All language subtitles for Masterclass - David Baldacci Teaches Mystery and Thriller Writing - 05.Outlining

I get asked this question a lot. Um, do

you outline the whole thing from A to Z?

Do you outline a little bit as you go

along? And the answer is yes to all of

those. Every writer that I know does it

a little bit differently. I have some

really well-known writer friends who

outline everything in the book from A to

Z. cannot start writing the novel until

they know the ending exactly how they're

going to get there because they feel

like I'm wasting time on floundering

otherwise. I know some writers who don't

outline at all. They just sit down and

just wing it and let it grow

organically. Um I'm kind of in the

middle. I've never outlined the book

from A to Z. I never know the ending of

the novel before I sit down. Um what I

tend to do is I will do two sets of

documentation. I'll call it that. where

I've got a little binder where I've got

some, you know, blank pages and I do

like broad movements, broad sweeps of

what I would like to accomplish during

the course of that story. And it's very

rudimentary. It's just kind of a first

stab at it. But I have these big

movements, small movements in a musical

score. You know, this is these are the

big things are going to be happening in

this novel. And then my job is to fill

in all the other stuff that actually

makes it work and make and make sense.

And then I have another notebook where I

sort of go chapter by chapter. So today,

you know, I got up this morning early

and I was working on chapter 24 and I

have my chapter 24 and I have bullet

points that I would like to accomplish

in that chapter. It could be someone is

meeting somebody, a certain bit of

information is exchanged that maybe will

have impact on chapter 25 or maybe

chapter 35 down the way. So it's kind of

like this intricate puzzle you're having

to put together. The great thing for all

of you as the writer, you can do it any

way that you want. And there's another

added benefit. The longer you write,

guess what? You can change the process

that you do. You may go from outlining

everything to just sitting down and just

winging it every day and to see how it

feels. Or you could go back to out, but

it evolves. Don't don't sort of

hamstring yourself into thinking I can

only do it this way. I have changed the

way that I plot my books out over the

course of time. I've changed my writing

style over the course of time. I think

that's a good thing. And writers can

evolve too, just like other people in

other occupations. So for me, it's

important to have sort of a broad scope

of what I want to get involved. I want

to know what the first few chapters I'm

trying to accomplish. That's really

important for me because as as a writer,

and you may feel the same way, I am just

I'm itching to get to the to writing the

story. I want to get past sort of

thinking about it in the outline stage.

I always get to the point where book

I've outlined a few broad movements,

outlined a couple of bullet points for

the chapter, and I'm like, screw it, you

know? I push it aside. Boom. The hands

go to the keys or the pen goes to the

paper and off I go because I just want

to get rolling on this thing and see how

it feels to me and then I go back to it.

So, the great thing is there's lots of

different ways to do it. Uh there's no

one way that you have to do it. Lots of

writers do it lots of different ways and

you can do it any way that feels most

comfortable for you.

I like dealing in miniature. Um, if you

get too broad of an expands in your

mind, nobody can really control all

those details. And that's when you get

the writer's block. That's when people

get overwhelmed and they're like, I

can't control this information. It's

just too much stuff. I don't know what's

going on anywhere in any facet of the

story. Okay, that's fine. You know,

well, you know, let's just break it

down. It's almost like, you know,

performing a surgery. If it's a really

multi-organ transplant surgery, it's not

like the surgeon goes in and slashes

everything and starts operating on all

the organs all at one time. They break

it down to discrete levels. Anybody does

a task, whether you work with the

computers or you work with cars or

whatever, there's discrete tasks that go

into doing something bigger, but you

have to do each of one of them first and

at the end you've accomplished your

task. Don't overwhelm yourself. Break it

down. So the many outlines for me could

be in an Amos Decker novel, he bullet

point one for a certain chapter, he has

to go somewhere and talk to somebody.

