#outlining your novel

[thesorcerersapprentice]

This questionnaire is lifted from the popular book ‘Save the Cat! Writes a Novel’ by Jessica Brody. It’s designed to help flesh out your main character's personality, motivations, and backstory. I filled it out for Altaluna, the protagonist of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

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[thepinkravynreads]

Should I Outline as a Pantser? 5 Outlining Methods Suited for Pantsers | The Writer’s Guild

Here are my five tips to outline your novel—even if you're a pantser like me. #writingtips #theravynwrites #TheWritersGuild #writingchallenge #writingprompts

If you’re a pantser, you’re probably wondering if you *need* to outline. Continue reading Untitled

[nibbelraz]

Falling back in love with your craft

[the-wip-project]

With the big annual novel writing month coming up there’s a lot of excitement and preparation going on. 

The thing is, while doing Nano can be a great experience, it’s definitely not for everyone.

It’s overwhelming to a lot of people, takes a lot of time and energy, and is notorious for burning writers out. Most people quit well before reaching 50k, and among those rare few that make it across the finish line, many end up creatively exhausted and don’t write again for months.

Personally, I find that a slower more persistent approach is far more effective long term.

What if, instead of spending hours a day grinding out words in a blur of stress and exhaustion, you could write your novel in fifteen to twenty minutes a day?

That is my challenge. On November 1st, join me for a SloMo WriNo. Spend fifteen minutes writing, every day (or most days, we’ll discuss that in a later post) for a year, and by November 2024 you’ll have a novel completed.

And drop by the WIP Project discord. We’ll be able to encourage each other, do group sprints and share our progress.

More posts to come with all the details on how this will all work. Plus help on setting your word count goals, finding the time to write, and suggestions on the best ways to manage an outline and track your progress. Don't worry! It's going to be fun!

— Maree

[sarah-sandwich-writes]

Did I tell you guys about when I told my coworkers I wrote a book and one of them was like omg!! I'm also writing a book!!! Except I wrote a queer romance novel and she is writing some kind of corpo self help something or other and she asked how long it took me to write mine and I completely didn't know how to answer bc technically I wrote it in like 26 days for nano but before that there was a shitty 110k draft that got axed so like, I'd been trying to write a story for these guys for a year but the book I ended up with was written in only 26 of those days

But anyway I stuttered my way through an explanation that didn't make me out to be a complete prick and now I have to think about that interaction every time I imagine talking to anyone else about my books and thus far it's resulted in a complete lack of talking about anything at all.

[squarebracket-trickster]

internal conflict? Check.

forshadowing secondary antagonist? Check.

forshadowing overarching mystery? Check.

scene I have already written dialogue for? Check.

detailed magic system? Check.

part one outline completed? Check.

external conflict? ?????

inciting incident? ...

primary antagongist? *sigh*

[the960writers]

THE SIMPLEST WAY TO OUTLINE YOUR NOVEL (pantser-friendly!)

Abbie Emmons

Want to outline a novel without feeling overwhelmed? Maybe you’re a discovery writer or you just HATE PLOTTING and you want a simple, straightforward method of outlining that helps guide your story to success without taking all the joy out of the journey. If you can relate, today's video is for you!

A lot of writers ask me: “Abbie, What is your very first step to writing a new story?” “Do you create your characters first or do you outline your plot first?” “Do you fill out all your character profiles and scene cards before you begin?” “How long does my outline need to be?”

These are all great questions, and since my outlining process has evolved SO MUCH over the past few years, I thought now would be a perfect time to show you a behind-the-scenes look at my Preptober process. In this video, I'm going to share with you the very first steps I take when I set out to write a new story. These are the methods that I am currently using and would recommend to any writer who feels lost and overwhelmed when it comes time to outline.

[amtrak12]

Man everytime I start thinking 'huh, maybe I can do NanoWrimo this year', I look at my Lucifer WIP and I feel utterly exhausted. :/

[queer-ragnelle]

whoops wrote over 3k percival pov today

[arimeghlen]

Ep 179 | The Merry Writer Podcast

Today we are talking about a plotting system, specifically the one that I have found the most useful. We may look at getting guests on the show who use other methods to discuss them and give an overview.  But in this episode, we ask and answer the question: “What Is The 7-Point Plot System?” Continue reading Untitled

[incandescent-creativity]

The funniest part of my outline document is a part where I write down a specific line of dialogue I thought of, and then in parentheses it just says (Red flag!)

[mandyraine]

Writing Assignment #5: Chapter Summary

Once you've completed this latest writing assignment, you'll be ready to start drafting your novel!

