Unlocking the Power of Outlining: Proven Techniques for Successful Writing

Today's epsiode why it is important for authors to outline their writing projects. I help answer the question is it better to plot or discovery write your writing project?

Highlights

• Why do you need to Outline
• How to begin to outline your story
• Best Outlining Resources

Resources Mentioned in Show: (Affiliate  Links)
 Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
Outlining Your Novel  by K.M. Weiland
My Story can Beat up Your Story by Jeffrey Alan Schecter
The Trope Thesaurus by Jennifer Hilt

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the pen by design podcast. I'm your humble host, Destiny Jordan. And here on this podcast, we delve into the craft of writing, publishing and tips and strategies of being a career entrepreneur. So let's get started. Hey, are you just have piles of notebooks and notes all around the room? This video is for you. Today we'll help you take all the step by step guide of outlining for authors. And by the end of this video, you'll have a clear plan of action to get your writing project off the ground. But first things first, before we dive into that, is why do you need outlines? Well, before, outlines can have many different shapes and sizes, and outlines for one are just a roadmap to help you guide you through your story and keep you track, track of the plot, characters, and the themes in your story. It can be as detailed as you want or as brief as you want. Either one is fine as long as it works for you. The key to the method is making sure you can stick to it and you also know where to find it. There can be, the first thing in this step of making an outline is brainstorming. Brainstorming you can just do with old fashioned pen and paper, like I have my notebook here and notes here, and that is always handy dandy and trusty. And jot down notes. You can use your favorite writing software, or you can use iKnow for sure. Google Docs is great to use, or Scrivener. Both are wonderful resourcing tools. And start jotting down your notes, but don't worry about structure at this point. You're just trying to get some ideas and see what sticks for you and what you could possibly commit to. Just focus on getting things on pages and ask yourself questions like, What's the story about? Who's the character? And what's the main conflict? If you ask yourself those three questions, those are a great foundation for making a great story. You can use tools like ChatGPT, or you can do fairy tale retellings. Or you can just think about playing a game of what if, thinking about what if in your favorite movies are Harry Potter, what if Harry was actually the villain, dun dun dun, and so on and so forth to help you brainstorm ideas to help you get started with your writing project. You're saying yes you got that, step two, be structuring it. So now there's plenty of ways you can turn it into a structured novel. The three act structure, the hero's journey, the snowflake method, the five act structure. There are different ways to structure your story. And it's all about finding what works best for you. Some of my best resources that I love using is Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. That's a wonderful resource that has a lot of great ideas on how to structure your novel and many different forms of novel. You can also use the one Write a Novel by... You can also use the one outlined in the novel by K. M. Weiland. She is a best selling author of fantasy. It has the podcast, Helping Writers Become Authors, where she gives plenty of great resource for authors. And she has a wonderful collection of books on helping authors. The other one you can use is, My Story Can Beat Up Your Story by Jeffrey and Sheckler. And that's a really good resource as well to help learn about structuring of your novel or just your story. And those are, could help you out in about piecing these together, all the elements together to make one coherent story that's recognized by those who are going to potentially read it. The third thing you need to do is start to detailing. This is where you can flesh out your story and your characters. As far as what's your theme, what's your main moral that your character wants to accomplish. Also your world. What does it look like? Does it look like here in the real world or you're making this up so you need a lot of world building? This is where you kind of get a little bit into the details and again, it can be as brief or as long as you want it to be. Usually I know for me in fantasy writing, mine's are pretty long because I can forget a lot of details of different drinks and planets and places my characters go. Um, But it's up to you and your world and how that goes. So remember, kind of keep your outline flexible. Things can change. This is not set in stone. It's a simple guide map to help you along the way as you, as you go on your writing project. So you may have changed a couple things and that's okay, it doesn't mean that it's bad, it just helps you out. And one of the best places with details I love is Scrivener because it makes it easy for you to find all your details and make it easy to find and to remember what you said was going to happen. The fourth step you need is revising. So once you kind of have the first draft of everything that you want, for ours your characters, your world, your theme, and all that, and all that goes in that. And tropes. What trope do you want to use? Do you want to use a secret baby, the billionaire, husband, an orphan? Which, there's a great resource for that as well. It's by Jennifer Hilt. The trope of, the trope of thesaurus. Almost a hard word for me. But this site resource is really great to find out different tropes that are common and put your unique spin on it. These are my step by step guides for outlining for authors. And if you found this video helpful, hit that notification bell so you never miss a new episode. And if you want more tips and tools, don't forget to look in the description box below to download my free ebook for you with self publishing. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you for listening to Pinned by Design. Links are in the show notes of all items mentioned in today's show. Don't forget to pick up your free self publishing guide to start your author journey in the show notes. Hang your own story designed by you. Catch you next episode. Bye for now