katecavanaugh
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On mega outlines, writing experiments, craft book club, & moooore!
🕑 Added 2024-04-29 13:20:44 +0000 UTCSometimes I put writing experiment polls up to y'all and one option blows the other out of the water. I kind of love when that happens, because I know that means y'all are just SO EXCITED for one of the options. It's always been an indicator that it's a really, really good idea.
Other times I put writing experiment polls up to y'all and they come back split as split can be. (I love these times, too.)
Such is the case with our drafting experiment!
So I'll actually start with More Words Than the Day Before (because, frankly, I think it will be a shorter experiment lolol), and then I'll continue within the same story using the 500 Words Per Scene Per Day....until I've written a little bit in every scene of the story.
I can only do this because, for the first time ever, I've created an outline monster. 10,000+ words, and still, somehow, growing. 43 chapters and an epilogue! So I have some good bones and I'm excited to put some meat on them, 500 words at a time bahaha.
This does lead me to a question I have for y'all! Which is: how long are your outlines *usually*? If you'd like to share what you typically "cover" in your outlines too, whether that's beats or chapter-by-chapter, or general motivations with a couple plot points, let me know! Also let me know what your biggest or smallest outlines have been.
For instance, my smallest is No Outline, because I'd often jump straight into the zero draft. (Though some people have debated me that that is, possibly, my version of an outline.) And this is by far the longest I've ever created. Truly a spectrum I've covered now!
Then again, on a Twitch stream the other day, several people mentioned trying to write 500-1,000 words per chapter as their outline! So yes, please do let me know where you fall on this spectrum. :)
Now I wrote the intro to this post about a week ago. I have since FINISHED the "More Words Than The Day Before" experiment, and I think I might have underestimated myself. It took longer than I expected for me to tap out, and part of that was because I had a plane, train, and automobile to catch to get to Colorado! Where there is snow! (Actually not today, it's mostly melted off. But the first day! SNOW!)
I cannot explain the gasp I gusped when cresting the first hill to see SO MUCH SNOW still blanketing the mountains in the distance. And a remarkably similar gasp when it actually began snowing where we're staying, for just about an hour, heavy flakes that stuck, dotting the earth.
I love the cold. I love the chill in the air, that sort of bite it has, but it doesn't matter because you're all bundled up in layers. The air smells different here, with all the pine, fresh and crisp. I'm trying to take as many long, slow breaths and really soak it all in while I can.
I thought I'd try to take the whole week off. Instead, I've been drafting up a storm. It's like the story's gripped me and won't release until I've got it all down on the page.
The one thing I'm realizing is that I need one last little hook. One more stake I need to raise for my three main characters. Enter a local bookstore, where I happened upon this oracle deck:
(You can see in the photo above, the snow has already melted away bahaha.)
Someone had JUST recommended this deck to me on a Twitch stream last week! I even still had the link pulled up for it on the Barnes & Noble website. (It was sold out on Amazon when I'd been checking.)
So it feels sort of kismet? (And of course, I HAD to support a local bookstore! HAD TO.) There are so many fun ideas for fantasy novels in here. The deck also has a whole section on how to use it for tabletop games and create a D&D world, characters, etc.
I have a couple new ideas now for how to up the intrigue, make my characters' lives a smidge more difficult, and I'm excited to see how I can fold them into the 10,000+ word behemoth I've already created.
That's it for me on the writing front!
For reading, I'm halfway through Finlay Donovan Is Killing It and I also brought with me I Finally Bought Some Jordans, the newest Michael Arceneaux, for those of you who like essays, and The Witching Year.
Also downloaded via cloudLibrary is our Crafts & Drafts book club pick for the two months, April and May, The Anatomy of Genres by John Truby.
It is a thick boi of a book and some feedback I got from last month's chat was that, for these thick bois, we need a little bit more time to read through them. (Myself included!) So we'll be looking at the end of May for a bonus stream to write and chat all things genres.
(I do recommend skipping around through the chapters/genres that you're most interested in first! Truby makes the point that a lot of these genres "cluster into families that share certain characteristics" but it's a CHUNKY book. I believe him that he'll build on what we'll learn as we go and the overlap between genres, but we only have so much time. Skip what you're not into! You'll have the rest of the Crafts & Drafts club to fill you in on what you missed.)
Alright, it's time for me to go outside and get a little cold. I hope you've all had an amazing April and I'll chat with you soon!! Happy writing!
Comments
Andrea Donoso Sepulveda
Your idea of the 500 words outline, spark a connection in my brain… I think is going to work for my re outline: doing the 27 chapter plot structure of Katystatic using the Mary Robinet Kowal structure for short stories for every chapter in less than 500 words… so that give me the clues for outline… I think… I don’t know… I’ll try
Jessica M. Vázquez
For last outline, I used the Snowflake Method, so it’s well over 5,000 words. It’s a bit overwhelming, but it’s also really helpful to go into such depth.
Matthias Grosser
I'm somewhat of a "reformed pantser" in that I... sort of make outlines before I start my first draft of a new project. I pretty much only fill out beat sheets for the work, with the barest details possible because dear god I hate outlining in detail -- it makes my story feel flat and undynamic, and to be super honest I think the best ideas come to me randomly as I write, I can't just force it out all at once. Most of the time, though, it's more than half empty as I start writing and I gradually fill it in as I work and the ideas percolate and gain traction as I start to see what works for the story. It helps reduce the time I spend in editing with structural issues, because it tends to have at the very least a solid skeleton I just go back and flesh out later.
