Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Diagramming Components and Writing Outlines

In my class, The Exploratory Writing Workshop, it is often difficult to convey the idea of multidimensional writing. The idea is so simple I fear insulting my readers, however, many of my students use only only a portion of the tools in a writer's tool box to the exclusion of many others.

A writer must resist the notion that turning on the spigot and simply letting the words flow is going to result in a good chapter that will somehow magically integrate itself with those that follow leading mindlessly to a coherent manuscript.

As in baking there is a recipe and the components of good writing require an artful blending of the ingredients. Writing a novel has a degree of complexity that requires some organization and while a smart writer might "hose" a good vignette they will come up short trying to use the same approach on a novel.

There's more to it than writing 5K words a day.