#how I outline

[kogarashi-art]

Writing Tips: How I Outline

(Or: How I turn a list of random ideas into a plot outline.)

Saw this question pop up elsewhere and thought I'd put together my method, as someone who doesn't necessarily write her outlines the way your middle school English teacher probably taught, but I get something workable out of it in the end.

This goes for both fanfiction and original fiction.

Step 1: Throw Ideas at the Paper

I don't start out by trying to write an outline, beginning to end. Very rarely do I actually know the story start-to-finish already at this point, and even if I do (for example, a fairy tale adaptation I've been working on since college), I'm more likely to get hung up on what comes next and forget important details I want to remember.

So instead, just like those people who write individual scenes of their stories out of order and worry about maybe stringing them together later, I just write down ideas. I don't even necessarily try to keep them in rough plot order. The most important part of this step is just getting those ideas written down so I don't forget them.

To this end, I make a new document. I write a 1-2 paragraph summary at the top of what the basic idea is. Then I start a bullet list. Each idea gets its own bullet. Sometimes I'll have more to say on one idea, or have related ideas, and use sub-bullets to group them together visually. Every idea goes on the paper so it doesn't get forgotten.

(It's also worth noting that I say "paper," but I actually do this in Google Docs so I can add to it on the go via my phone if I have an idea away from my PC.)

Step 2: Start Grouping Related Ideas Together

This is still in the "throw ideas at the paper" phase, technically, but was worth its own step in the list.

Once the document starts getting long enough, it's time to start grouping things together. I add in section headers to make things easier to sort. I'll group ideas together that are related. I'll refine ideas via further sub-bullets. I may even start figuring out a rough plot order at this point—acts, narrative arcs, subplots, what have you. I still don't delete any ideas. Everything is valid (for now, at least).

You don't need to know things like story structure at this point. You only need to be able to recognize which ideas are related to each other.

Step 3: Organize Everything by Plot Order

This may have already been happening bit by bit leading up to this point, just by me grouping related ideas together or dropping new ideas into the list in their relative plot-position, but this is the point where I focus on really figuring out the order everything is going to go in.

Sometimes, my idea list is short enough that I can just cut-and-paste everything into a new plot order. More likely, though, I'll have to type it all up anew. When I do, I open a new document and move the old one to my other monitor (but you can also group the two windows side-by-side on a single monitor, or one-above-the-other on a phone/tablet screen, at least on Android). Then in the new document, I start re-typing all my ideas, but this time in strict plot order.

This means I need to figure out which idea makes for a good start to the story, or happens the earliest chronologically. That becomes the first bullet in the list. Then the next bullet is the next plot beat from the ideas list. Sub-bullets refine each beat. Ideas that don't work get left out. I end with the conclusion to the story (the climax and denouement).

This is where it's a good idea to have an idea of good story structure, but there are lots of articles on the internet about what makes for a good story, and there are a lot of different ways to go about planning one out. For the purposes of this guide, I would just suggest putting the events in chronological order. What makes sense happening first? What makes sense as the wrap-up to everything else? Would a specific event work better if it happened earlier in the story, before the other ideas, or does it work better if it comes after the other ideas?

Another important note is that I don't stress about breaking this into chapters yet, if it's a story that is intended to be long enough to have chapter breaks. I don't worry about word counts either. The only thing that matters here is that everything is in plot order so I can get to work on writing it (because I write in chronological order).

Step 4: Create a Chapter-by-Chapter Outline (Optional)

It needs to be said, I don't always do this for every story idea.

I've got two fanfic WIPs right now. One has a chapter-by-chapter outline, and the other doesn't.

For the one that doesn't, it's written more like a Wikipedia-style plot summary, with section headers to separate each major event, and when I write it, I just work my way through that outline and put chapter breaks where it makes the most sense to me (going off of rough word count as well as each chapter's individual arc).

For the one that does, I have a rough idea of how much plot fits into a given chapter of the length I'm writing for the story. Like Step 3, I put my plot-order outline on my second monitor, and started the chapter breakdown in a new document, but this time, instead of bullet points, I put the chapter numbers as section headers. Under each, I write a 1-2 paragraph summary of the events of the chapter based on the bulleted outline.