Maybe Lavender
I have a pretty broad range too. I've gone off a couple hundred words of vague ideas but I often end up with a save the cat beat sheet and a few sentences per chapter. That said, my two current projects have about 100-200 and 300-400 word chapter descriptions respectively and the latter's outline is now at nearly 5500 words even without all the character info, setting stuff, brainstorming so yeah...
Hector Luna
i'm am way over on the plotter side of the fence, but to each his own, on a personal level, it's just easier for me to start if i know where to end. i can still feel the muse's influence as i write. i adhere to Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird shitty first draft ethos and tell more than i show, but that's just to get the first draft done, then the real work can begin I start off putting together the Save the Cat Beat Sheet, and once i have a good sense of the story's flow, i'll then dive into Story Grid's 5 law method for writing down the inciting incident, complication, crisis, climax and resolution for each chapter, once i have that I'll then use Lisa Cron's Story Genius method of putting together a cause and effect, internal and external scene card for each chapter on my current novel, the STC beat sheet was 3500, the 5 laws were 5000 and for each scene card, they're about 250 each and i have 48 chapters plotted out, so the total is about 20K. it did take about 6 weeks of daily work to get this plot/outline ready
Tamy
Super excited for your experiments! Maybe I should do the 500 words a day one as well :D For the plotting, I am not sure. I haven't really been writing a longer novel size story in so long. I used to just pants everything, surprising myself with how the story continues. Recently, my brain came up with a story and I have been kind of plotting it in my brain. I was thinking of just making a short graph with arrows about major plot points that need to happen and then just go for it?
Clara Rose Elliott
Definitely prefer to go with a shorter outline and use the zero draft as my first outline. I think when I outline before I write I fall into my editor/academic essay writing mindset and get too heavily into the logic of everything. With the zero draft I feel like I can wander around a bit first. Afterwards I'll read what's there and begin outlining from what is emerging. That oracle deck looks so cool 💖
alessandra
I do not track the words of my outlines. I write something similar to a bullet point list or a few sentences for what I want to happen in a scene or where a plot beat needs to go. If I have a plan for a scene, then I will just write it as it comes to me then go back to finishing the plans. I can reevaluate if that scene is needed in the final story.
Jessica Hurt
I have that same oracle deck! Re:outlining, I mostly do the flashlight method where I discovery write the story but plot out a chapter or so ahead or whatever other scenes I get ideas for. When I conceive of the idea, it usually comes attached with an opening scene of sorts so I start there. And as I'm writing, I'll get loads of ideas for future scenes so I just add them as scene cards in my writing program for around where I think they'll be. I'm currently experimenting with plotting out one major thing that happens per plot thread in a 6-act outline (without any concern for the order of events regarding interweaving the plot threads) for my next story though. I'm interested in seeing how that goes and if it helps give my story better shape while maintaining the fun of discovery writing. I've tried detailed outlines many times, but I just really can't do it because then I don't want to write the story anymore because it bores me! I don't like feeling like I have everything figured out.
Kerri B
I've never been able to force myself to actually finish an outline. I get too excited about the idea and end up just writing. I really like figuring out my story as I go. I really do want to try forcing myself to outline an entire book from start to finish before I write, though, just to see how it affects my writing process!
78kgsofshade
I tried Snowflake with my current WIP and ended up too excited to not write, so I dove it. It'll figure itself out, right? Right?! Otherwise, I'm on the low-to-no end for outlining, though I've done more as I've written more books, and of course, it makes them better.
Aced Coffee
My outlines vary in size, depending on the project and the amount of time I can put into the plotting part. Additionally to the raw outline I have collages, character sheets, location descriptions, worldbuilding, mindmaps and ideas, inspirations or scenes that haven't found a home yet but that I might want to include in the future. And every bigger project comes with an additional notebook of handwritten notes that I have no idea how to count, but they're usually at least halfway filled by the time the first draft is finished 🤣 If I had to guesstimate, the raw outlines range from 1.000 - 5.000 words and outlines including all the other text I've written in addition to that can range anywhere from 2.000 - 10.000 words.
GiGi Huntley
I outline each chapter as a summary of events I want to happen, often changing things as the characters show me something new (and better!). I need to get that genre book! Fun!
Vicious scribbles
When I do outline, it's pretty short. My most recent (and most complete) outline was me following Romancing the Beat and that ended up around 400 and it's not even complete (I also ended up changing most of the premise of the book so I really need to re-outline anyway). Other times I've used the Snowflake Method, which is longer. I think my longer one was around 5,000. So it really varies for me! I've only attempted to outline maybe three or four times, none of them completed, so it's an incredibly small sample size though lol.
Anja Kuemski
My outline usually is a page of bullet points and maybe a second one if I don't start writing soon after, so I won't forget some random details.
Silvia Letizia
Ooooooh! It's me who recommended that Oracle deck to you. I'm SilentElera on Twitch. I'm glad you got it and liked it!
Tiffany Hensley
I’ve only done 1 outline, but it ended up being 21,500 words total.
themysteriouscloud
I still struggle to outline. I've been trying to master it for years, and honestly, I have the general premise and idea, then pants what I can and fill in the gaps later once I've written the initial story about it. But I never plan for it. I should learn though lol
