Preptober Week Four

It’s the last full week of October. This means that we’ve reached week four of Preptober.

This also means that next week is Halloween and the start of November which means any sitting down or breathing you plan to do you’d better get out of the way now.

Week four of Preptober is always my favorite week. Because it’s the week we start outlining our stories.

Hold your applause.

That’s right, we are outlining this week! Now, there are as many ways to outline as there are writers. But I thought it might help today to tell you the way I outline a rough draft. It might work for you, and it might not.

Step 1, Start with the big scenes

Whenever I start thinking about a story, some scenes just jump out at me. Or, if not a whole scene, an image. For the book I’m working on now, I have an image of an older woman in dress clothes, standing on a battlefield with a sword.

Start with the scenes you’re excited about. The scenes you know need to happen.

I like to write my scenes out on index cards. These can be moved around, erased, and thrown out if need be. This will be important later.

Step 2, Plot out the main storyline

Now that you’ve got the big scenes in place, we need to figure out how we’re getting to them. Figure out the plot points for the main story you want to tell.

Now, here’s where some people get caught in the weeds. And by some people, I mean me.

You don’t need to write down every single little that happens in this story when you’re outlining. For one thing, you probably don’t know everything that’s going to happen yet. That’s the joy of a rough draft. You’re still learning about the story. Just get down the points you’re pretty sure you want to hit.

Step 3, Layer in subplots by order of importance

Next, you’ll be outlining your subplots. I usually have too many of these, to be honest. But a good subplot adds to the main part of the story. It cannot generally be lifted out without requiring a change to the main storylines.

There’s no time or space here to go into the hows and whys and how nots of sub-plotting. But if you want, I could do a post about that at a later time. Let me know in the comments if that’s something you’re interested in. For now, it’s just important that your sub-plots come after your primary plot.

Step 4, Prepare for this to all go out the window when you start writing.

Writing a rough draft is a wonderful discovery process. You do not know everything you want to say in the book until you start writing the book. Which is, of course, the fun of writing a rough draft.

Yes, an outline is a great place to start, so you have some direction when you’re beginning your rough draft. But don’t get committed to it.

Give yourself the freedom to redo your entire outline. Let your story go off the rails if it seems better or more exciting. I usually redo my outline at least once before my rough draft is finished.

So that’s it for our Preptober series. I hope you’re eager to get into Nanowrimo next week, armed with a solid story foundation.

See you then.

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