2006 photo by badrobot, www.morguefile.com...

Whether you’re writing a 22 page comic or a 200 page graphic novel, for many, scripting can quickly become overwhelming.  Without a plan of attack, just getting from the first scene to the second scene can be a daunting task. Trying to swallow a meal that big in just one bite is too much! 

One easy solution to scripting woes is to break everything down into easy to chew portions. (Otherwise known as: THE OUTLINE! DUN DUN DUN!) An outline is the same for writers as thumbnails are to a penciler.  They allow you to assemble your ideas for a story before you ever begin scripting it and also double as a road map for when the actual writing starts so that you don’t find yourself lost and meandering later.  Outlining a story before writing the script also allows you to plan ahead and estimate just how many pages a scene should take and overall how many pages you’ll need for your book.

Outlines can be as simple or as complicated as thumbnails and there are many ways to write them. Some are shorter and less detailed than others and the more you practice writing them the faster you’ll find what your comfort zone for detail and length are.  As long as the outline lays out the storytelling for you in a way that is helpful and makes sense, it can be considered a successful outline.

As a general rule, when outlining a mutli-chaptered or longer body of work, I usually use no more than a short paragraph to describe a scene and I split the outline up by chapter. However, for our example Outline, we will concern ourselves with a self-contained short story of only 32 pages.

So let’s start with an idea:

Title: Little Red
Genre: Action/Horror
Rating: 13+
Pages: 32

Little Red Riding Hood is sent to visit her injured grandmother on the other side of the woods.  Unfortunately, the woods are a dark and dangerous place and Mr. Wolf, a creature known for eating little girls, approaches Little Red. Chatting her up a bit, Mr. Wolf decides to double his anti and eat up the girl’s Grandmother too. Mr. Wolf advises Little Red to stop and pick some flowers for her Grandmother before running off down the lane to Grandmother’s house himself. 

Little Red, being no fool, heads towards a shortcut through the woods. As she’s running, she spies a drunken woodsman and eyes the small hatchet he has next to him.

Mr. Wolf finally arrives at Grandmother’s house and congratulates himself on such a cunning plan. When he opens the door however, the house is dark and creepy.  Mr. Wolf’s cunning plan is turned against him as Little Red gets the drop on him and the two battle. In the end, Little Red kills the wolf and she and her Grandmother have tea and cake while they discuss what a lovely rug he’ll make.

This is a short overview of the type of story we’re creating. While for some, this short description could be broken down into a successful outline, because the story is so short, we’ll take this opportunity to flesh out our idea so it will be even easier to write.  Like thumbnailing, the more information you give yourself in the preparation stage, the less work you’ll have to do in the working stage.

In the more detailed outline, we flesh out the general idea a bit more and add notes about important things to include or that we do not want to forget.  The outline is broken down by scene.

Little Red Outline:

We begin at a happy little cottage on the edge of a dark forest.  Little Red Riding Hood’s mother hands her a basket and fills us in on the Grandmother’s broken leg.  She tells Little Red to take the basket of goodies to her Grandmother’s house and cheer the old lady up a bit.  Her mother seems tough and unconcerned about the journey as Little Red looks at the foreboding entrance into the woods.  The dialogue establishes this is NOT Little Red’s first time through the forest and that her mother thinks she can handle this “mission”. Innocently, Little Red gives her mother a thumb’s up and walks up the path to the woods.

Cut to shots of a child’s shoe, a broken doll and finally child-sized skulls and bones strewn about a large nasty looking tree. In the middle of this horror, we reveal Mr. Wolf picking his teeth with the bones of a little finger.  As he muses to himself about how tasty the children from the gingerbread house were (insinuate Hansel and Gretel in the dialogue) he suddenly hears Little Red singing to herself as she walks up the path.  Mr. Wolf slyly steps into her path and Little Red looks suspicious of him as he begins to chat her up.  She reveals her destination to him when he inquires and Mr. Wolf joyfully imagines eating both the girl and her Granny.

