I’m writing my third book live on the Internet, and you can follow along! Today: the complete, detailed phase outline!
If you missed the previous parts of this story, the first post describes how to collect ideas. The second post is about outlining. In the third part, we expand the outline using the hero’s journey. In the fourth part, we talk about how to make the plot stronger. And in the fifth part, we talk about researching the details.
What is a phase outline?
Since I read the famous article by Lazette Gifford about phase outlines, I have been using them in almost every project.
The idea is to describe every single scene in one’s book by one short paragraph of text, which Gifford calls a “phase.” I find the word phase confusing in this context, but since the concept is quite well-known, we’ll stick to it.
Phases have the advantage that they are located somewhere between outline and first draft. They are a lot more detailed than an outline, but do not limit the writer like a first draft does. If you want to radically change something or introduce new characters in a first draft, this is a lot of work. In a phase outline, it is relatively easy.
Phases are numbered, so that one can easily estimate how much text each phase should translate to. For example, the Rosemary children’s books have around 12,000 words of story, and if I have 60 scenes (phases), each phase should end up being around 200 words, or about one page long.
Let’s outline!
Let’s now create the phase outline for Rainforest!
I have numbered all the phases, so that I know, in the end, how many I have. I have programmed my editor to always keep these numbers consistent and to renumber the phases if one is inserted somewhere or deleted. In principle, every editor should be able to do this kind of automatic numbering. I’m using Emacs on Linux, but I wouldn’t recommend this setup to non-programmers. For me, who was a software developer in his previous life, it is the optimal tool.
So here’s the outline:
Introduction. The characters are introduced. References to other volumes and the backstory.
{001} Arrival at the mission (fly over the Amazon). The kids fly to the mission in a little airplane. They look down. “How big the forest looks.” Rose explains that it is in danger, despite its apparent size. Briefly explain who the girls are, reference past two books. This is going to be a short stay, only 6 months for Mary’s father, and 3 weeks for the kids.
{002} They land. A little airstrip in the forest.
{003} They are excited to see everything. Are there lions here? Tigers? Elephants? Someone from the mission explains a little about the rainforest and what animals live in it.
{004} The mission. As they walk around, the fairies materialise. They tell the kids about the problems: gold digging, bad laws, corruption, illegal logging, big companies taking away the Y’s land.
{005} Yanomami? What is that? — You will meet some soon.
{006} In the mission hospital, they meet a young boy from the tribe. He had an infected wound on the leg. He is better now, but bored. He’s reading a book about how tribespeople live in the big cities, a pretty grim book. Rose and Mary bring him cookies, and, in return, he shows them how to make an arrow. He speaks a bit of English (from the mission school).
{007} They meet his father, who is coming to pick him up. (He takes the book along.) Father invites them to see the Shabono. (The children are in a foreign, dangerous world, and they will need a guide. The Yanomami boy and his father are the “mentors” who will guide the girls through the world of the tribe.) — The father of the boy is the tribe leader, a person of authority. His tribe is always at war with the other tribes (the Yanomami are known to be fierce fighters, who always find some reason to fight against other tribes!).
The problem arises. The bad guy or bad thing appears.
{008} They tell Mary’s dad that they’re going to the Shabono, and he is happy to see them go, so that he can work on the mission stuff. He knows the tribe leader and trusts him to take good care of the kids.
{009} While they walk through the forest (description! Mary’s wheelchair!) we learn that they are at war with the other tribes (disputes over land ownership).
{010} They take a boat and row upstream. Crocodiles etc.
{011} When they get off the boat, they meet a group of loggers who are surveying the land. The fairies, who fly ahead to make sure that there are no dangers in their path, warn them. They hide. Leader: If they see us, they’ll shoot at us. Other tribesmen are with them. They go on.
{012} Rose: what were the other tribesmen doing there? Leader: We’re all at war with each other over the forest. Some tribes want to sell their parts to the loggers. We don’t. Mary: Isn’t that illegal? Leader: Yes, but who cares, so deep in the jungle? Then the loggers pay them a little money and employ them as guards, or as workers. When their forest has been cut down, they’ll have to leave. They just disappear down to the big cities. I’ve heard that they live poor lives somewhere in the capital.
{013} Can you now work together against the loggers? — No, there are too many disputes. Some tribes get money for land that isn’t theirs, and then the other tribes go to war over that. — Rose and Mary realise that if the tribes cannot unite, they will lose everything to the loggers. So the only way to win against the loggers would be to unite the tribes. They talk with the fairies about that. The fairies are sceptical that this will work. The fairies disappear again, because they don’t want the kids at the Shabono to see them (to not confuse them with their traditional beliefs).
