Prewriting: Listing

Do you like lists, Neophyte? I know I do. There used to be a time when I made them and never ticked off anything, or I would forget about them, only to stumble upon them later, buried in some drawer. Oh, the embarrassment. If I sound dismissive, Neophyte, it’s because I am. That kind of embarrassment, while healthy, should not prevent you from actually doing what you ought to.

But I’m getting off track. Listing in prewriting— one of the many tools people say you can use in the procrastination phase without ever giving you context on what to do with it. A hammer is all well and good, but if you don’t explain what I can do with it, the results are going to be mixed, no matter how self-evident the tool may be.

Now, Neophyte, what do you think listing could be used for in the prewriting phase? I’m not asking about the broom closet I stuck you in yesterday; no, I don’t care. You still haven’t given me the name of the Corpo. What do you mean that there isn’t one? Only a Corpo can get Corpo ideas inside your skull. Anyway, we will continue the lesson; we can talk about this later.

Listing—what do you need a list for in the prewriting context? Or do you need a list at all in writing? Well, for starters, you don’t need one if you feel you don’t. Simple as that. But if you do feel like you need one, it can be just about anything.

The Utility of Lists in Prewriting

Once again, we face the fear and insecurity of understanding one’s own limits and needs. You may make a list of just about anything. Perhaps you need to list the hero’s team and the villain’s team, or maybe you require separate lists for locations, monsters, towns and cities, story beats, the hero’s grandparents, and even a grocery list. Don’t forget the coffee, tea, and booze—because what goes up must come crashing down.

At the end of the day, tools are as useful as you make use of them. A list alone does not make a story, Neophyte. Even within the prewriting phase, unless you go hogwild on listing things, its usefulness is minimal. Why, you ask? Because whatever points you write in a list must be expanded eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later. A single sentence describing one thing is nothing—a word in the air without anything around it.

The true usefulness of a list, Neophyte, is to jot down the things you consider most important and that must be worked on—the themes, the main characters, locations, etc. These are things you can catch from the eagle’s eye, from high above. Once you have these elements identified, you can begin playing with them, pondering how to build with and upon them.

If you want to extract as much utility as you can from the lists you make, Neophyte, it’s recommended to add a short paragraph to your items. Even though we both know you’ll have to go back and change it, it is useful. The “you” of today is not the one of yesterday and won´t be the same one tomorrow, and if it’s hard to think about what you did without writing it down, it’s even harder to remember the thought process that took you to any particular conclusion. Sometimes, how you reach a conclusion is far more important than the conclusion itself. After all, isn’t that what a story is? On a personal level, I don’t understand the fear of spoilers, Neophyte. No, not at all. The “what” is far less important than everything else. But I am going off the reservation here.

So, to recap, listing is useful to guide you and keep disparate thoughts pinned down on paper (or byte) so you can maintain a straight flow from your head to the paper. You should use listing as a tool to aid other tools because it isn’t useful otherwise. Also, keep your items as macro as possible and add a little text to make them clear. Trust me, speaking from experience, there are few things more confusing than finding a tiny piece of paper saying, “dark lighthouse, the head is there,” and not remembering what that was about. It’s either a serial killer broke into my home and left a note for me to find, or I had a killer idea—literally, in that story, someone is dead, or at least I hope, and I forgot about it. Without text to explain, it is lost forever.

Hope this helps. Until then, back into the broom closet with you.

Until next time.