David Farland - Million Dollar Outlines

Book Description

Bestselling author David Farland has taught dozens of writers who have gone on to staggering literary success, including such #1 New York Times Bestsellers as Brandon Mull (Fablehaven), Brandon Sanderson (Wheel of Time), James Dashner (The Maze Runner) and Stephenie Meyer (Twilight).

In this book, Dave teaches how to analyze an audience and outline a novel so that it can appeal to a wide readership, giving it the potential to become a bestseller. The secrets found in his unconventional approach will help you understand why so many of his authors go on to prominence.

By David Farland

Smashwords Edition 2014

WordFire Press
wordfirepress.com

ISBN: 978-1-61475-175-5

Copyright 2013 by DFE

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover images by Shutterstock

Cover design by Kevin J. Anderson

Book Design by RuneWright, LLC
www.RuneWright.com

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

Published by
WordFire Press, an imprint of
WordFire, Inc.
PO Box 1840
Monument, CO 80132

Contents

The Million Dollar Writing Series

When seeking advice, always consider the source. Many self-appointed experts write how-to books without themselves ever accomplishing the thing they are trying to teach you how to do.

In the Million Dollar Writing Series, each of our authors has sold a minimum of one million dollars of commercial product in their field. They have proved themselves, and here they share their wisdom, advice, and experience with you.

There are many factors in becoming a successful writer, and we cannot guarantee that youll break into the top levels, but we hope you find the advice to be useful and enlightening.

Foreword

David Farland has trained dozens of New York Times bestselling authors over the yearspeople like Stephenie Meyer (Twilight), Brandon Sanderson (Wheel of Time), and Brandon Mull (Fablehaven) all came to him before they had ever sold a novel, then went on to make millions.

As a greenlighting analyst, David Farland worked helping with novels and films (as a consultant he urged Scholastic to push Harry Potter big, long before they were willing to do so).

And as a videogame designer he helped create stellar games like Starcraft: Brood War.

Eventually, people began asking him to teach a class on how to integrate high-level audience analysis into the design of a new intellectual propertya book or movieand his popular writing course Million-Dollar Outlines was born.

This book is used during the course as a reference, a refresher for many of the main ideas. An earlier edition was hastily thrown together. This new edition is heavily rewritten, and hopefully will help you learn not just how to outline, but how to begin tweaking your work in major intellectual properties before you ever begin writing.

Overview

What Kind of Writer Are You?

Lets face it: there are a lot of places where you can learn to outline a story. Ive read books on the topic, studied card systems used in Hollywood, and even computer programs that can all teach you how to outline well.

In fact, I bought a program recently for $70 that did a pretty decent job of teaching you how to create a good working outlinebut only if you wanted to write a hero journey story. It wasnt much help in writing romances or comedies or several other types of tales.

So this book can help you to outline any story, but more importantly it also seeks to explain to you why some story ideas are better than others. Why do some ideas electrify wide audiences while others leave readers scratching their collective heads? How can you tell the difference so that you dont waste your time writing a book or screenplay that has an audience of just one?

To understand this, I need to get into the basic psychology of storytelling, taking you much deeper than your average how to manual or software does.

This requires that you first learn what constitutes a potential bestseller, recognize the qualities of a good story, and then learn how to outline it in such a way as to bring out the best in it.

So, long before we ever talk about outlining, were going to spend dozens of pages on audience analysis and story theory.

You may be wondering if this book is for you. Ill be honest: maybe it isnt. Read the next page to find out why.

Two Approaches to Storytelling

There are two major approaches for writing a story: discovery writing and outlining. Neither approach is completely right nor wrong, and most authors take a hybrid approach. So lets discuss each approach, along with its strengths and pitfalls.

Discovery Writers

A discovery writer is one who likes to begin a story without really knowing where it will end. Stephen King is an excellent example of a discovery writer. Such writers enjoy the process of discovering the story as it unfolds. Often, a writer who is deeply involved in a novel will be writing about a character and suddenly recognize that unexpected things are happening: the killer in a mystery turns out to be the protagonist himself, or the hero actually fails in his quest.

Discovery writing is an excellent way to create stories that feel organic. Characters often tend to come out well-rounded in discovery stories, and settings come to life.

However, Ive known countless discovery writers who have problems with weak middles and sluggish endings because they didnt control where the story was going; or maybe the writer may take ages to write a novel because they end up following characters down blind alleys.

Very often, in discovery novels the focus on the primary characters shifts from one protagonist to another over the course of the novel, or the major conflicts that the author started with arent the ones that get resolved. When this happens, the reader feels cheated because the author hasnt kept the promises that were set up at the beginning of the tale.

Yet many authors find that extra enjoyment in taking this approach because the story always feels fresh, vital, and alive. It makes the crafting of the tale fun, in and of itself, so that regardless of whether the piece sells, the work is enjoyable. So if you love the process of crafting the tale, this might be your favorite mode of writing.

Just remember that not all projects can be written through the discovery method. Ive created a number of novels for major franchises like Star Wars and TheMummy. Some of them have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars. But franchise owners will insist on a beautiful outline before they greenlight a project.

If you are solidly in the camp of discovery writers, if you never want to learn to work in others franchises, then this book may be of no help to you at all. In working with writers, I find that about ten percent of them fit into this category. You probably know who you are: you may be the kind of writer who likes to write what are called small stories, intimate tales based upon your own past, your own personal life. Or like Stephen King, maybe you just enjoy the process of discovery so much that it becomes your primary drive for writing. It becomes addictive.