Identification of what needs to be done.
{014} They arrive at the Shabono. This is the special world of the story. The moment they leave the mission grounds, they are in the world of the tribe. They have accepted the call, and have now taken sides. They meet the other members of the tribe and play Yanomami games with the other children (shooting arrows, hunting, painting their faces etc).
{015} Suddenly, there is shooting coming from the forest. Loggers are approaching. A particularly nasty, English-speaking man is their boss, and he offers the tribe money for their land: 100 dollars (Brazilian money!) for each grown up and a social housing flat for each family (look up money value for such an offer!) if they leave peacefully and relocate to the city, never to return again. — Mary: what will happen if they don’t accept the offer? — Man: they will leave anyway. Only perhaps not all of them alive. — They give the tribe a deadline to decide (until tomorrow at sunset) and leave.
{016} Some want to pack their things, but the leader stops them. To Rose and Mary: you come from the cities. What do you think? — Rose: The book from the hospital Where is it? — The kids describe life as they saw it when they arrived, and they show the pictures from the book around. They describe cities with no forests or animals. Clothing etc. Cars. Many of the Y are terrified.
{017} But some want the money. They look at the pictures of magic in the book (electric light etc). And they’re afraid that they will never win against the loggers. They want to give up and go the easier way, even if it means to go away. The tribe breaks apart, and the lines are drawn.
{018} The logger-friendly faction leaves the common home and goes with the loggers, to accept their money. The boy’s uncle, the tribe leader’s brother, is their leader. (In the end we will have to heal that schism. They will have to return and be accepted back into the community.) — The uncle will need some visual identity, some characteristics that are memorable and single him out of the mass of other people: he is particularly big and strong, and this is why he always thought that he should be the leader. But he’s not as bright as his brother, the actual leader of the tribe. He’s very good with the bow, the best archer in the whole tribe. — The situation at the beginning should then be the opposite of what we want to reach at the end. When the story starts, the other tribes around have already made peace with the loggers and get money from them, or are too afraid to do anything. So it looks like the bad guys have won.
Coming up with solutions.
{019} Rose and Mary spend the night in the Shabono, watching the lives of the tribe. It is right after some of them left the community.
{020} In the night, somebody attacks the Shabono, and tries to burn it down. The fairies awaken them. They all escape (Rose helps Mary!), but the Shabono burns down. (Now Rose and Mary have been threatened personally. This is the inmost cave. There is no going back now.)
{021} What to do now? They realise that they will need the help of the other tribes if they want to fight the loggers. Mary: Let’s go back to the mission.
{022} They arrive at dawn. Rose and Mary persuade Mary’s father to take in all the children from the destroyed Shabono and to let them stay in the mission.
{023} In the meantime, the others discuss what to do. Build a new house? If they do, that too might be attacked. As long as the loggers want their land, they will never be safe. And next time, perhaps someone will die. Perhaps all of them.
{024} Rose and Mary: You have to fight. — Leader: We cannot fight alone. Too many of us are already working for the loggers, or have left the forest. — You need to unite. The other tribes must hate the loggers too. What are the differences about anyway? — Leader’s son (and later leader himself admitting it’s true): It’s actually about pretty small pieces of forest that are disputed. By now, it’s more a matter of principle than anything else. Disputes about a few small bits of land that have been blown up beyond proportion.
Execution, climax, twist, surprises, and finally success.
{025} There’s only one way out. To fight. Scooter, Rose and Mary explain that what the loggers want is money only. Scooter has the central idea: if they make it expensive enough for the loggers to keep going, then the whole thing will become unprofitable. And then they’ll leave and go somewhere else. Good idea, say the Y. We don’t want to kill anyone, but making it expensive for them is something they deserve. After all, they destroyed our home.
{026} How to make it expensive? Steal their stuff, destroy their machines. — How to destroy a truck? Scooter: I’ll look on the Internet. We have a computer at the mission house.
{027} Rose’s idea: we’ll take the Y kids and go play around the camp of the loggers. We’ll pretend that we collect leaves for medicine or something, and take big sacks with us. They won’t harm a few playing children, particularly if we’re with them. It’s morning again now, and all have to finally go to sleep. Rose and Mary in their mission house bedrooms, the Y kids in other parts of the mission house. The grown-ups prepare for the day.
{028} They do it. When they get up again, Rose and Mary take the Y kids from the mission and they play around the loggers’ camp. The fairies fly around and scout, and tell the children where the tools are. A few close encounters with guards etc. Whenever they see a tool, into one of the sacks it goes, together with the leaves. Slowly but systematically, they steal as many tools, keys and other equipment they can carry. They know that the trucks and logging machines stand unguarded overnight, but they don’t know how to destroy them (yet). They are big.
