New answers tagged outline
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A change that I made that reawakened my interested and excitement about my story was to stop writing in linear, chronological order. I've been thinking about this current story for nearly a decade, so I already had a solid idea of the overall plotline. And I've been doing a lot more world-building and research than I usually do, so I knew a lot about the ...
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Don't do it top-down, do it bottom-up.
Break your story into chunks of index cards.
Sort your cards in the order you felt most natural. Then put 95% of the index cards into a jar.
Congratulation, now you can work on the most significant 5% of your story. The index cards in the jar now only functions as a source of inspiration, you should not put it in ...
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There are two kinds of discovery, not one! I am a outliner, not a pantser. I am also a plot-driven, not a character-driven writer. I love outlining, but always the finished product has huge departures from the outline. What I outline is plot, with very little character work. The plot is my creativity set free to do what comes easily: creating worlds and ...
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Try breaking your outline into chunks, and write small novelettes for them.
At the moment, you "feel like [you] have already completed the task" - you look at the skeleton in place, and think "that looks the right shape". There's nothing wrong with that.
But, if you look at the outline from a different angle, you have actually turned 1 task (write a story)...
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I am a discovery writer, I have been for many years, and I complete stories.
Scrap your outline.
Most discovery writers (including me) have struggled with what you are talking about; finding the climax, resolving the character arcs, dead-end "mysteries" that we could never figure out.
The solution to that is simple, but it is NOT outlining. For a ...
answered Nov 13 at 11:16
Amadeus-Reinstate-Monica
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The only way to resolve it is to write.
I'm a discovery writer too. I get excitement from just "imagining" how things could go, how the world might be, and how the character should react. Did you notice? I used verbs in conditional form.
That's because - no matter what your brain tells you - a story isn't done until you write it. It doesn't matter if you ...
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Your brain is convinced it's done with the first draft, which means it's time to start the second draft on the story cleaning up everything and filling up any missing details as needed. Which is a new task and one that you have to do regardless of how complete the first draft is. Yours just happens to be pretty barebones in the second half, but that's ok, ...
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You could also try Minder. It's not for handling plots, but you could use it for a graphic overview and organizing of your plots and stories, and then one of the tools suggested in the answers above just for text-handling part of it.
You can install Minder from the AppCenter (if you use a Linux-based OS). But there are also similar software for windows, and ...
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You could try WikidPad. It is basically localised Wiki software with all the inter-linking features you may expect from such a tool. I've been using it to organise all my writing and outlining for nearly a year now, and I've yet to doubt it.
The only downside, if I could name one, is that 'pages' can't have one-word or purely numerical titles. I mainly ...
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You might use Twine
This is an open source tool that is originally made to create interactive stories.
So, writing in blocks and visualize the structure of your story can be easily done.
If you use the "online" version (means only without installing), you can still use it offline (everything is inside your web browser).
But remember to backup (archive) ...
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You could use either YWriter or Shaxpir to move parts of a manuscript around and rearrange things.
Not strictly for writing but you could use ToDoist as a simple outlining tool, or else try something like Trello, Asana or even Evernote to write a bunch of notes inside a project file and then mobe them around as needed.
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