Your story has come a long way since you first began the novel planning process. What began as a rudimentary concept and premise is now developed enough for you to plot out a chapter summary that will be your guide throughout the next step of the novel writing process: Drafting. Image generated using artificial intelligence. Writing a chapter-by-chapter summary of a novel you are planning to…

[novella-november]

Novella November 2024 Announcement Post

Hate AI, but love writing challenges?

Want to take part in a global, fun project to write a Novella in one month?

Grab some friends, and take part in Novella November, by writing 1,000 words a day for the month of November, ending with a 30,000 word Novella to test and stretch your novel-writing skills!

Your goal is not perfection, but merely getting into the habit of writing a litte bit every single day :D

No website, no sign-ups -- Just a community initiative to write using only your own word!

What are the rules? Just Three so far!

#1 - No AI

#2 - No Plagiarizing

#3 - Wordcount for the month should only come from what you write during the month.

What does that mean?

Only words written during November should go towards your Wordcount for the month... but! Feel free to use your 30k words as a continuation of previous writing, or just make it the first 30k words in a longer novel!

Don't think you can write a whole entire 30k word story? Write a series of short stories that total up to 30k!

Not ready to write original works yet? Write a 30k word fanfiction that you can post after the month is over!

Share your writing experience, tips, encouragement, and questions in the #Novella November tag!

---

EDIT, from the tags: Want a progress tracker? Track your progress with TrackBear!

https://trackbear.app/

Don't have a word processor? Use LibreOffice , the free and open-source alternative to Microsoft Word!

Want to organize/storyboard your Novel and don't want to pay a subscription? Try 7writer by Simon Haynes!

Want to be able to listen to your story aloud for proofreading using TTS (text to speech)? Try Balabolka!

Or, create some custom progress / Goal Cards in advance you can fill out as you reach word goals! For ideas and templates, search this blog for "goal cards" :D

Want to do a writing challenge in more than just November? Check out my ideas here for year round challenges to keep you writing consistently! Got feedback? Send it in, I'd love to see everyone's ideas!

---

EDIT 2: I almost forgot to mention, if you are unable to write/type your story, you can also narrate/dictate your story to your preferred recording device!

If you're doing a Recording only and it doesn't automatically generate a transcript, it would obviously be hard to judge the word count -- but you're also working with a lot of obstacles, so I'd say if you're able to complete your story via voice recording from start to finish, you've definitely achieved the goal!

Edit #3: added the title "Novella November 2024 announcement post" to the top to make it more standard with my Ominous October and Drabble December posts (will be updating Outline October shortly) , added "Official Announcement Post 2024" to the tags so people can easily find the monthly events for 2024, and added a bit of bold to the third bullet point in the original post from September 2nd 2024 for emphasis.

[literaryvein-templates]

Writing Worksheets & Templates

will update this every few weeks/months. alternatively, here are all my tagged Writing Worksheets & Templates

Chapter Outline ⚜ Character- or Plot-Driven Story

Death & Sacrifice ⚜ Magic & Rituals ⚜ Plot-Planning

Editing: Sentence Check ⚜ Writing Your Novel: 20 Questions

Tension ⚜ Thought Distortions ⚜ What's at Stake

Character Development

50 Questions ⚜ Backstory ⚜ Character Creation

Antagonist; Villain; Fighting ⚜ Protagonist & Antagonist

Character: Change; Adding Action; Conflict

Character: Creator; Name; Quirks; Flaws; Motivation

Character Profile (by Rick Riordan) ⚜ Character Sheet Template

Character Sketch & Bible ⚜ Interview your Character

Story-Worthy Hero ⚜ "Well-Rounded" Character Worksheet

Worldbuilding

20 Questions ⚜ Decisions & Categories ⚜ Worksheet

Setting ⚜ Dystopian World ⚜ Magic System (AALC Method)

Templates: Geography; World History; City; Fictional Plant

Writing References: Worldbuilding ⚜ Plot ⚜ Character

all posts are queued. send questions/requests here.

[snekdood]

i feel like this guy rn about "heart shaped box"

[malcolmschmitz]

So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.

There's a subset of self-published indie authors who write a ludicrous number of books a year, we're talking double digit releases of full novels, and these folks make a lot of money telling you how you can do the same thing. A lot of them feature in breathless puff pieces about how "competitive" self-publishing is as an industry now.

A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.

They're using upwork or fiverr to find people to outline, draft, edit, and market their books. Most of them, presumably, do write some of their own stuff! But many "prolific" indie writers are absolutely using ghostwriters to speed up their process, get higher Amazon best-seller ratings, and, bluntly, make more money faster.

When you see some godawful puff piece floating around about how some indie writer is thinking about having to start using AI to "stay competitive in self-publishing", the part the journalist isn't telling you is that the 'indie writer' in question is planning to use AI instead of paying some guy on Upwork to do the drafting.

If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive', because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.