{029} They go back to the mission and put the stuff into boxes, which they send back to the capital, to the company’s headquarters that owns the logging business. It will take weeks for the things to arrive there and come back again. In this way, they have not technically stolen anything!
{030} Scooter goes and does some research on the station’s computer.
{031} Rose and Mary talk to the boy: could he go and alert the other tribes?
{032} But the tribes are not on friendly terms with each other. The kids and fairies come up with the solution: Mary’s father buys the disputed lands from both tribes that claim ownership, effectively paying twice for them. In this way, he gives them the money the loggers would give them (which is almost nothing). But this solves the problem with the disputed lands, because now they are not disputed any more.
{033} He sends a man out to go to the tribes and do the transactions, accompanied by the boy’s father, the leader of our tribe. This will take a day or two, to visit all tribes.
{034} Scooter reports: On the Internet I found a way to destroy their trucks. But we’ll need fuel. Rose: There’s is car gasoline in those drums out back, behind the main house. (They need it because there’s no fuel station in the rainforest!)
{035} In the night, they sneak out and fill some fuel into bottles. They give the bottles to the tribe, who will fill the fuel into the diesel tanks of the big trucks, thus destroying them. The tanks have no locks, since they are not needed in the jungle.
{036} The next day they watch the loggers. One by one, the big trucks fail, and the tools to repair them seem to have disappeared! The fairies cheer!
{037} As they watch, they are discovered by the loggers! Guards with guns surround the kids, and bring them to the leader of the loggers. — You did that, he says. You will pay for this. Your mission will pay for this. — He starts to issue commands to his people, when suddenly the loggers’ camp is surrounded by not only our tribe, but an alliance of the five or six surrounding tribes, which the boy and his father have called for help. (After they paid them for their lands).
{038} In that last moment before their defeat, the loggers try to grab their weapons. But the exiled tribesmen, who are still living among them, wrestle the weapons away from them. — In the end, the “self-exiled” tribe members are ordered to shoot at their tribe members — but they refuse, giving the victory to the tribes. Here it must be the ‘bad’ uncle who finally realises that he must be loyal to his tribe, rather than to the loggers. When it comes to shooting his own people, he cannot do it. And so he is the one who turns his bow towards the loggers and brings about the final victory. Which really is not the victory over the loggers, but the unification of the tribes that gives them power and the ability to survive in the future.
{039} The loggers have to leave and abandon all their machines. They are escorted out of the forest, and put onto a boat at the mission river pier (since their trucks are dead). Rose and Mary tell them that they better not return to the logging company, because they will be held responsible for the destroyed machines, and might have to pay for them. Better disappear to some other place. They nod, defeated. Their leader is seething but unable to do anything. They disappear down the stream. Everybody is happy.
Happy end, reward.
{040} The tribes re-unite. They take in those who left. “We didn’t know they were so bad,” they say. “When we saw that they were ready to shoot you, we had to stop them. Now we will help you rebuild the Shabono.” (The story, on a deeper level, is about the tribes, about the forest, and about how friendship can overcome adversity!). The leader and his brother perform some Y friendship ritual (look up!)
{041} After the loggers have been sent away from the forest, the tribes give Mary’s father his money back, and they will take back the land, this time in peace and unity. So nobody loses anything really. (We don’t want the priest to end up owning a piece of the rainforest, just like the loggers did.)
{042} Mary’s father provides the tools to rebuild the Shabono. They also have the tools of the loggers, which have not yet been shipped away, and are still in the boxes. They take them out and use them to build a new Shabono, using some of the wood the loggers already cut down. In this way, some justice is done.
{043} That evening, surrounded by the first columns of what will become the new Shabono, they all (including fairies) celebrate a big party, with food, drink and music (research what they’d have!) Everybody is happy. Tomorrow they will learn to hunt with bow and arrow. The end.
Final words
So the book now has 43 phases. If we aim for 12,000 words, each phase should have about 280 words. I will start dictating this tomorrow, and it should be finished in a few days.
I’ve written all my recent books using this same system. Writing the book first as a phase outline allows me to see what will work and what won’t. I can push things around, tweak the structure, add people and storylines as needed, without having to operate on the first draft text directly. Only after I’m happy with it, I will start dictating the first draft.
Of course, this will still change, and it will probably deviate a bit from the phase outline. But still, this preparatory step will save me a lot of time and work later on.
In the next installment we’ll look at the dictated text, and how to clean it up before editing it.
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