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!