Writing a novel: Part 2

In part one of this series, I talked about initial planning. Today, we’re going to rip into outlining. I’ve talked about outlining before, but today we’re going to take a look at my own personal process.

Fresh from the initial planning stage, I’ve got a nice long list of basically what I want to have happen in this book, not necessarily in order. The first step here is to go over the list, complete it, and then add in the things that have to happen to make those things work.

By this time, it’s only a matter of putting everything in order to complete the outline. Read through it once or twice, make sure the chronology is established.

Now as I have said, an outline is not carved in stone. There are events in Author of the Gust’s outline that did not even earn a brief mention in the actual novel. Not only that, but the entire storyline changed.

You may be asking: why are outlines important? If you don’t pan to stick to or update them, what’s the point? It gives you a fantastic roadmap for the project, a reference point. Now, some of you may actually have to update the initial outline, some of you might not bother.

For this project, the initial outline will probably be it. The Consecution Books are set to be a series of “light” novels, hopefully clocking in at around 60,000 words each. For that reason, they are not divided into chapters. If this were going to be a longer novel, my next step would be to actually outline the individual chapters.

Well, that’s all for today, kind of a short one, but hey no one’s reading these things yet anyway.