Who's who's he going to talk to and

what's the information he's going to get

out of that? Or it could be an

interaction. And I've had one chapter

scene where it's totally about

developing Amos Decker's character. The

bullet points are like interaction with

Jameson, you know, goes badly um and

there's a conflict and maybe she's no

longer working with him. He's got his

old partner who works in Burlington, his

hometown where he used to be detective.

She's got her own personal issues um and

she may not be able to work with him

much longer. So, the purpose of that one

scene was to build do the building

blocks to show that maybe for the bulk

of this narrative, the story I'm

writing, Amos Decker's going to have to

fly solo for the first time in a long

time. But in order to get that thematic

element out there, I needed to show the

little building blocks of how we got

there. He's got a partner. Well, this

happened to her. He had this old partner

was working with him. Well, this

happened to her. Those are the bullet

points, the little chapters where the

whole sort of stage is set. Um, but you

got to have to those little building

blocks first. Otherwise, nothing can be

supported by anything else. And I've

also found that when you break things

down like that into smaller chunks, uh

it's just easier not to feel overwhelmed

uh by just the breath of what you have

to accomplish writing the novel. Look,

if I sat down and I thought to myself, I

need to think of 500 pages, 140,000

words, all right now before I can sit

down to write the first page, I don't

think I ever would have written a novel.

And I don't think you would either.

This is the innocent. This is the Will

Roby. Um, and this is July 20th, uh,

2011. I was in London on book tour

problem. Premise. This is the very first

thought I had about Will Roby. Premise.

Man wakes up in a room with one or more

murdered people. Has no idea how he or

they came to be there. Um, as you can

will see, I've slashed through that.

None of that happens in the book. I went

through a couple more iterations and

then I came to Will Roby, freelance

government hitman. Good, the best, but

losing interest and maybe control. And I

thought about where am I going to set

this and how am I going to show him

opening the novel? And I'd been to

Edinburgh um before and they have this

really cruel underground Edinburgh, town

of Edinburgh. They built it on top of

the other one. They had the plague come

through. They just built new Edinburgh

over top of old Edinburgh. So they have

these tours down there and I went on one

of the tours and again this is the

writer's prism coming back. I went on

one of the tours and everybody enjoyed

the tour. I'm sure they thought it was

really cool. They learned a lot. I'm

thinking this I could not think of a

better place to kill somebody than down

here. It's like these long dark

corridors and hallways and so there was

this really orchestrated scenario where

Will Roby, the guy taking these people

through the targets. He's going down. He

turns a corner and he he's got this hood

on because they're playing up the old

medieval thing. And then he goes out of

sight for like three seconds from the

people following him and Will Roby takes

his place. He's got the hood on. He's

got his gun. He's got his knife and he

takes these three guys out in a very

professional orchestrated way. And

that's how he opened the innocent that

none of that was in the original

outline. Um because I needed to figure

out who Will Roby was because that would

drive everything else, every action he

did in the novel. So this is, you know,

it's a lengthy outline and it's

chapterby chapter breakdown. Um, what I

like to do though is I I I live by sort

of small bullet points and I try to make

a novel which is a huge scene, a huge

stage into these manageable bits and

pieces and I do that scene by scene

breakdowns, chapter by chapter

breakdowns. It makes it a lot more

manageable and then I can focus on the

moment because the last thing you want

to do is you're so worried about the

whole huge stage doing everything right

at the same time that your individual

scenes and chapters suffer because you

don't focus enough on them. Um, that's

why I like to break it down. But look,

if your scenes are not powerful and

strong and your chapters are not, you

know, fluid and complex,

the stage falls apart. You know, people

people don't read the whole book at

once. They go page by page, scene by

scene, chapter by chapter. That's how

you should attack writing the story as

well. Because if you fall down there,

the reader's gone. You lost the reader.

They're not even they're not going to

bother. So, you gota you got to sweat

the small details, the small scenes. The

small scenes make great novels. You

know, it doesn't work in the reverse.

