What if I told you that it is possible to
write a book without an outline? What if I told you that many authors are doing
this with great success? And what if I told you that there was a roadmap,
a guide, an exact playbook to writing your next book without an outline? In this video I’ll be digging into Writing
into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith, which teaches writers how to write without outlines. *** What’s up, guys? This is Michael La Ronn with Author Level
Up, giving you the best tools and strategies for writing faster and reaching readers with
your stories. This is the kickoff to a new video series
where I’ll be covering the best books on writing craft and talking about the ideas
behind them to help you write better and faster. For me personally, the foundational book that
changed everything for me was Writing into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith. I credit much of my prolific output to this
little powerful but often misunderstood book. Dean is a USA Today bestselling author and
he wrote many of the Star Trek novels that I read as a kid. He’s written over 100 novels and hundreds
and hundreds of short stories in many genres. Together with his wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch,
he runs WMG Publishing, which publishes all of Dean and Kris’s books. They also facilitate online and in-person
workshops for writers with great writing advice that you can’t find anywhere else. His writing courses are game-changers, guys—see
my WMG Workshop Review video for more info. So let’s talk about the big idea in Writing
into the Dark, which is this: writing without an outline is a scary proposition for most
writers, but it can be done. But outlining is such a deep-seated habit
because it’s taught so widely in schools. It’s what teachers and college professors
are recommending to their students, and people are often reluctant to do the opposite of
what they learn in school, even many years later as an adult. Most writers are trained to think they need
an outline when in fact, some of the best creativity comes from spontaneity. There’s no one way to do anything, and I’m
not telling you that you need to stop outlining, but many long time professional writers like
Dean have learned to ditch outlines with great success. I found Writing in the Dark in late 2015,
which was the perfect time in my life. At the time I was frustrated with how much
time I was spending on outlining. For my Android X trilogy, I had actually tracked
how much time I spent in every phase of the book, down to the very minute. It looked like this:
20% outlining 60% writing the first draft
20% revising the first draft 60% of my time for this entire series was
actually spent writing. If you look at that on a grade scale, that’s
a failing grade. The other 40% was not spent writing at all. And most of my emotional struggles were during
the 40%. And you know the worst part? I didn’t even follow my outlines most of
the time. The characters led me down different paths. So if I was spending all this time writing
outlines that I didn’t follow...why was I outlining again? So I wanted to find a way to eliminate the
“emotional rollercoaster” of writing a novel. You know, the ups and downs, both emotional
and production-wise. Your novel is awesome one day, horrible the
next, you’re writing one day, not writing the next. I prefer consistency, and I told myself that
I’d rather reduce my time spend on outlining and revising even if it meant spending a little
more time writing the book. Right around this time is when I found Writing
into the Dark. It was the answer I needed. Now, this is a small book, but Dean covers
a lot of concepts in it, like the fact that writing without an outline is really scary
if you haven’t written without an outline before. He also covers how to manage uncertainty since
you don’t know what’s going to happen in your novel, and helpful hints such as simply
writing the next sentence, cycling back through your work so that you can write a clean first
draft, and what to do when you’re stuck. A big concept that he explains is that creativity
comes from the back of your brain—he calls it the creative voice. Others might call it a muse or your subconscious. Similar idea. But when we outline, we do it from the front
of our brain, which is more logical and critical. Dean calls it the critical voice. This part of the brain’s job is to keep
you safe, so any time you have fear, the critical voice jumps in to protect you. It will tell you that your work sucks, or
you should quit, or any other kind of silliness—anything to make the fear go away. And in this case, that’s the fear that you
can’t write without an outline. The critical voice is not your friend. It’s logical and not creative. It wants to stop you from finishing your book,
and it kills many writing careers every single day. Dean refers to it like a parent who’s looking
out for a child. The creative voice is your friend. It’s insanely creative if you let it be,
but it’s a sensitive thing. It’s easily suppressed and stops cold the
moment the critical voice starts speaking. In order to thrive, it needs ample room to
play. If the critical voice is a parent, then the
creative voice is the innocent, optimistic, playful child. You’ve got to let that child out to play,
and play as much as possible. Dean’s point is that writing in its most
pure and engaging form can only happen when you learn to suppress the critical voice and
let the creative voice do its job. Easier said than done. I consider the book to be not only a helpful
