do you/how do you plan/plot/outline your novels?

My way of doing things my husband describes as, 'being possessed'.

Characters, plot, scenes rumble around my head, incessantly. I'm currently editing book 1, have book 2 largely figured out, have a seperate novel clamouring in my brain, and just trying to get ALL. THE. THINGS. DONE.

I definitely fall into the discovery writer category, but I do have a process of development that can be fairly rigorous in a way.

I start off by developing the initial starting point for my story very carefully. I need a goal, motivation, and conflict for each of my main characters, and also for my villain. I've learned that without those three elements, any story idea will fail. You either develop them through improvisation, or you get them before you start. Experience has taught me that it is better, for me, to figure them out before I start.

Then I spend some time daydreaming, writing down random notes and ideas, until I begin to get a vague sense for all the different kinds of events that might take place in the first act of my story. This isn't so much a specific plan of action. Instead it's more of a dreamy, multiverse blob of possibilities that lives in my head. If I spend enough time daydreaming, I might also start to get glimpses of the second act. (I think in terms of 4 act structure--basically 3-act structure with the second act broken into two pieces.)

Then I develop a few random scene ideas, usually no more than five or six. Most of the time these are not really planned scenes in the typical fashion of an outline. Instead they tend to be open-ended what-if scenarios, like "what if Joe got attacked by an alien while he was filling his car with gas?", or "What if Linda saw a flying saucer through her kitchen window?"

These initial scenes will all be based on my premise, and designed to serve my concept for the story setup, but won't be created in any particular chronological order. Usually I only have a vague sense of where I'll put them in the actual story before I start writing them. Most of the initial material is intended to fit somewhere in Act 1, but that's about all I know for sure. I write these first few scenes (or at least a couple of them) to see what will happen. For example, with Joe and the aliens--maybe he will survive, maybe he'll get abducted, maybe he'll kill an alien. I'm not really sure till I put him in the situation and try it out. Some of these scene ideas end up being duds, and don't make it into the story at all. Others get cast aside as soon as the writing starts because it becomes obvious that they won't actually work.

While I'm working on the initial scenes, a bunch of other random scene ideas will occur to me, still mostly open-ended. Some are inspired by very small things that occur to me--character moments, images, snatches of dialogue--and some are not necessarily connected to specific cause and effect elements in other parts of the story. Some will be obvious followups to scenes I've already written, others will be speculative ideas for things that might happen further along, or even things that might've happened earlier: setup scenes, character development scenes. I'll make notes about these, and sometimes I will open a document and conduct little conversations with myself on the page about possible plot elements (something I learned from a writing book by David Morrell).

Eventually, I pick a few more of my scene ideas or images, and write them to see what happens.

During all this, I continue day-dreaming, and making notes, and expanding the multiverse story-blob in my head. At some point I start to have a good grasp of the basic nature of Act 2--not necessarily all the specific plot twists and turns, but a strong sense of the pressures that will come to bear on my characters, and the sorts of scenes that are likely to be needed. At this point I will also begin to get glimpses of things that could happen in act 3 and 4. I'll make notes, and eventually start writing scenes that occur much later in the story, just to test out the ideas. Writing these scenes helps me solidify my feeling for the later acts, and allows me to plant more foreshadowing into the early material.

Eventually, writing all these bits and fragments out of order allows me to see a clear framework for the shape of my story from beginning to end, and the scenes I've already written become a flagpole outline. Then I just have to fill in the gaps.

The closest I come to an outline is jotting down a little note to myself at the end of the day's work so that I remember what I was going to write next when I come back to it... I've tried to outline before, but I find it cuts so much into my writing time that I'd rather wind up with an unorganized (or even incomplete), clusterfuckish first draft than see the outline to its completion.

