Took me way too long to get around to doing the second chapter. I really need to be totally done with this whole book, so that I can be outlining my next novel, The Gauntlet, and getting started with the writing of it, but I haven't. So, I'm spinning my wheels writing a bunch of Christmas short stories for a collection I want to put out this winter. It's very important, though, that I get on with this, because sooner or later, all of those stories end. Then what do I do next? Can't move on to The Gauntlet until I get that pre-production work done.
Chapter two is a pretty simple chapter. She starts by telling us that the best way to outline is the way that works for you personally. Her book will share her own outlining process, and she recommends that each author choose only the parts of that process that they think will work for them. If you believe that something won’t work for you then don’t force yourself to do it. Seems obvious, but I suppose some folks need to hear that.
Before moving on to chapter three, she gives a few alternative methods to outlining or supplemental tools. The first one is a mind map. I remember a teacher instructing us on mind maps when I was in grade school. You write your central idea, then branch off from there writing anything and everything that comes to mind that goes with that central idea.
I've never found a lot of use in a mind map, even back in elementary school I thought they were dumb, but maybe it would work for you. I don't know. We all tend to be different after all. I can still be friends with you even if you like mind maps.
She talks about a pictorial outline, which is cool, and I've done a little of. It's not exactly a different kind of outline so much as a suggestion to include pictures in your outline as well. For example, in the pre-pro work I did for The Gauntlet so far, I found photos of people to cast as my main characters. This is Ramona, our main character:
And her brother Sebastian, our other main character:
I don't even know who these pictures are of. I just searched on the internet for pictures of people who looked a certain way, and scrolled through the photos until I found ones that I thought fit the bill. I also grabbed a picture for the Ogre that they would face:
And one for the manticore as well:
Those are to help me remember just what these things actually look like, so that I can describe them properly whenever I wind up describing them. I cast a few other characters as well. I didn't do it with too much, but K.M. Weiland suggests doing it with anything that you feel like--settings, props, or anything else.
Weiland suggests drawing a map of your land if you are doing something set in a non-earth location. Doesn't even have to be any good. Just a stick figure version would be enough to give you the spatial awareness you'll need to be able to say whether your character is going north or south when they get on their gryphon and fly to Bloodholm Keep.
Adding to that suggestion, I'm going to say that even if you are doing something on earth, figure out just where exactly it is taking place. I did that with my story Fireflies, finding the place where Oscar and Simi lived on Google Maps, and then extrapolating from that the likely places they might go, like when they had to go to the hospital to get stitches in Oscar's hand after Muno attacked. I also did it for Sunny & Gray part one, looking for a house that Rob could grow up in that would have easy access to some nearby woods that he could play in. I think it really helped, and I'll continue to do that.
Another thing she suggests is writing yourself the perfect review. You pretend to be a critic who just absolutely loves your book, and write a review that talks about all the things about it that were so good. I guess the idea is that it helps you understand what it is that you need to develop to make the book reach the level that it could receive that review or something. I don't know. I found this to be the most useless suggestion she had, but maybe you love it. We can still be friends, but if you keep this up, it's going to be hard.
Weiland made a few recommendation for some tools. She suggests writing your outlines with a pen and paper instead of typing them up on a computer. The idea is that it will keep you from trying to edit yourself. You just write and write until you're done. You can clean it up when you type it up after you've finished it all. Also, if you're writing with a pen and paper, you're not on a computer with an internet browser calling to you to come and waste time with it. The distractions can be minimized.
She suggests using a program called yWriter, which is free to download, but is kind of less useful for me because it isn't made for Macs. They have a beta version of it for Mac, but they suggest you not use it for anything important, just in case it eats it and vomits it back out as an Overwatch fan fic or something.
Weiland also suggests getting a calendar to plan things out with, just to make sure your week doesn't accidentally turn out to be nine days long because you got confused while writing. That seems wise. You can even look up online to find out what day of the week a particular date fell on if you are writing a historical story. That would be an added bit of realism.
That's it for chapter two. Next up, and hopefully not quite as far in the future as the last time, is Chapter 3: Crafting Your Premise.
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