign Language Quickly and Easily Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Everything Sign Language Book: American Sign Language Made Easy... All new photos! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tao Of Writing: Imagine. Create. Flow. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Writing into the Dark
16 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Really helped me to come over my fear and focus on my art and what I’m doing when I’m writing
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5First, understand that I give this book 5 out of 5 stars because Dean Wesley Smith delivers exactly what he promises: A method for writing into the dark, cycling around the story while keeping an outline as you go.
What must be understood, I submit, is that an aspiring writer must have internalized the craft of writing fiction for this to work. Dean's right, of course. Your self-conscious, critical voice is the kiss of death for your story or, at the very least, your enthusiasm for it. So you must learn to work with the subconscious, and you must memorize story structure.
Otherwise, writing into the dark is like me saying, "Okay. Anything goes. Your move." And then you'd either sit there and do nothing because you have no vision to go on, or maybe you'd flail randomly and throw anything onto the page in the hope that by chance it works.
I don't work by chance, and I don't think you have to either. So basically, to write into the dark, you need to pack your own light and your own tools to carry with you. Vade cum dio, and have fun!
(P.S. If I can recommend another book on Scribd and Smashwords to help to this end, I will recommend 2 which are both free: David Sheppard's Novelsmithing and Story Alchemy.) - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A short book, but packs a hell of a punch. It's already helping me to let go of a bunch of my anxieties about writing, use less outlining, and have more fun writing. I'm building up my writing routine to get rid of both the outline and my usual second draft in the near future. Highly recommend this book!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I don't agree (and probably never will) with a few things in here, but this book still gave me a new perspective and reminded me of my early teen years when I just sat down and wrote whatever I wanted, shaped the story however I felt at the moment I got there and enjoyed every second of it.
I'm an INTP. Outlining, finding out every little detail about my stories fires me, gives me joy like nothing else, it makes my logic thrive, but the thing is, after I'm done, the story looses the magic and I don't want to sit down and actually write it anymore, because I already know everything.
This year I want to try different type of writings, to see what would be the perfect match for me. And although I don't think I could ever go simply off my pants the whole time, I'll try not to come up with every single detail. Writing used to be so much fun when I was a kid. Nowdays the ideas themselves are more interesting for some reason.1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent book, I read it in one sitting. It makes you want to go write, immediately, no excuses.
1 person found this helpful
Book preview
Writing into the Dark - Dean Wesley Smith
For all the brave writers out there writing stories into the dark.
Have fun.
INTRODUCTION
In almost 150 novels now in both indie and traditional, I have written into the dark on some, done outlines on others, and even did a 135-page fully realized
outline on one poor novel.
There are as many ways to outline a novel as there are writers. Plus, there are about a million books out there giving you the secret to outlining. In some of the online workshops I help with at WMG Publishing, I even taught a few ways to outline.
But there are very few articles and books on how to just type in the first word and head off into the dark writing a novel with no plan, no character sketch, nothing but pure exploration.
That’s what writing into the dark is all about. Pure exploration of a story.
In this book, I hope to help you learn how to have the courage and the ability to just tell a story from your creative side.
SO WHAT EXACTLY IS WRITING INTO THE DARK?
Some call it writing by the seat of your pants.
There are other terms for it that are so stupid, I can’t bring myself to even type the names of them.
Basically, writing into the dark means that you decide to write a story without an outline.
Now most short story writers do this automatically. But faced with a novel, the same writer who just had a blast going off into the dark on a short story will freeze down like shallow lake in the Midwest in the dead of winter.
Critical voice takes over the writer’s mind, and all the stuff the writer was taught by people who have never written a novel comes roaring in.
In fact, most of us in our early years of writing take all our information and learning from very, very unqualified people.
English teachers in high school may know how to put a sentence together in some grammatically correct fashion, but they have zero, or less than zero, idea how to create a story from nothing.
We are taught how to tear stories apart under the guise of learning, but that’s like handing some kid a hammer and telling him to tear down a house. Then when the house is in rubble, you turn to the kid and say, Now, build a wonderful new home with fine craftsmanship there.
The kid might have been fine at tearing a house apart, but tearing a house down teaches little of the creative process, the building process.
So teachers tear apart a book, then make students outline the book. What that does is make the writer of the book look damn smart, actually. Students come away from the process thinking, Wow, how did the writer know to put all that foreshadowing in chapter six for what’s going to happen in chapter ten?
So then, later, when the writer is facing a novel, the writer thinks all that idiocy taught in school is going to help the writer with the task of writing. Nope.
In fact, most of that learning from school will hurt the creative writer.
But off the writer goes, spending time and energy outlining and working on the outline and making sure the outline is perfect before ever writing word one. And all that is done from the critical voice, from the voice of a teacher who wouldn’t have been able to write a novel on the threat of death.
It is any wonder so many early outlined novels fail, and fail big time?
And actually, most outlined novels never get written. I’ll talk about why later in the book.
CRITICAL VOICE VERSUS CREATIVE VOICE
A great deal has been said about critical voice versus creative voice in writing, or in any art, for that matter. Great art is rarely, if ever, created from a critical perspective. Art is never done purposely.
Great art comes from the creative side of our brains. I like to think of the creative part living in the back of our brains. The front part of our brains, the critical part, is what takes in all the information. The creative part has a large filter and only takes in the knowledge it wants and uses.
The creative side of our minds has been trained since we were born, and story has been trained into that creative side since we were first read to by our parents. The creative side loves story.
For most writers, the difficulty comes when trying to get past the critical side of our brains and write from the creative side only. Outlining comes from the critical side by the very nature of outlining.
So the critical side of our minds outlines a book, then we wonder why the creative side often doesn’t want to follow the outline. The creative side knows story, knows what needs to be in a story.
So all the way through this book, I’m going to be talking about how to access the creative side, how to trust that part of your mind to create stories, and how to kill the fear that the critical voice will use to try to stop you.
Much, much more on this topic coming up.
WHY WRITE INTO THE DARK?
The first answer to that question is easy. Writing into the dark imitates the reading process for the writer.
All writers are readers. And as readers, we love it when a writer takes us along for the ride in