The Running Man and Why Story Outlines Rule

“Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters’ theses.”

Stephen King

Story outlines are useful. While you can say they are not strictly necessary, it is very clear that by having an outline, you channel your writing into what is relevant and avoid drifting into dreary beside-the-point or inconsequential happenings. Outlines may be ‘the last resource of bad fiction writers,’ but, hey, I use them, and if that makes me a bad writer, so be it. Stephen King can go fuck himself.

Also, I don’t even get the ‘masters’ theses’ part. None of my outlines could be submitted as masters’ theses of anything!

I always outline my stories and I stand by them. I don’t even love my outlines. Outlines are generally dull, without details, without character, merely a structure to work with. I always talk about good stories, and I always love a great ending, but the truth is, a great book doesn’t need a good story. Books just need a series of engaging sequences to occur. But whether a book has a complex story or a simple plot, an outline is a way to plan out what is relevant or important.

And outlines are not set in stone. In the novel I’m currently working on, I’ve already switched a couple of chapters around and inserted an entirely new chapter that wasn’t in my outline. When it comes to writing, it’s not easy to know in advance how parts of a book need to be written and often outlines cannot tell you that.

King seems to labour under the impression that whatever goes into an outline stays that way – which is like saying once you write something, you can’t ever edit it because you are not allowed to change it, sorry, thems the rules! Either that, or he’s saying outlines force writers into a list-like writing pattern because they more or less transcribe their outline into book format.

I suppose the problem with outlines depends on how detailed you make them. My outlines are rarely so detailed that they are completely rigid. Most details I don’t bother to work out until I get to that point in the story. Sometimes it’s merely a case of this-sort-of-thing-happens-with-this-outcome. The main thing is to get to the outcome, and if the story expands or changes or there’s a diversion from the main plot, then that’s what happens. I plot out a sub section and work it into my existing outline.

I’m not entirely sure why King has such an aversion to writing story outlines. It seems such a strange thing to insist upon because it assumes all writers should work in the same way. I mean, you write however you want to write. What authority on writing would suggest you work in a way that doesn’t work for you, or suggest all writers should work in similar ways, to – I assume – get similar results? There’s room for all kinds out there!

In the above quote, King also seems to be implying he can tell when a book has been writing using an outline or when it hasn’t, which is quite a strange thing to claim. Or does he ask the author of every book he hates to confirm they used an outline to write it? Or is it just a bullshit claim and just pretends he knows?

The above quote is actually from King’s guide on writing, so he might elaborate a little and give reasons for thinking that way, but even then I don’t think he can say all books written with outlines are bad books. It feels more like he’s trying to project a self-image of a wild rock star writer over some tedious pedant who has to have things exactly the way they want them to be.

Me? I don’t care as long as the results are worth reading. King seems to be implying that an outline makes a book rigid by stifling the author’s creativity. But why should it? Why shouldn’t an author use an outline like the rhythm section of a John Coltrane composition and allow the certainty of a strong base to carry the wild meanderings to a satisfying ending? I don’t see why an outline should stifle creativity.

I should point out here that I greatly enjoyed two of King’s novels: The Shining and Misery. I wouldn’t call myself a Stephen King fan because I’ve only read a tiny fraction of his books, but I admire his work. However, as we shall come to, I posit that his work The Running Man would be infinitesimally better if he’d used a story outline …

Outlines Keep Writers on Track

I admit I’m an impatient reader and my biggest gripe is having to read superfluous information that doesn’t move the story along. This usually falls into two types:

1. Extensive character description and overly long descriptions of minor characters or places. This is the sort of thing you might find in older novels before they had TV and soap operas. They might go on about a place or type of person (sometimes using out of date pseudo-science) because people didn’t travel so much, and they didn’t have TV to waste away their hours.

When this is done in more recent books, I feel it’s done more for the writer’s sake than for the readers’. It’s like they are just explaining what type of person a character is, nothing of which described actually matters to anything. It’s them literally putting their character description notes into the actual book.

2. Deliberately delaying the story. This is a symptom of capitalism where a book has to be a certain thickness to be worthwhile, or the story is relegated to the end of each chapter to create that ‘page turner’ novel.

Many, many books delay telling the story to tell dreary nothingness just to pad things out. The worst I read was a book about a weird hole in the basement that was an evil portal of some kind. The slacker kid who found it and toys with it, who’d be the exact person to call in sick for work or just not bother turning up, decides he most definitely has to go to his low paid job and leave that weird hole alone for 8 hours! Later the book he goes to an ex-girlfriend’s house for no reason and stays for a bit just to return again. A chapter of ‘clearing his head.’

I mean, sure, you might need to pace things and delay things, but you should at least make it feasible. A weird physics deifying hole of evil and the character suddenly has other pressing engagements? Fuck you!

This is where an outline can really help. You can plan out what’s relevant, what’s interesting, and also what isn’t interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t think even and outline can save a writer from trying to pad their novel, or artificially delaying the story if that’s what the publishing industry expects.