One reason why I don't like to outline

the whole book is that I know that a lot

of the stuff is going to fall by the

wayside when I try to execute it in in

the novel. It's very different writing a

outline. It seems very structured. One,

number one, A B CDE E FG. Um, writing a

novel is not that. writing a novel is a

whole lot of different elements and

essential details all coming together

and kind of like the perfect storm and

you can't foresee everything that's

going to happen. If you go with the

mindset that the outline is important in

some ways but not set in stone

inherently flexible and gives you

incredible latitude to change it on a

dime. And then you write the novel

understanding the outline is over there.

But you're writing the novel, let it

grow organically with some of the

elements that you might have had in the

outline, knowing that you're probably

going to have to jettison a lot of stuff

that you had in the outline because it

no longer works. It's a round peg and a

square hole and just doesn't work. Then

I think you're going to be okay. And and

that sense of frustration goes away

because you already told yourself, I

know most of the stuff's not going to

end up in the novel, but it's given me a

little bit of framework to work the

story through and then I let it

organically grow. Every page you write,

you learn something about the story you

want to tell that you don't get when you

write the outline. So every every page

that you write, you're growing as a

writer into that story. And it's almost

like the beginning of it, you were

starting high school, at the end of the

novel, you just got your PhD handed to

you pertaining to that story. So that's

why I think outlines are good, but you

have to understand their limitations and

you have to work in an equal way, an

equitable way with outlining and

actually organically writing and

creating the story. Your job is to be

imaginative and clever and witty and

then put this piece of, you know, this

thing together. Use your outlines when

it's necessary, but understand they have

severe limitations. Let your mind grow

and flow as a writer because that's the

whole point of it.

This is the outline uh for the fix. And

it's a lot of stuff, you know, a lot of

handwritten notes. And so, um I like to

date everything. And I also like to put

the location where I am. I don't know

why. So, you'll see my outlines that

say, you know, Czechoslovakia, the Czech

Republic, uh July 4th or July 5th or

whatever, 2009. Um this is July 27th,

2016. rest in Virginia where my office

is located. It's the fix. Chapter one,

woman shoots the man in a public hearing

on gun control. Points to consider. Who

was a woman? Who was the man? Why this

venue? Connection to gun control. Red

herring. Other speakers. Clear target or

perhaps mistaken target. Work backwards

to the woman's motivation. Okay. The

woman shooting the man at the public

hearing is not in the finished story.

That was just kind of my first

rudimentary stab at where I think this

might take place and who was going to do

something to whom. And I moved on from

there, you know, possible theories of

domestic jihadist forced to do this. She

was drugged. She was blackmailed. Others

behind it, not the usual suspects. Who

was the woman? You know, I thought of

her name, Anne Birkshshire. That did end

up being in the story. But the

machinations is sort of started at my f

preliminary idea was okay school board

meeting woman comes in shoots that

didn't work out. I thought maybe I could

have two people at another venue. I

thought about maybe the Pentagon. Uh

it's really difficult for that something

like that to happen at the Pentagon. So

then I thought, well, maybe I could do

it in front of the FBI building on

Pennsylvania Avenue, the Jerger Hoover

building in front of Pennsylvania

Avenue, and then I could tie that story

in this outline to the Hoover building,

the FBI. Well, this was an Amos Decker

novel. So then you think about as you're

going through sort of the outline, when

do I want Amos to be involved in this

story? Is the crime going to happen? And

then he's called in to investigate it,

which happens in 99% of detective

stories that you read about. And I

thought about, well, maybe I'll will do

it that way. That seems right. But then

I thought about a little bit more. And

then it seemed to me that wouldn't it be

cool to actually make Amos Decker a

witness to the crime because it would be

very plausible that he would be going to

the FBI building. That's where he works.

So then I thought about, well, how can I

make this crime different? Not just, you

know, somebody walking up and shooting

somebody else. So here's how it finally

came down to. Here is the opening. This

is the big pop. This is the scenario.

