Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [42]
So far we have been talking about an outline strictly as an author’s aid—something you write before you write the book itself, for the purpose of making the book stronger and the writing easier. Along the way, however, I’ve alluded a couple of times to an outline which has another purpose, that of persuading a publisher to offer a contract for a book which has not yet been written.
Writers who have established themselves professionally rarely write a complete book without having made arrangements for its publication somewhere along the line. When one is of sufficient stature, it’s not even necessary to have a specific idea for a novel in order to get a publisher’s signature on a contract; when one has no track record whatsoever, most publishers would prefer to have a completed manuscript in hand before making any commitment.
I would strongly advise a first novelist to finish at the very least the first draft of his book before making any attempt to sell it. Almost any publisher will look at a neophyte’s chapters and outline, but he’s unlikely to offer a contract on that basis. Why should he? He has no reason to assume the unproven writer has the capacity to finish the book, to sustain whatever strengths the chapters and outline display. If he is sufficiently attracted by what he sees, he may gamble to the extent of offering far less generous terms than he would for a completed manuscript.
But that’s not the main reason why I would recommend writing the whole book first. More often than not, any interruption in the writing of a novel is a mistake. A loss of momentum can sometimes be fatal. If the book’s going well, for heaven’s sake stay with it. If it’s not going well, figure out what’s wrong and deal with it; bundling it off to a publisher isn’t going to solve your problems. A couple of times, when I had sent chapters and outline to a publisher, I kept right on with the writing of the book while awaiting word on the portion I’d submitted. In some instances that I can recall, I had the book completed before the publisher made up his mind.
When you do reach a point in your career where it’s advantageous to submit an outline, the document you will want to produce is a rather different proposition from the sort you write solely for your own benefit. Your object in this submitted outline is to convince another person—the editor or publisher—that you have a sound grasp of the book and will be able to complete a novel which will fulfill the promise of its opening chapters. A successful outline of this sort gives whoever reads it the impression that the book’s already there in your mind, fully realized, just waiting for you to tap it out on the typewriter keys.
When it comes to clinching a sale, long, detailed outlines are best. There are two reasons for this, one logical and the other human. The logical one is that the more substance and detail you include in an outline, the more the editor is able to know about what you intend to do in the material to come, and thus the better able he is to judge whether the book you will write will be a book he would want to publish.
The other reason is rather less firmly rooted in logic. Editors are people, too—hard as I occasionally find it to admit this. If they are going to commit their firm to the purchase of a novel in progress, and if they are going to lay substantial cash on the table as an advance to bind the deal, they like to feel they are getting something tangible for their money. A fifty-page outline, comprehensive enough to be what the film industry delights in calling a “treatment,” has some heft to it. You don’t even have to read it to know there’s something there; just weighing it in your hand