Calling all Outliners

Two ways.

For the rough draft, I jot down set points in a notebook. These are main points or events that I need to build to for the story. I also use an Excel spreadsheet. ::waits for the snickering to die down:: With multiple POV characters or multiple storylines (which might not work for a memoir or it might, depending on your structure), I have one column for each POV. Beneath that POV, I write 1-3 sentences describing the scene. Only one scene per row. It gives me a visual representation of how the scenes are going together and leading one to another. Many people do something similar with notecards.

Here's how I would tackle it:

What's the theme of your memoir? What's the rope that's going to pull the reader through it? Ideally, it will be some sort of struggle, some obstacle that you've had to overcome. Identify that, and then you can decide which episodes from your life pertain. As with a novel, the scenes you choose to include should drive the narrative forward, and any that don't can be eliminated. I would start with a scene of conflict, either at the beginning of the struggle and proceed chronologically, or at the point of greatest tension and then go back to describe how you got there.

My two cents, anyway. I'm interested to see how others would do it.

Timeline of events as a dot point. That is an outline (for me).

JJ

I write a 2-4 page 'general' outline, highlighting themes and the timeline of events, and the relationships between characters. From that I create a chapter-by-chapter outline, and then a scene-by-scene. And take a lot of notes. But I'm still relatively new to the concept of writing anything lengthy enough to require serious organization, so take that for whatever it's worth!

I really like the idea of an Excel spreadsheet for multiple POV. That sounds much easier to look at than 3 different Word docs.

When I outline (which is not very often) I do the same thing as Birol, only I also use the pattern feature in Excel to color the rows depending on the POV character (in a multi-POV novel) or the storyline (in a single POV with multiple storylines).

Another thing that works for me when I'm outlining on the fly--which means I don't do an entire outline ahead of time, but as I'm writing the draft--is to use the Document Map feature in Word. I start with chapter numbers as a Heading 1, and beneath them I'll put notes about what happens in that chapter as a Heading 2.

And I've also tried the colored notecards on a cork board, but ended up ignoring it. Since you already have a list of events, I'd suggest starting with notecards; write down one event per card and then lay them out on the floor and put them in some sort of order. See if you have any gaps. Fill those in.

I'm not sure I qualify, because my outlining has been done in response to frustration.

I made a timeline in a spreadsheet, much like Birol, but seeing as my story spans many years, it goes year by year. That's rather breaking down now that I'm reaching the climax and a lot happens in a short period of time, but that's easily tweaked. I like Birol's idea of doing it scene by scene and will probably steal that idea.

I've also made point by point outlines of the story from the point of view of different characters. Seeing as you're doing a memoir that might not have any value for you, but it helped me ensure that my characters were people, not props, with their own motivations and internal logic.

Wow... spreadsheets. Now that is detailed.

I've so far only written synopses for fiction - a couple of novels, & kinda rough sketches for longish short stories.

I'm currently - stuck - halfway thorugh a travelogue, the first half of which I wrote sort of chronologically. I'm now beginning to realise that it needs a structure and a kinda story arc, much like a novel would. It needs to head towards something, it needs some sort of aim or goal.

So I'm currently working this thorugh in my head, looking for the central theme of it - why did I go to that place, what did I want from it, what did it give me, and how was I changed?

This is all rather waffly and long-winded, but I think what I'm trying to say is -- obviously you can only write a memoir as things happened (well, pretty much), but to achieve an arc and a structure, maybe you could look for a recurring theme, a topic, an aim... and use that to build the structure from, or on, or around.

Hmmmmm. I hope that made some sense.

I use Excel spreadsheets, sometimes multiples, with columns for different specifics like characters involved, locations, dates, action, and then notes for rewriting, etc. For a very complex novel I used a separate spreadsheet just to keep all the characters organized. Puma

Presently, I'm experimenting with a three-outline format. My first outline gives each chapter's basic premise; the second outline gives each major point in each chapter; and the third outline is a book-length play-by-play outline that has every major movement the characters make.

However, I'm only experimenting right now, and I'm still not certain if this will work for me or not. Still, if it helps another writer out, cool.

I tend to create a fairly detailed synopsis (almost a mini-novel) and then go back and pick out events/scenes. Since I use WriteItNow when I plug the scenes in as events it generates something very close to an outline for me (YWriter does something similar, although I prefer WIN's format). Since the event tab also allows plugging in characters in each event I can track viewpoint and other things that way. With WIN's event outline I can then go back and break out chapters.

Prior to WIN I would take my synopsis and cover it with pen marks detailing who was active in what scene and how they all fit together.

For works of any length from a thousand to more than 100K words, I've used both top-down & bottom-up approaches, & bast... er, hybrid versions between.

As someone's already suggested, you could start by writing down -- "25 words or less" -- your overall story-arc. Then you break this down to major phases & event arcs. Then you break these down to substories. Then you break these down to scenes.

Conversely, you can do the "index card" method -- with the understanding that, by the time you reach the end, you may have to toss it all out & take another running start at it because your act of pinning it down has caused you to make key changes. Anyway, what you do is begin at your (proposed) opening scene, & say briefly what happens. Avoid going into great gory detail, but be sure to jot down any key bits of business or dialogue that happen to pop into your head -- these often form the crux of a chapter. Then move along to "what happens next." keep going until you hit something like an ending -- again, you may get to the end with an entirely different protagonist & setting & purpose & theme!! This happens as your mind finds something much more cool &/or illustrative.