But while King might say outlines stifle creativity, I say trying to make your book marketable and fit a certain genre or structure is far more stifling that anything an outline can do.

Billy Summers

(Spoilers!)

I don’t dislike King, but there are certainly parts of his novels that could do with a bit of work, and if he was a starting writer, not a Best Seller™, these are things that would certainly be addressed before publication. It just pisses me off that someone who sells lots of books might be seen as an authority on writing, and themselves an infallible writer.

No writer is beyond criticism. And if outlines make bad writers, that doesn’t mean writers like King always write well. So then, what does it matter if you use an outline or not, since either way is no guarantee for success?

The last Stephen King novel I read was Billy Summers (which sounds like a British spoonerism). The first half was very enjoyable. The second half was shit. But as well as that, there were a few issues with the writing.

The beginning felt a bit clumsy to me, not particularly well written, and the book doesn’t have a great first line (which is what writers are supposed to do, apparently). When reading I felt that if an aspiring writer had written it, it would have either been heavily edited or not even published. It annoyed me that it was published like that.

Either this book draws attention to King’s limitations as a writer, or he just cannot be bothered to address the weaker parts of his writing (and the editor knows his book will sell anyway). I mean, I know, sometimes you can’t be bothered with a troublesome bit of writing, so just leave it half-arsed. Writing doesn’t have to be perfect, and which works of fiction are perfect anyway? But for a famous author, some of this book was real crap!

A lot of the ideas are told to the reader, not delivered through example. Like, there is a gay man character who wears elaborate clothing and at one point he is described as being flamboyant but not camp in a stereotypical way.

And what the hell does that mean? It’s like saying, this character is a real stereotype – but not in a stereotypical way! I mean, what sort of writing is that?

The novel is based on the 'one last job' cliche from gangster movies The main character is a hit man and when I was reading, the idea of 'he only shoots bad people' came into my head, then a few pages later the book tells me he only shoots bad people. It’s the old cliché of: he’s a criminal, but he’s the good kind of criminal, so you’re allowed to like him.

There are just too many naff aspects of this book.

There's a rape story line and the main character is a bit of a male saviour. The woman is raped and dumped by the road and Billy takes her indoors, losing his underpants along the way. Yes, you read that right. Why does he need to lose his underpants?

The woman has hypothermia so he gets in bed naked with her. That might be a realistic thing to do but it didn't have to be in the book. It's a bit creepy. And then Billy has the problem of getting an erection.

He's in bed with a beaten up, nearly dead woman and he's getting aroused by that!

Then she wakes up in this strange house with a stranger and she just accepts him and more or less instantly likes him. She then shows no signs of trauma except the novel telling you she's damaged – which is another version of: This person is flamboyant gay but not in a stereotypical way. It’s a case of: This person is broken because I say so!

The second half of the novel turns into a bit of a slog. What starts as a hit job, being engaging, describing how he goes about planning what he aims to do, becomes an on-the-run story and begins to plod along. There's also a Gulf war sub plot which is really dull, and which I skipped.

I realised I was more or less reading lists of things the characters do, rather than reading a thrilling story – the kind of writing King accuses outline-users of writing! I mean, if anything it started to read like one long, tedious story outline!

A good edit to condense this book would make it something much much better. Are you’re telling me an outline would make this book worse?

The Running Man

(Spoilers!)

The Running Man is such a disappointment of a book. To me this novel should be fast-paced and relentless. Instead it’s slow and uneventful with the stalkers finding the runner without any description of how they did it. All the things you’d think would be interesting aren’t in the book.

It’s unfortunately not even good science fiction. While it has the original idea of a killing game show, it is conceived in a real crappy, clunky, low tech way. Video technology existed at the time King wrote the novel, and it doesn’t take much to conceive the concept of a very tiny camera that broadcasts a live stream. Even episodes of Columbo have things like that.

Instead, the runner has to record themselves twice a day using a film camera, then the film is posted to the TV network to be developed and broadcast on TV. But there isn’t even an obligation for the runner to show where they are, so they can just film a blank wall. Then what’s in the point in them filming anything at all? But if they don’t film, there is no TV show. For this the movie adaptation is better conceived with an arena filled with TV cameras.

I know I’m speaking from a time where mobile technology and digital cameras are commonplace, but livestreaming the show would make much more sense. If I were to write something similar, I’d have floating tiny cameras following the runner, which are constantly broadcasting and therefore giving away the runner’s location. You could also have members of the public videoing and sending footage to the TV station for rewards. Or even members of the public joining in trying to kill the runner.

It would be much more fast paced as a result.

I’ve noticed with authors that there is sometimes the tendency to put the character in a safe place – Billy Summers does this also – where chapters go by with characters in low-risk settings. Perhaps this is a tendency because writers find the writing process relaxing, a kind of mental safe space. The Running Man turns out to be more of The Hiding Man he spends so much time in hotel rooms.

This is where a story outline would have made this book a million times better. You could plan how the story would unfold to give the runner little time to stop. Here, an outline could be used to force yourself into sticking to a heightened pace, making sure you don’t lapse into putting the character in hiding. You would need to conceive a story of real luck, and real quick thinking, that would do the concept of a killing game show a service.

