Friday, May 20, 2016

New mindset for outlining / Happenings In The Outhouse 20-May-2016

A month ago, I said I was going to try my hand at outlining the fourth thriller book in the Central Division Series.  It went well, brainstorming the beginning, middle, and end, and a lot of pieces in between.

But after two days, I was itching to just start writing the book, because that's the way I roll.

What brought about this urging for me to outline?

I discovered a new podcast a few months ago called the Story Grid Podcast with Shawn Coyne and Tim Grahl.  When I started listening, I knew I had to listen to them all.  And I highly recommend it, if you want a new sense of storytelling and why some stories work and many don't.

Shawn Coyne has been an editor for over twenty-five years and wrote a book called the Story Grid.  Check it out.  It's well worth the investment, no matter what genre you write.

In a number of the podcast episodes, Shawn suggested not necessarily planning out one's day in word count but in writing a specific scene or two.  The scene or two may take up the word count you need for the day, but it's a different mindset to have, looking at it by scene instead of words.

With my new book, I decided to take this approach.  After the day's writing, I would plan out the next scenes.  It's still early in the process, but it seems to be working well.

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