Day: August 6, 2016

Ways I get Myself to Write, Method #6: Master Scene Outline

Young Writer's Posts

About a month ago, I mentioned something about discovering a new way to outline. I didn’t realize it when I was in the middle of creating my outline, but after I had made it, I saw that using outlines (specifically this one) is another way I motivate myself to write.

In this outline, I created a bulleted list and put all the excerpts I have written for my FF series in chronological order, separated into their respective books. Then, I added all the scene ideas I had swirling around in my head to the list, adding a brief description/phrase/word to help me remember what the idea was about. After that, I looked at all the reject scenes that I had written for my series but had absolutely no place in any of the books and tried to find ways to modify them so that I could include them in the story. Finally, I marked the scenes that I had just barely started (baby scenes 😛 ), the ones I needed to edit, and the ones that needed major revisions. As you may have guessed by now, I color-coded the different types of scenes within my outline and therefore made it easier to see what I needed to work on (and also because I love colors and am an organizational freak 😛 ). I included a screenshot of a template for the outline (although it’s really not that complicated and the rules can be completely up to you) as well as a pic of the color key I use. The reason why I’m even including this method in my series is because 1) I literally came up with this a few weeks ago 2) IT IS SO NICE TO HAVE ALL THE SCENES FOR YOUR STORY IN ONE PLACE and 3) looking at the scenes I have written encourages me to keep writing and gets my mind thinking about what else needs to happen to further connect the pre-exsisting scenes and thus, finish the story.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy/try this new method of outlining for your story and that it helps motivate you to write some more or even start writing your very first story!

MSO template pic

MSO key

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