I start with a broad outline. Then I go back and forth between the outline (filling it in) and storyboarding on Scrivener. The Apothecary's Curse was extremely complex to timeline, since the story moved back and forth not only between early Victorian London and present day Chicago, but with flashbacks, I had to keep track of the ages of two immortal characters who were not always immortal. My calculator became my best friend. I also used timeline software at first, but the long stretches of time overall (1587-present day with several points between) made the timeline software useless. I've tried writing without an outline in the past, but never was successful at finishing a project. TAC was the first time for an outline, and I swear by it. You know where you're going, and where you're ending. My outline kept changing, but it was really my anchor throughout if I felt I was veering off my original concept.

I mostly just wing it because I work 40+ hours a week, but when I do plot I like to summarize each chapter separately so that I can incorporate as much detail as possible, as well as outlining any plot twists. but honestly I have about 20 documents on google docs with random lines, paragraphs, and ideas.

Scrivener is a godsend when it comes to outlining, organizing etc.

I only use it when I'm very serious about a project. In addition, I write a synopsis and query letter before the project is finished then continue to edit those documents as I write. This helps me keep my plot in mind.

Everyone works differently. I'm a planner and love the Snowflake Method (google it). You can modify it to your needs. My scene list is a spreadsheet that includes the date, the POV, and which characters/subplots it addresses. That way I have no scenes that don't advance the plots or increase a characterization (I try to do at least 2-3 in each scene) and I make sure each subplot is 'evenly' handled throughout the book.

I start with characters. I let them lead. The story flows out and even I'm surprised by what they say, do, and where the stories go. I feel like I'm just the medium telling their story. It just comes through me.

I tend to start planning with the worldbuilding, usually from a single idea I really like. I build from there and add more details, and at some point conflicts and ideas for interesting characters start emerging. I then expand on those as well as the worldbuilding to form the actual plot.

As for outlining, I'm still trying to find the best method for me. This is my first novel-length work and I don't need a detailed outline for short stories, so this is new territory for me.

greendragon said:

Everyone works differently. I'm a planner and love the Snowflake Method (google it).

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Hi all, I'm a newbie, and as I was poking around on various topics, I came across this one and found it extremely helpful! Thanks so much for the tip on the Snowflake Method, greendragon!

I used it loosely to plot book three in my series, but for myself, I can't predict it all. I know the major events, but I have to write into it a bit more before I can be all structured.

Like Spork and J.J.PITTS, my characters are alive and surprise me constantly, but even they need to know where it's going, LOL!

And M. Charles, I'm in a very similar spot. My friends get mad at me because I'm so preoccupied holding whole scenes and plot points in my head, it's hard to snap out of it!

Thanks to all you posters here, it's all been very helpful!

Hey there! I've got a pretty set method nowadays to how I work, because story ideas really come to me one of two ways. Either I'm agitated that a story I've read was missing SOMETHING, and I become fixated on working with that thing I felt it was missing, or I come up with the bare bones of a character, and I want to write a story for them.

Either way, a couple of days (usually an hour or two a day for a week or two) worth of freewriting is how I start. I write up exactly what I want to put out there in terms of a character. From there, a plot OR the other characters connected to them start to emerge. So then I freewrite about the next character (usually a best friend, love interest, or villain- whoever will be the second most important voice in the story). That'll then usually spin off to two-three spinoff characters.

As I fill those characters in, their connections and motivations usually create a plot for me. So at that point, I write up the plot from all the freewriting (which has evolved and changed with each character), and then break that down into a scene by scene outline. I mark off places that I know have holes in it, and go back in to fill in the holes.

Usually at this point I have a workable outline. I put it into scrivener and start working. Normally I take notes before starting any new scene, just to keep track of things that have changed/character emotional states, etc.

That said: I have never, EVER finished a novel draft without reoutlining half through/ two-thirds of the way through. My development tends to go Character-->Plot-->Emotional Arcs, so usually a great emotional arc or twist pops up at about this point, so I go in, reoutline, and make notes of everything I should do in the next draft to strengthen the story.

I like having a notebook per story/series. Keeps things organized.

Note: I actually don't straight up world build until my second draft, or at least the second outline. The reason for that is this: I get stuck on my own rules. I have difficulty letting myself change a rule once I've set it in stone. So what I do is allow the story to dictate the rules, and then set them in stone AFTER i know that i can tell that particular story.