book, but also a manifesto on how to be endlessly creative. Here’s the #1 Idea from this book that changed
my perspective on everything. It’s not even a popular section or a common
highlight. Most people will probably miss it. That idea is this:
“…Writing into the Dark takes a belief system in story. It takes a trust that your creative voice
knows what it is doing. And it takes a vast amount of mental fight
[...to] let the fine work your creative voice has done alone and not ruin it with your critical
voice.” Writing as a belief system. That got me thinking about my relationship
with religion. I believe in a higher power. I can’t prove it, though. For example, I could tell you about an emotional
experience I had that gave me faith, but you can’t see it. I can’t really convince you that a God exists. Yet I still choose to have my own belief system
because of faith. Faith is believing in something even if you
can’t see it, even if you can’t prove it. Without faith, you don’t have a belief system./
It’s the cornerstone on which any belief in ANYTHING intangible rests. I’m going to get philosophical for a minute,
but writing for me is a sacred act. It’s as sacred as prayer. When I sit down and write and simply trust
my creative voice and have full faith in it, I’m connecting with something higher than
myself, for reasons beyond myself. Because I don’t outline, I never know where
my story is going to go, but I trust my creative voice. And it always, always, always comes through
for me. It has never failed me. Not once. But that, like belief in any major religion,
takes an incredible amount of faith. And guys, I’m not an overly religious person. Let me tell you another story. When I decided to put Writing into the Dark
into action, I tried it with Old Dark, Book 1 in my Last Dragon Lord dark fantasy series. (Side note: I wrote my book Old Dark in the
dark. Get it? Haha)
I wrote this book with no outline, no idea of what was going to happen except an image
of the first scene in my head. The story is one of the most interesting,
twisting narratives I’ve ever written. It’s the story of Old Dark, a supreme Dragon
Lord who has ruled the world for hundreds of years with brutality. He’s a supervillain. When an assassination attempt on his life
goes wrong, he falls asleep and wakes up 1,000 years in the future, in a society ruled by
his enemies. The story starts off in a Game of Thrones-like,
high fantasy world, but as I explored it, it morphed into a futuristic urban fantasy
as you follow Dark on his quest to seek revenge and reclaim power. It has a lot of plot twists, a lot of players,
politics, and is quite Shakespearean in tone. In other words, it’s the kind of book most
writers would try to outline first because it’s pretty complex. Anyway, when I published the book, readers
said some interesting things in their reviews: They were posting things like the story was
deliciously good, it kept them wanting more, and all kinds of other things that I had never
seen them write before. That’s when I knew that I was on to something. So let me bring this full circle for you:
I was frustrated with outlining, committed to stop doing it. I followed Dean’s Writing into the Dark
method, wrote an entire series without an outline, and readers praised me for it and
didn’t even know the difference. And ultimately, my story and characters were
better for it. All of that because I trusted my creative
voice to do its job. If that’s not a success story, I don’t
know what is. If you’ve never done this before, trust
me: I know it’s hard to give up the safety of outlining and venturing into the dark instead. To use Dean’s analogy from the book, It’s
like journeying into a dark cave without knowing where the exit is. It’s dark, pitch dark, and you can’t see
anything, not even your hand in front of your face. And it’s scary too. You fear what you can’t see, and everything
is new and frightening. There are creepy stalagmites and stalactites,
hidden bodies of water, and at every turn it seems like you run into a dead end. A few times you want to quit and run out of
the cave, back into safety. But if you remain patient and push through
the discomfort, you’ll eventually find the exit. You’ll emerge on the other side. And when you come out on the other side, it’ll
be one of the most amazing things you’ve ever seen. Fearlessness, self-confidence in your writing,
satisfied readers and a better story all converge into an incredible euphoria of a finished
novel. Anything feels possible. You’ll have so much more confidence and
feel so much better about yourself and your writing that it won’t even be funny. But in order to get there, you’ve got to
get through the cave. And the first time around, I’m not gonna
lie—it’s a bitch. But it gets easier every time you do it as
long as you have faith and trust your creative voice. Writing into the Dark is available at all
major retailers in ebook and paperback formats. You can grab your copy via the links below. I hope that the book will be as transformative
for you as it has been for me. And if you liked this video, check out the
rest of the videos in this series, where I dive into writing craft books and explore
them on a deeper level. And of course if this is your first time watching,
I'd love to have you subscribe. Every week I publish videos just like this
one with writing advice to help you write better and grow your influence with readers. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you in the next video.
