Writing an Outline

I've done some pretty extensive work with world building for my setting, how ever, I've decided to take a break for a while and actually start outlining the plot of the first 'installment' of the story.

Only thing is, this is the farthest I've ever gone with a writing project and I'm looking for some tips for outlining and avoiding 'getting stuck.' Thanks.

Don't just sit with what you have, build on it a bit; keep coming up with new ideas for characters, plot, setting, everything. In my experience, that's a pretty great way to keep the 'magic' of wanting to getting the story in your head down alive!

Earth Needs Gentlemen

I was planning on doing that anyway :) Any tips for structuring it or other things like that?

Speaking from personal experience, I've found that the goal behind an outline is that it's like the storyboard of a movie: you use it to plot out exactly what events happen and lead to what, keeping track of motifs and plot elements you want to repeat or invoke, and track characterization. Since conversations can be very important to writing a story, outlines can track how specific conversations would go: mentioning this leads to that reaction, et cetera. A great writer can evoke a specific, precise response with only one or two words; an outline makes that possible (sometimes my outlines go "I want to do this—how?" and then proceed to fill in backwards).

So, you're essentially writing a scene-by-scene summary, working out how everything goes. I'm aware this is the opposite of writing by the seat of your pants, which can be a lot more fun, but that comes later; before you don your cowboy hat and climb down to the B-52's bomb bay to ride your story into the ground, you need to make sure you have at least a rough plan for how everything will go, and the outline is crucial for that.

Be aware that your story will diverge from your outline as events and characters unfold in ways you haven't foreseen. In many ways the outline will be something of a living document, a plan to be constantly updated as events happen and characters evolve.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

-skeptical of the minimalist nature of that statement-

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I'm writing an outline currently and that's pretty much what I settled on, writing it like a movie script, minus the transition notes and dialogue. I've always liked the Cold Open/s I saw in Breaking Bad, Lost, and Heroes.

I start Chapter 1's outline with a scene labeled "intro", then put the title, and continue with "Scenes 1-13", and label each scene with the name of the character whose perspective I'm using. I move to the next scene when I switch perspective, or transition.

edited 27th Jun '14 11:29:20 AM by FOFD

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

Hardly. That's how poets work. It's amazing how the best of poets can change the tone of a poem entirely or call up a new image in a single word or phrase, and it's worth studying. Obviously that requires great skill, but it's something to aspire to.

Not just in poetry, either. The example that comes immediately to mind is in John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Trying not to go too far into spoiler territory: near the beginning, during his establishing character sequence, one character, Jim, snaps the neck of a wounded owl. By the book's end, when the connections and characterizations are all firmly established in the reader's mind...

Nothing else is said about who killed Bill Haydon. Nothing else needs to be said; you know it's Jim.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.