This is not set in stone, by the way. As I write my way through the story, I may think of another event to slot into a chapter, or may realize I want two events to happen in a different order than I planned. I may realize I don't have enough content for a chapter the way I thought I did, and need to combine two. I may realize I have too much content for a single chapter, and need to split it. The outline is always flexible.

Step 5: Write an Outline for the Current Chapter (Optional, but Helpful)

I'm ready to start writing after either Step 3 or Step 4, but I will frequently do this as well before I actually start writing.

If I have a chapter-by-chapter outline, I'll look at the chapter I'm ready to write, and then create a quick bullet list of the events of just that chapter. Any specific scenes or images I want to remember to include go on the list, and I write this list in chronological order.

If my outline is more general (the "Wikipedia summary" style or a bullet list not divided by chapters already), I'll start writing the chapter outline wherever I intend it to start, and include events until it seems like enough content for the chapter (or an event sounds like it would be a good end to the chapter).

In either case, I may not end up writing everything I've included in this outline in the chapter, rolling some of it over to the next one instead, but this essentially gives me a checklist to work through as I write the chapter to make sure I don't forget things I wanted to include (in case my characters go off the rails a little).

Step 6: Write the Story

Now just write the story.

Hopefully this helps anyone who didn't already have an idea on how to turn random ideas into an outline. Full disclosure: this is also how I write other things (such as lesson plans or talks for church). I throw random ideas at the paper, then worry about sorting them into a coherent order and figuring out what my thesis is.

[hinamie]

surprise it's yuri!!!in 2024

[ladystoneboobs]

so, one aspect of catelyn which i think is underrated (certainly the biggest adaptation loss which nobody talks about) is her, let's say superstitiousness, or better yet, let's call it genre-savviness, being one of the few adult characters open to magic and the supernatural in this fantasy world. we first meet her in the godswood, home of gods which are not truly hers, yet she is still very aware of their power. when she and ned talk of the deserter he killed, he hopes he won't have to go with the nw to deal with mance rayder, but she has even more fear of that idea bc there are worse things beyond the wall than just wildlings. ned scoffs and says she's been listening to old nan too much, but she's right. we already know from the prologue that she's right! and here she is, understanding the genre of their world better than her husband, who was actually born and spent his earliest years in this northern land of deep magic, listening to old nan's stories. same with the direwolves, where she was uncomfortable with them at first, but later believed in them as guardians from the old gods even after robb had lost his own faith. and once again, we know she's right even if she doesn't know the evidence to back up her instincts, bc summer and shaggydog did not fail bran and rickon and robb was almost certainly a warg like his brothers. (perhaps making it more fitting that she's the one brought back as a fantasy vengeance monster, not ned and robb, the most unbelieving dead starks.) and in her 2nd agot chapter, everyone focuses on her ambition in wanting ned to agree to the hand job (pun intended) and sansa's betrothal, and while she does recognize the value of their daughter being a future queen more than ned does, that's only her stated argument bc she thinks it's rational enough for ned to listen to. (if ambitious matchmaking were as important to her as to her father she never would have made those frey betrothals fandom loves to blame her for.) in her own head there's a deeper urge driving her. she keeps thinking of the dead direwolf with antlers in its throat, an omen which filled her with dread from the first she heard of it, before robert's arrival, and thinking of it again is what makes her desperate to convince ned not to refuse robert. she had to make him see. and really, she's not wrong, as jon snow would say. the dead direwolf was an omen of ned and robert getting each other killed. it's just one of those misread portents, with no way of knowing the danger to ned was in his loyalty to robert, not conflict with him. BUT the next time she's dealing with baratheons, she knows exactly what she's talking about. it's catelyn, not brienne, who sees the shadow slaying renly, and explains that it was stannis who did that through some dark magic. with no way of knowing how it was achieved and no prior expectation that such a thing were ever possible, she realizes with no hestitation that stannis was guilty and that his red witch was capable of pulling this off somehow. really, the only instinct of the supernatural she's wholly wrong about is her insistence that varys gathered his knowledge through some dark enchantment. however, though that might offend varys, given his own personal experience with a sorcerer, i'd say it's a reasonable assumption without knowing the dude had children moving through walls everywhere like oversized rodents. and imo it just shows she had a healthy respect and awe for varys's power which most other characters lack.

oh, oh, and let's not forget that she also believed in the curse of harrenhal, from her own childhood and the stories old nan told her kids. "and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and cursed. 'I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of that keep,' Catelyn admitted." sure, that wasn't enough to save robb, but he did not die from the curse of harrenhal. that doom was meant for his enemies from tywin lannister to roose bolton.

[sacredxnight]

So I've been rewatching some Seinfeld recently

[cutter-kirby]

getting into both of these games at the same time is pretty funny

[glittergroovy]

[accirax]

a collection of DCAS memes so far

[prahacat]

when the horrors catch up and you take an evening off to batch-process

[sevenlersiniz]

You turn on the light.

[choccy-milky]

omianne wip from over a year ago that ill never properly finish (redraw of 'the other father' by mac conner)

[das-a-kirby-blog]

what if I drew mii

[blaithnne]

I don’t think Twig grows up to be as big of a deerfox as his parents because it would honestly be pretty inconvenient. One thing about Twig is he CANNOT be too big to sleep in Hilda’s bed, I simply will not allow it.

[dodofoge]

I saw @soappbar post and immediately thought of these two. The shit post was too good to pass up on 😔😔😔

Original is @ _sadeleine on tiktok

[katabay]

bayek, doing some exploring :)

[puppppppppy]

obsessive

[lgbtlunaverse]

So I've said multipe times now (here and here) that thinking nmj is just so blinded by privilege he doesn't undertand that acting out of line gets people killed is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of his character that ignores the part where he's, you know, actively dying the whole time and thinks that's a good thing. But that doesn't mean I don't think privilege plays no role at all in how he views the world.

Specifically, his view that death (at least premature or violent death) means something.

Death isn't always a tragedy to NMJ, but it is always meaningful. If you kill an evil dangerous person for your righteous cause, that death had meaning. There was evil in the world and now there is less of it. Similarly, if you die in the pursuit of your righteous cause, that death has meaning, because the sheer dedication you gave to it that you were willing to die for it will further that cause, and your bretheren will be invigorated by your sacrifice to fight even harder.

If a death isn't meaningful, that's an injustice and it is up to the living to give it meaning. That's what cuts so deep about his father's murder. There were no consequences, no changes, no meaning. Wen Ruohan was just going to get away with it! He fights and wins an entire war to make it mean something, to make it so that the unjust murder of Nie Mingjue's father is part of Wen Ruohan's downfall.

But this is a view he can only hold because he's the kind of person who's death will be meaningful. Most ordinary people's deaths are meaningless. Not ontologically, not inherently, but they are made meaningless because no one cares. For death to be meaningful you either have to be so powerful that anything you risk your life for will be impacted in some way. (Like, say, if you sacrifice a long life for immense martial power in a faustian bargain with a blade) Or if people with that kind of power care enough about you to do so for you. For most people, this isn't true. A starving street kid has no power to change the unfair world that put them there, even if they risk their life trying, and no one will do it for them once they die.

Nie Mingjue knows this in abstract, and of course rightfully believes it's wrong. But all that does is make it yet another righteous cause people should be willing to die for. Everyone's deaths should mean something, we'll make it so or die trying!

This is what the conflict between nieyao is about at its core. Because Jin Guangyao, fundamentally, cannot conceive of his own death as meaningful. Nie Mingjue grew up around powerful men who could change the world but refuse to do so because god forbid they risk a single hair on their perfect heads. Meng Yao, on the other hand, grew up in an environment where no one of importance would blink twice if you died. He was surrounded by meaningless death. Indeed his entire early life is defined by that lack of care.

Meng Shi dies and no one cares. Meng Yao gets thrown off a flight off stairs and no one cares. He has to be the one to do the caring, and once he's gone no one else will do it for him.

So he has to live.

Jin Guangyao eventually gets far enough that he actually does aquire the power to change some things... as long as he's alive. If he changes too much, holds on too tightly to his ideals, he'll die and it'll all be for nothing. He can't sacrifice himself for his goals because doing so would immediately render those goals unobtainable. No one will care about what he tried to do. He won't be a heroic sacrifice, he'll just be trash that finally cleaned itself up.

And well... Nie Mingjue dies, and someone makes it mean something. Makes it mean so much that the entire story of mdzs would not exist without it. Jin Guangyao dies and it doesn't mean anything. Most people are glad to be rid of him, and the few that are not don't do anything to change that.