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Our online course Story Structure will take you step by step through planning your story. In the end, she removed this event from her outline, and the problem was solved. And she couldn't find a way to make it work.
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I know one author who spent a whole year trying to get from Chapter 6 to Chapter 7 of her book because the outline said a certain event was supposed to happen. Don't become a prisoner of your outline.What the reader cares about is the novel, so put the loving attention there instead. Don't waste time choosing the perfect words for your outline or color-coding your note cards in seventy-two colors.Know yourself, and figure out the method that works best for you.Your outline is a guide to help you it's not an exact recipe you have to follow. You may discover that some part of it doesn't fit naturally in your story, or you may get a better idea part way through. If you outline, it's important not to get too locked in to your original plan. Some writers do the outlining and detailed planning and then choose not to look at their notes a lot while they're actually writing. Other writers do make an outline, but only after a lot of freeform brainstorming. This is a fine method, but keep in mind that the less planning you put in ahead of time, the more rewriting you will likely need to do.Ī reason some writers prefer not to work with a detailed outline is that they feel that the outline stifles their creativity and makes them less spontaneous. Instead of planning their novels, they prefer to write a lot of drafts, discovering new aspects of the story each time. But then they usually rewrite the whole book again afterwards. There are authors who never outline at all. For certain kinds of novels such as mysteries, some kind of outline or plan is almost necessary because there are many small details that have to fit together at the end.You can prepare the reader for scenes that are coming later in the book. You can set up your ending because you know what is coming.You can solve story problems before you've wasted a lot of time writing scenes that you would only change or cut later.
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You can avoid writing yourself into a dead end.You have a roadmap as you're writing your novel.It can make it less intimidating to start writing.You can type up your outline with Roman numerals, or you can paint it on the carpet in lipstick if that works for you. If you are doing this for yourself and not for an editor, then the good news is there are no rights or wrongs.
#Memoir outline how to
At the bottom, you'll find links to related pages on how to write a novel.Ī novel outline is a plan for a novel. This is just one of many pages on this website with creative writing worksheets and advice. How to Make a Novel Outline Here you'll find easy novel outline techniques to plan your book step by step, along with worksheets for planning characters and scenes.
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