Who's Been Outlining? This Gal!!

So I've actually been outlining, and I'm getting super excited about my novel. Go figure. :-)

I gave up wrestling with my ending (for now) and have started Step Eight of the Snowflake Method, which is the one, the only, the invaluable List O' Scenes. This is absolutely the most useful step of the Snowflake, in my opinion, as it's where you get to take grand sweeping statements (like, for instance, "They fall in love") and figure out specific scenes that put your beautifully vague ideas into a format you can actually use. This saves SUCH a lot of headache time during the actual writing of the first draft. I love knowing exactly what's coming next so I can just focus on the scene I'm writing and not worry about it.

Of course sometimes your characters/plot/storyline/whatever decide to do their own thing regardless of the outline, but it generally turns out all right anyway. I often have a hard time getting my characters to talk about what they're supposed to (I have no idea why, but if I leave two characters alone for an extended period of time they tend to wind up discussing Deep Philosophical Truths), but eventually I force them to behave. Well, usually.

But anyways. Where was I?

Oh yeah, Step Eight. I'm currently in the middle of outlining scenes for Chapter Six of The Last Garden. It's all about mermaids, and evil Worms, so basically it's gonna rock. ;-)

I have sixteen-ish chapters planned, which leads me to this Very Exciting Hope:

I really think I can write the entire novel during NaNoWriMo. It's a pretty straightforward storyline (well, as straightforward as you can get when your plot revolves around ten different worlds), and only follows a few characters. Last year I had multiple storylines, six main-ish characters, and lots of (badly written) political drama. The year before it took me the entirety of November and 100,000 words just to get my two main characters into the same universe so they could meet each other.

So it's really looking good.

I think.

Successfully puting off outlining to write this blog,

Joanna
also known as
Guardian of the Doors between Worlds