This means the main character would find little time to eat and sleep, so the story would get progressively more difficult. In The Running Man the main character does find himself starved and sleep deprived, yet by the end of the story he shows no signs of irritability and short temper. In fact, he’s a little too calm and clear-headed for my liking. Again this is the story telling you one thing, but the character behaving like something else.

Again a story outline can fix this. This is when you can make notes in your story to keep a track of the character’s mental state. You can force yourself to make sure you write the character in an appropriate and convincing way and track their changes or mental decline. You would do this and you would write a better book!

The main character in The Running Man is too lucid at the end of the story; too smart and clear-headed. It didn’t work for me.

Why Outlines Bad

I admit that outlines could be stifling, especially if you make sure you keep everything you’ve put in your outline and you give time to every idea. One thing I’ve noticed with outlines is that for one section you might write several paragraphs of essential ideas that need to be conveyed, yet when it comes to writing the story proper, you find that section does need fleshing out, and more or less remains as a few paragraphs. Other sections you might write a single line and find that part of the story becomes two or three chapters.

You have to go with your gut when writing, but if you keep your novel fixed to your outlines, I can imagine that might make your story lifeless and rigid.

Having said that, I think aiming to make your novel marketable is far worse for stifling your creativity, but in many ways, that can go hand-in-hand with over-planning. Many writing guides will tell you to structure your book in a certain way, or include certain archetypes. They might might tell you to hit certain dramatic plot points at certain moments or tell you to end each chapter with a cliffhanger.

I don’t buy all that, and it’s fairly easily refuted. Things you enjoy about books are merely collections of words you find mentally engaging. It’s not so much about their position in the book, more that the book is giving you regular mental engagement.

(I suppose in many ways a story is there to carry the reader to each mentally engaging section, whilst making those sections seem natural or necessary by providing a credible reason for them.)

Structuring your book in a way that naturally makes sense to you is far more valuable than forcing your ideas into a ‘marketable’ structure.

Why Outlines Rule

OK, so, look, every writer writes in the way they want to. I chose to use outlines and here are a few reasons why:

1. Keeping to relevant information

Planning your story gives you something to aim to, to make your characters do things that will take them to each stage of the plot. Even if you deviate from the plot, an outline gives you something to aim to to get back on course again.

Knowing what the characters are going to do, allows you to do a bit of foreshadowing if you wish. Or you can make sure the characters are right for the things they are going to be doing later in the story. You can make your characters convincing in that way, and not have them suddenly change character merely for plot convenience – which is the kind of writing you might find on a soap opera which has numerous writers writing over several years and no long term outline.

2. Keep track of subtle changes

I think writers tend to slip into a regular pattern with how they describe things, and how their characters behave. By making notes in a story outline, you can make sure your characters change in the way they are supposed to change. This is especially useful if this is a subtle change over time.

As I mentioned with The Running Man, sleep and food depravation would make the main character slow-witted, tired, depressed, and short tempered, yet these aren’t traits the character displays much of. Making notes along the story outline can allow you to make sure you are describing the characters correctly.

3. Compartmentalising

An outline can also help you to make sense of your ideas. It can be overwhelming when you’ve got lots of ideas of things that could happen in your book, but leaving them as mere disembodied fragments, in a collection of other disembodied fragments, can be difficult to sort out. It can be tricky to know where ideas should go, or whether they need to be left out, and a firehose of ideas can be stifling. Too many ideas can stop you writing.

An outline allows you to start at the beginning and work your way through each stage, one at a time. Then once you’ve placed some ideas in your story, you can start to sift through what ideas you have left. It’s a very useful writing aid.

4. Limited Time

This is an important thing and it makes me angry to have someone like King trash outlines.

I write in my spare time. I work for a living. If I had the luxury of having nothing else to do, perhaps I wouldn’t need to make an outline. Perhaps, if we all have lots of free time, we could all write like King and do away with story outlines!

The privilege King expresses in his trashing of outlines makes me sick. Fuck that! We are not all in secure positions that we can solely concentrate on a novel and have nothing else to think about.

Story outlines allow you to keep a track of what you’re writing about, what you’ve written and what needs to be written. They are useful to people who have other things to do. If you need outlines, you should not be ashamed of needing them.

In this vein it also maximises your limited writing time. I don’t spend all my writing time actually writing. Sometimes I’m thinking, planning, working out what’s going to happen in each section. But with an outline, you can know exactly where you are and what needs to be written. It allows you to get the most out of your writing periods. Yes, not everything you write you will used, yes, you still need to edit, but it helps to prevent you from wasting a lots of time on dead ends.

And I think this is the strongest case for story outlines. We are not all privileged people who are free from work and other worries. If you have a problem with outlines, perhaps you need to check your privilege.

Also: Guess what? I outlined this blog post! I typed all my ideas out in brief form, then fleshed them out over time.

Eat that, Stephen King!

Over and out for now, guys!

xxx