McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Outline Help

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the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: Franzeska on May 01, 2008, 02:54:50 AM ---Very true.  A lot depends on if you'd like to get published or not.

--- End quote ---

I'd certainly like to get published; I'd certainly listen to an editor.  Good editors, though, from what I have seen, tend not to mess with the fundamental nature of the story. This is why they are so busy and take so long to get to manuscripts by unknowns. *sigh*


--- Quote ---But even beyond that, I find that I personally don't have a very good sense for how many pages a particular amount of plot would naturally cover.  Outlining first lets me decide if I really have an idea for a novel or if I should think about turning it into a short story instead (which would usually involve truncating some of the backstory type material).

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I'm a natural novelist, I think.  I've only written one short story that's satisfied me, and it took about the same amount of time as a through-draft of a 100,000 word novel because of how much finer the detail has to be.

Style depends on voice, really and voice is character.  D'Artagnan can narrate exactly the same set of events as Sam Spade, but it will take him at least three or four times as long if you're doing the voice of the original Musketeers books right.

Franzeska:

--- Quote from: neurovore on May 01, 2008, 02:58:46 PM ---I'd certainly like to get published; I'd certainly listen to an editor.  Good editors, though, from what I have seen, tend not to mess with the fundamental nature of the story. This is why they are so busy and take so long to get to manuscripts by unknowns. *sigh*

--- End quote ---

I've also heard that there has been a shift in the publishing industry over the years towards less and less content editing.  (Obviously there are still plenty of overworked acquisitions editors and copyeditors.)

azjayp:
As far as outlines goes, and setting a book up to write, i am very methodical, and organized. i find this works best for me. the book i am writing took about 7 months to come up with all the information that i wanted in it.

fist i got down the world. everything from the countries, to the land formations, to the political structures, to what the resources and allies and enemies are for each country. i am not going to use it all in this book (mine will have multiple books in the series however) but "knowing is half the battle" and the information comes up on occasion.

then i got characters... all of them. i have added REALLY small characters since, but even the small characters got into the notes. this makes you think of the character and really form them as a real to life character. this info was just as detailed as the world info.

then i got a timeline down to go after (yes i already had the ideas, but putting them in an outline made it more feasible to write). once the timeline was done, i moved on to a scene by scene. this got the real details of each scene down so that once we started writing, we knew EXACTLY where we were going, and just had to "flesh out" what was already writen i the scene by scene.

being extremely organized in this process with forms for each thing helped immencely.

there were other things i put in the notes, but these are the most important ones.

this isn't for everyone, but it really does help...and i agree, go to the JB livejournal.

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