Mr. Wolf chastises Little Red for visiting her Grandmother without flowers. He leads her off the path to a small field of rather dead looking lily’s, explaining that she should put together a proper bouquet before she continues on. Little Red seems to be playing along at this point and kneels to pick flowers. Mr. Wolf then excuses himself with a lame story about being late for dinner. He wishes her luck and runs off down the road with the sign pointing to Grandmother’s House.

Little Red watches him fade from sight and her eyes narrow. She drops the flowers she has picked and heads off down the other path in the road. She comes to another sign (this one older and covered in leaves/brush) and as she wipes it clean, we see that her direction reads: Dangerous! Shortcut!  She smiles a rather wicked smile and begins to head down the road.  As she walks a loud snore catches her attention and she spies a rough looking woodsman, drunk and asleep, beside a tree stump. She approaches the woodsman in a slow and frightening manner before stealing his small hatchet from the stump.  She then continues down the road.

Mr. Wolf emerges from the forest and stares down at another quaint little cottage.  The sign next to him tells us this is Grandmother’s house.  Mr. Wolf gleefully approaches the cottage and we get a glimpse of his devious plot as he plans things out all the way up to the door.

As he goes to knock however, the door opens with a creak.  Curious Mr. Wolf opens the door and steps into the darkened cottage.  This obviously catches him off guard and as he moves farther in to investigate, the door slams shut behind him.  Little Red dives down at him from her perch above the door and slashes him with the hatchet.  Mr. Wolf howls and trips backwards and a fight between the two breaks out. Little Red seems to have the advantage and is toying with him. He chases her into the grandmother’s room only to find it empty, save for a person shaped lump in the bed. Mr. Wolf is sure the lump is her grandmother and Little Red has made a mistake. He advances on the bed and throws off the covers only to find a stack of pillows.  Behind him, Grandmother suddenly appears and cracks him hard across his head with her crutch.  Mr. Wolf lands roughly on his back on the floor and as he looks up, he sees both the Grandmother (who is a tough looking old lady) and Little Red staring down at him. Little Red raises the hatchet and grins saying: “My, what big eyes you have.”

We start with a close-up of a teapot and pull out to reveal a happy looking Grandmother and Little Red sitting at the kitchen table. The cottage is now brightly lit and they are enjoying tea and cakes.  Grandmother is grateful that Little Red has come to visit her and the dialogue seems light in contrast to the horror of the last scene.  Grandmother thanks Little Red for all the wonderful gifts. As she declares what a fine rug “he’ll” make, we pull out even further to reveal Mr. Wolf’s skin hung out to dry by the fire.

With such a detailed roadmap, it is now easier to sit down and script out the dialogue. There’s no question as to where the story goes and the scenes break the story down into bite sized chunks.  Rather than concerning ourselves with the whole story, we can now focus on individual pieces.

This brings us to the final step in breaking down the story before we can begin scripting.  Now that the outline is finished, we can easily assemble a page breakdown for this story.  In this case, we know we have 32 pages to fill.  So let us look at the scenes individually:

Scene One: Little Red’s House

Scene Two: The Woods

Scene Three: The Fight

Scene Four: The Tea Party

First, look for your largest scene.  We know that Scene Two will require a large number of pages.  In Scene Two we must be able to cover:

• The Introduction of Mr. Wolf
• His Conversation with Little Red
• His Exit
• Her Exit

Because Scene Two is so large, it is safe to say that it equals half of our story.  We can assign at least 16 pages to Scene Two, which leaves us 16 pages left to work with.

Next, look for your shortest scenes.  Scene One and Scene Four do not require many pages.  They are short scenes and will use up a couple pages at best.  This leaves the remaining number of pages for Scene Three.

Here’s my page breakdown for Little Red:

Scene One: 3 pages

Scene Two: 17 pages

Scene Three: 10 pages

Scene Four: 2 pages

Remember: Page breakdowns are only rough estimates.  As you’re scripting you can adjust the numbers if you find you need more in one section than another.  An outline is not a story set in stone, but a general roadmap to help you get to through the writing a bit easier.