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[Guide] Planning and outlining tips

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Lysmata Debelius:
Not everyone plans and outlines, and that's cool, everyone is different  :angel: But for those who do: what works for you?

Something that helps me a lot is to keep a separate page on which I list questions as they come up. Stuff like "but why doesn't the main character just phone her mother?" or "Can you launch a missile without access to electricity?"
That way,  whenever I come across a plot hole or problem, instead of stopping me in my tracks and discouraging me, I just add my question to the list.

Also, when I'm not feeling up to full on plotting and planning, I just open my questions list and find an easy one to solve. :)

Al Stevens:
I plan (outline, plot) only for non-fiction. I develop an outline of subjects, topics and subtopics. The outline eventually becomes the TOC. The subjects become chapters.

I developed that approach when I was trad publishing technical books. Acquisition editors wanted submissions to include outlines, so that was where I always started.

The outline is organic, changing its hierarchy and growing and shrinking as I write chapters, each into its own document file.

This approach requires a word processor with a strong and flexible outline view and a master document model that actually works. After trying almost every one, I settled on OpenOffice Writer.

For fiction, I write SOTP, but that's another discussion.

And, as always, use what works for you. There is no one right way.

elleoco:
After I have a new story developed enough in my mind to write down anything, I use Scrivener's outlining function and write down a sentence or phrase for anything that will be a chapter or scene. From my current WIP: "JJ returns with advice." Sometimes I write a more expanded description, which I suppose helps me get going at the time, but which almost always ends up not being quite right as I have new ideas as I actually write the story. Another advantage is that after I make that original scene list I can see how much story I actually have. Short scene list = novella or think about things some more. Long scene list = novel.

Scrivener used to have a section for each scene and for the project as a whole called "Document Notes" and "Project Notes," which I used for reminders and questions as I went along. The Windows version still has that, but the newest Mac version has a changed approach, and I now have those notes in a Bookmarked document, but that still means I can keep it visible as I go.

The Doctor:
I've found that what works for me is writing brief outlines for the first scenes that come to me when starting a new story. Then I will write a clean first draft of those scenes (usually they're not in chronological order). Afterwards, I'll read over what I've written and come up with scenes that connect the ones I've written down.

In the past, I've done the whole 'Act One Key Event' outline which has worked well.

This time though, the 'scenes' method has meant my productivity has increased and I've done about 10k words in a week (I also have a day job).

cecilia_writer:
I am not a big outliner (this is an understatement!) but a sort of planning process has evolved over the years whereby I can only plan via hand-written notes. I have separate notebooks for each series and use them first for an initial very rough outline of the whole plot which can be very basic and only takes up half a page at most. Then I will probably list some characters and after that I will plan where I'm going to start. For my mystery series I won't have more than a sentence or two for the first couple of chapters, and maybe a sentence in mind to open with, and after that I'll just wing it, but for the historical novel I'm currently working on, I find I need to pause and scribble a paragraph or so for each chapter before starting to write it.
Not sure why I'm happier planning in notebooks. Maybe it's just because I can never resist buying more of them.

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