Examples of Strange Outline and Story Notes

Are you the type of person that likes to plan things out before writing your story? Do you have outlines or any other references?

If so, have you ever found that these notes are just a little...weird? Do you argue with yourself? Write something that makes no sense when you later look at it? Just want to share something that totally makes sense in context?

Do it all here.

edited 28th Aug '11 8:38:10 PM by Hermiethefrog

I used to write everything without notes, using only a loose outline I kept in my head.

For the last 2 years I've experimented with outlines, but I never seem to complete them. At best I'll have a checklist of scenes or important events to work through.

I've found character profiles/outlines the worst. Characters have to be so much more than the sum of their parts, or a few paragraphs of traits and backstory. By description alone, any character can come off as cliched or shallow. I have yet to find any way of planning characters that works for me—so it's even worse than the story outline situation.

I'm decent at character profiles, but only because I've had to fill them out a lot for role play groups.

I agree with you though, when you describe the character in tiny bits you just don't get everything there is to know about them. It's through using them that you figure out all the tiny beautiful details.

Story outline wise, I'm only doing it now because I realize that I should probably have all my random ideas written down somewhere on the off chance that I lose track of the things I have in my head.

And when I mean random I mean like,

"Suddenly, HAMSTER BALLS! Motherfucking hamster balls!"

It totally makes sense in context.

Not only do I have really embarrassing, weird outlines and story notes, most of them are illegible. I write in really sloppy cursive, and once I get going, I start writing sideways, in the margins, upside down, over other words...

Sure it does

edited 28th Aug '11 8:51:52 PM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers