Drafting part 3: Sketch me out
Today we’re talking about the sketching stage of drafting. Sketches give some degree of direction and structure to the writer—exactly how much is helpful, depending on the writer and on the piece.
Sketches can help you come up with and test out different kinds of shapes, connections, ideas, and transitions before you commit to a direction—it costs more of your time and energy to correct course later on, once you’ve poured your heart into the prose or hauled ass on a bunch of research. You artists out there probably sketch in pencil before you start working with the expensive paints, right?
If you prefer a theater metaphor, sketching is like blocking a scene—the more complicated the scene, the more blocking is helpful to avoid awkwardness and injury. In some plays or scenes, improvisation might be the brilliant choice—as we discussed last week, a free write is sometimes the best way to figure out what you’re writing, what you think, and how you want to express it.
But when you want to know how something is going to end before you begin, when you want to prepare steps for yourself to take, or if you’ve struggled to move from idea to draft, try adding sketching to your process. This post shows you some of the options you have in sketching, and a list of questions to create space for your sketch.
Is sketching outlining? We talked about outlining your book in writing a book 4/ , which is a good companion post to this one. Here we’re talking about sketching out material and structure for an essay, post, or other shorter-form nonfiction writing. One kind of sketch is a detailed outline, but there are other forms a writer’s sketch can take. If you ‘struggle at the outlining stage,’ as a lot of writers say it to me, just drop the concept. You’re blocked on outlining because you learned it in school—witch’s hat, ‘supporting evidence,’ denouement, all these things you could get wrong. Sometimes a point-by-point outline is really helpful, and sometimes a shaggy sketch or a visual map is what you need.
When sketching, you really want to focus on is just two things: what do I want to say and what do I not yet know? Here are some forms that can take:
Structured sketches or detailed outlines. These are helpful if you like to be pretty sure how something is going to end before you begin, if you’re using lots of research, complicated or interlocking storylines, or if you like to do this to work out your structure. This might take the familiar form—point by point lay-out of everything you’re going to include in your piece, in order, with thesis and topic statements, evidence, all this. It can also be a simpler main point + summary structure. Once you’re satisfied, all you have to do is fill out the sketch by building out each of the points you outlined or summarized.
Summary sketches. A sketch can also be a summary of the piece in a paragraph or two, or covering a whole page, sketching out the ideas you’ll dive into in your next draft. (A summary sketch can easily become a first draft as you are working.)
Visual sketches. Print out topics and points to make on index cards and move them around your desk, or tape them up on the wall and reorganize them until you know what to do, adding more or taking some away as you understand the shape. Or, draw our your possible structure and material using a ‘mind map’—circle the main idea, topic, or thesis in the center of your page, and surround it with supporting ideas and other things you want to include, drawing arrows of transition to connect the points.
‘Sketch it out in my head’ sketches. I sketch in my head while walking, outlining what I want to include and thinking about structure, using my notes app to record whatever I don’t want to forget. I’ll summarize in a voice note what I want to write, with ideas for the structure. While the white void of the page often swallows my vision, the open world of nature helps me to see. (In fact, whenever you feel ‘blocked’ at some stage of the writing process, ask yourself: how can I make this embodied?)
(Visual outlining and sketching, and the relationship between walking and writing, are topics I want to write more about in this newsletter! One of my wonderful writers, Anita, recommended a book that explores how to tap into the visual-spatial creative mind as part of the writing process—very excited to read it and share more with you here. I also have a great deal to say about the connection between writing and walking, which is a big part of my personal journey and writing as a spiritual practice :) So much to explore with you here!)
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Whether in a detailed school outline or in post-its all over your desk, possible elements of your sketch include:
Content: What you know will be included in your piece, represented by bullet points, topic statements, a key word, or a full-ass sentence or paragraph.
Narrative: Is there a central story being told here, whether the main focus of the piece or an element that ties it together? What is the force of this piece?
Material: If you’re using stories, examples, pieces of research, interview, photos, art, or other multi-media elements, you can drop links, codes, or references to these in the structure of a traditional outline, or at the bottom of whatever document you are sketching in. ( “Grandma 9/8 interview, Connecticut—quote about her dad”)
Needs: What research you know you need to do, questions that you’ll need to work out, things you don’t understand yet—when you’re writing to learn, rather than outlining a topic you already know, your needs might include lots of questions and goals you can write toward, like, “How does it end?” and “Figuring out why I love her so much.”
Shape: The best structure or order for the story you want to tell—whether it’s a narrative journey or a how-to—to unfold. Whether you’ll include personal story, research, or other modes in the piece, and can also identify information or material you don’t yet have or know about.
Sketch questions
Wherever you’re starting, these questions can give you some stuff to sketch out. If you don’t know the direction you’re headed or what about a topic you’re going to cover or the angle you’ve cover it from, these questions will help you focus in. (Not all of these will be relevant or helpful depending on what you’re writing about, just use your smarts to figure it out.)
What am I writing about?
What do I want to include about this topic or in this story? What ideas, points, and / or support do I know about?
What do I know I need to learn or gather?
Who is it for?
What pain point does the reader have around this topic?
Where might they be anxious when approaching this topic?
If you have a goal for the reader, what do they need to know to make progress toward that goal?
What do they already know about this topic?
What assumptions or attitudes about this topic might they bring?
Why am I prepared to help them with this topic?
What questions does my reader have about this topic? What don’t they know to ask about when it comes to this topic?
Why am I writing it?
Why am I writing it now?
What’s the thesis of my piece, the argument or viewpoint I am defending, the thing I am explaining, or the main point I’m trying to make? Do I have a lesson I’m writing to impart?
What’s my goal for my reader— what do I want them to walk away with?
What do I want to accomplish, learn, or discover in writing this piece?
What modes and structures can I use to best communicate this idea, message, or lesson? Personal story or examples from other people, research, step-by-step, simple-to-complex, abstract-to-concrete, hypotheticals, data?
You can use these questions at the start of any new writing process. Use the information you gather in answering some or all of these questions to put together your sketch.
Just as I wrote about your book outline, the only rule of sketches is that you allow them to be abandoned or altered as you write. You might start out thinking your sketch is just a rough version of your final piece, and sometimes that might be the case! But if it ever turns out that the writing process reveals something your sketch could not have anticipated—even if you wrote out a detailed outline—let it go. Being able to change the shape of things as you write and learn is the whole point.
Coming up
A few more topics in this series (and beyond) will add more context and utility to what you now know about sketching, and what you can do to improve your drafting process:
building sound structures (what structures are possible, and how to think about creating my own structure)
being logical
determining appropriate depth
learning about your reader / writing to your reader
when and how to use personal stories and examples
using narrative and narrative structures
communication without exploitation
teaching, preaching, and reaching
your thesis versus your goal
writing intros and conclusions
using research and references
… and much more!
I hope reframing your outlining stage as a time for sketching will help if you’ve struggled to figure out how to move from idea to draft, and if outlining has been a challenge for you!
I’ll return to your inbox again this Friday with your next creative writing prompt.
Remember, everyone’s an alien ✌️🌿