You have a guy, Walter Dabney, and he's

walking with his briefcase. He looks

like a solid businessman like you'd see

a 100 thousand times a day in DC. He's

heading towards the Hoover building.

Amos Decker is heading towards work.

He's thinking about he's hungry. He

might get a burrito. He's looking away.

He notices a woman coming from the metro

station down near the FBI building.

She's walking this way. Dabney's walking

this way. Amos Decker is over here.

But here's here's the kicker. I'm

thinking, okay, everybody's they they're

going to wonder what's going to happen

to these two people when they meet. All

right. And then when it got clear that

something really violent was going to

happen, then you have to dig a little

bit deeper. And this is about

understanding psychology of the reader.

Who does the reader think is going to be

doing the deed? And who's going to be

the victim in this? So, the way I

slanted the writing was not a whole lot,

but just a little bit. I'm gonna slant

this writing so they think this woman is

going to be the person pulling the

trigger and Dabney is going to be the

victim. And if you read it, it's not

like I did anything extraordinary in

that, but I just every sentence as I

move forward gradually convince the

reader who's seen a million of these

events play out on television or movies

that she's going to kill this guy. And

then here comes Amos Decker down and

he's following. And here comes a woman

here and Birkshshire and Walter Dabney.

come and they turn and they're walking

towards the Hoover building and then

right when you think that she's going to

pop him, he pulls a gun out of his

briefcase and blows a hole in the back

of her head. And then to make it even

more complicated and even more like wow,

he takes the gun, puts it under his

chin, pulls a trigger and blows his head

off. So they both die. So not only did

you get the person wrong about who was

going to shoot, you didn't realize that

both of them were going to die and Amos

Decker sold the whole thing. That's what

I mean when I I say sometimes that

you're the mastering commander. You're

the puppet master of this material and

you have to make sure readers, it's a

it's a contest of wills and intellect.

Readers are going to go, I read a

million of these thrillers. I'm reading

this now. I know exactly where it's

going. Disappointed slightly. You know,

Balachi's losing it. But then all of a

sudden, it's like, oh my god, you know,

wait a minute, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.

She was going to kill him, but he just

killed her. Okay, that threw me. And

then bang, he just killed himself. I

never saw that coming. And then what

happens to the reader? They're like,

they sit a little straighter in their

seat and they're like, I have no idea

what he's doing with this novel. I'm

going to pay really close attention. I'm

just going to I'm going to ride this

sucker and enjoy it. I'm not going to

try to compete with Beldachi. I'm not

going to try to figure this out before

him cuz he just blew me away in the very

first chapter.

The two outlines I just addressed for

the fix and the innocent are going to be

available in your workbook. So you can

go over them in detail and look through

them and see how at least how I uh

addressed and managed and attacked both

of these novels.

As you're going through them, I think

you'll find that there's a kind of an

equitable uh mix that I have there of

it's not just a chapter by chapter

breakdown. You'll see chapter six and I

do stuff in chapter seven there's some

bullet points. Then before I get to

chapter eight, you might see me just go

off and free association in the outline

where I'm talking about a big movement

that I'm planning and I'm using the next

chapter and the next one after that to

sort of set this up. And this big

movement may not have a payoff until

chapter 50. So it's not just chapter by

chapter by chapter. There are little

breaks in between. There are little

scene breakdowns, character bios,

something that I want to do here with a

particular red herring. You may even see

I write over here, you know, this is a

red herring, you know, and I put it in

there because I know that's the path I

want to take. So, it's an interesting

mix of not it's you won't see the same

thing over and over again. It's a real

diversity of sort of my thought process

set down on paper for you to go through.

And again, you may not want to do it

that way. The cool thing is seeing it

the way I do it may sort of stir

something in you that you may come up

with a different method and process that

works best for you and that's the best