S. W. Raine

This is the farthest I’ve ventured into the Revision/Editing world.  I have to admit:  It’s scary.

I sat down with Holly Ash and she was a huge help.  She walked me through her process of creating a Writing Plan and answered the hundreds of questions that I had.  And so I did manage to finish writing my novel by 5/31 as I mentioned in my previous blog post, but boy, was I ever cutting it close.  It was harder than I thought, during the work week.

According to my new Writing Plan, the next “task” was to take a well deserved break for a week or two, then begin Outlining.  I decided to outline straight away.  And thankfully I did.

Here are three things that I have learned about outlines:

1. There’s this thing called Reverse Outlining.
   Apparently it’s a real thing.  Whereas most authors outline first then write their novel, some authors write their novel first, then outline.

   The Pantser in me is pleased about this, because I never had any idea about how to outline, no matter how hard I tried or researched.  My mind is just not that organized.  I just let the words flow, and am usually as surprised as everyone else by the events in my novel.

2. Outlining is tedious. freaking. work.
   Reverse Outlining might have been way simpler than I had ever thought, but I didn’t think it was going to be as time-consuming as it turned out to be.

   In my new Writing Plan, I gave myself 1 week.  I also hadn’t planned on getting myself into a 30-day dancing challenge (Body Groove is so fun!).  There was no way I had energy to both dance for a half hour, then work on my outline after already having worked a full day at my job.  On the weekends, I would leave my son with my husband and go sit at Panera Bread for 2 hours for some much needed uninterrupted outlining.  And even then…  51 Chapters is a lot of outlining, and I just finished yesterday.

3. Outlining is important for identifying problems in your novel and fixing them.
   Even with Reverse Outlining, I was able to find inconsistencies, plot holes, and, the one that surprised me the most, issues with my timeline.

   My Outline contained columns for:
   – Scene Number
   – Chapter Number
   – Point Of View Character
   – Characters in the Scene
   – A brief Description of the Scene
   – The Location
   – The Time of Day
   – What does the Scene Accomplish
   – Word Count
   – Notes.

   I also color-coordinated each scene into 4 categories:
   – Minor Revisions
   – Major Revisions
   – Complete Rewrite
   – New Scene.

   In the end, I had a lot more Minor Revisions needing to be done than Major ones, but I also ended up with 8 Scenes that need a Complete Rewrite, and 12 New Scenes that need to be added in order for the story to either flow better, or make more sense.

   The next step in my new Writing Plan is to fix all of the scenes that need Minor/Major Revisions, write the New Scenes, and Rewrite the Scenes that need it.  I gave myself a 1 Month deadline before I can send it off to my Alpha Readers.  Lets see if I can at least stick with that plan.

   How do you do your Outlines?  If you’re not a writer, how do you envision them?  Let me know in the comments!

   Raine