Day Four: Outlining Your Draft
January 22nd 2010 12:24
Today you're going to create an outline for your finished first draft. You can look at some of my posts written on different methods of outlining, which you can find
starting with this post, this post on the Snowflake method, this post about the Phase Outline, and this review of the Three Act Method. The series ends with this post (clicky). Today we're going to use a very basic method of outlining, but you can use a different one if you like.
List all the scenes in your novel, in order. For each one write two or three sentences describing what happened and give it a title. If you don't work in scenes, then do it by important events or chapters. Draw a star beside each scene that desparately needs editing, the ones you think are probably going to need a full rewrite. Say why you need to edit it-think about what's wrong with it and how you can make it better.
Also think about any structural problems you might have. Are there characters who are mentioned only once, who should be mentioned more than once? Are there things that need more or less air time? Did a minor character take over a chunk of your story, and if they did, is it for better or for worse? Do you have long infodumps that you need to cut back on? Where are they the worst? Are your action scenes overall awkward? List the three main things that you struggled with during writing or that you see in retrospect you didn't do so well.
Spend ten to fifteen minutes brainstorming ways that you can try to improve your craft. Try writing some short stories from different PoVs in your story to develop characters' voices and pasts. Try writing out little action scenes. Try writing to prompts regularly to find your own voice. Whatever you need to get better at, practice doing it and analyze all of what you write. Figure out why it works or why it doesn't work, and then try to fix it.
Tomorrow you'll be working more on your outline. Kind of.
starting with this post, this post on the Snowflake method, this post about the Phase Outline, and this review of the Three Act Method. The series ends with this post (clicky). Today we're going to use a very basic method of outlining, but you can use a different one if you like.
List all the scenes in your novel, in order. For each one write two or three sentences describing what happened and give it a title. If you don't work in scenes, then do it by important events or chapters. Draw a star beside each scene that desparately needs editing, the ones you think are probably going to need a full rewrite. Say why you need to edit it-think about what's wrong with it and how you can make it better.
Also think about any structural problems you might have. Are there characters who are mentioned only once, who should be mentioned more than once? Are there things that need more or less air time? Did a minor character take over a chunk of your story, and if they did, is it for better or for worse? Do you have long infodumps that you need to cut back on? Where are they the worst? Are your action scenes overall awkward? List the three main things that you struggled with during writing or that you see in retrospect you didn't do so well.
Spend ten to fifteen minutes brainstorming ways that you can try to improve your craft. Try writing some short stories from different PoVs in your story to develop characters' voices and pasts. Try writing out little action scenes. Try writing to prompts regularly to find your own voice. Whatever you need to get better at, practice doing it and analyze all of what you write. Figure out why it works or why it doesn't work, and then try to fix it.
Tomorrow you'll be working more on your outline. Kind of.
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