Weekly Update #1

Updates

I’ve gone through where I want this story to go and where I am now and wrote out an outline. Nothing too detailed, but it does show the big plot points along the way so that I’ve got one fewer set of straws to grasp at.

But in terms of front-end stuff that y’all guys will see… yeah, sorry, nothing yet. I’m working on it. 🙂

IRL

Finals week is next this week. As usual, I’m not too worried about it, as tests, in general, have never fazed me. But they do take a lot of brain time and power. Along with the fact that finals are also the signal that everything is now due turn it in before you fail the class aaaaAAAAaaaah!

So yeah.

Is that all?

I would like to go into a quick tip on outlining for people who perceive outlining as a way to lose all the magic of discovering your story through writing.

If you’re anything like me, your outline tends to get more and more detailed the further from your writing progress you get. So the start is usually really vague, ’cause obviously, you know what’s going on: you’re in the middle of writing it. But the further down the story you go, you get more and more unsure of what’s going to happen. So you feel the need to leave more and more details so you don’t forget them by the time you reach this point in the story. Or because you’re not sure how this plot point is going to happen, and you obviously need to figure that out now.

No, you don’t.

Calm down.

Take a breath.

Walk away from the outline.

You have fallen into the trap of starting to write your story in your outline. Sure the language is more outline-esque, but you’re putting the same amount and type of brain power into figuring out the details of the scene as if you were currently working on those scenes. If you’re writing style is anything like mine, this is bound to lead to an unhelpful outline and a waste of time, so try to keep your head in the bigger picture.

This is again, harder than it sounds, and falling into this trap happens to all of us. Our stories are fascinating and of course, we want to keep messing with them. That’s why we’re writing them, after all. But this amount of detail is not required for an outline. Save that detail for when you’re figuring out how to get to said plot point from the one you’re on now. When you’re actually writing that scene.

For now, keep everything as vague as the start of your outline. Keep a side document/paper/sticky note/whatever for key details you really don’t want to forget, but keep these to a minimum. This is just a general roadmap. You won’t figure out which gas stations you stop at until you’re actually on the road.

But other than that, that’s all I’ve got to say since my last update. See y’all again