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| Supporting book structure with scaffolding |
The mentors of my “Write Your Memoir in 6 Months” course, Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D., President of National Association of Memoir Writers, and Brooke Warner of Warner Coaching call the outline “scaffolding.” This makes sense to me, for just as scaffolding supports the workers as they construct a building, scaffolding can support writers as they complete a writing project. Especially with chapters and book-length material, an outline—or scaffold—can assist with organizing your thoughts and thereby your writing. It can also show a writer what material was covered already and where to go from there.
The trouble I
had, prior to this memoir course, was organizing my material. Which memories to
keep in, which to leave out. What to write first, what to write next. And, of
course, what does it all mean. Outlining first gave me a chance to think about
my memoir in its entirety.
There are many ways to write
outlines. Don’t let anyone tell you
otherwise. Some writers want lots of
notes and guidance [like me]; some writers are more skeletal in their
needs. Outlining allows some writers to
write out whole scenes if the scenes come to the writer during the outlining process while other chapters can be simply memory prompts or ideas to be fleshed out later. Outlines keep writers moving forward in their
work. But they are merely suggestions
for the final product.
Outlines or scaffolds do not need
to be followed to the letter. They are
only starting points or “Dag-namit, where do I go from here?” type documents. Outlines can be changed in part or completely
as the story develops in the writer’s mind.
