After you come up with a story idea, try outlining it before jumping into writing the first draft. Outlining forces you to think about and plan out your story so that you don’t later suffer writing block or find yourself with a mess that needs a major revision. Here are four great tops for outlining your novel or short story (click the linked title for the full article):
• Utilize writing process to develop your book
Many writers will tell you “there’s no system” to writing a book. They’re right in that the craft of writing can’t be reduced to an assembly line production, at least not unless you wish to churn out cookie-cutter stories and ultimately be incredibly dissatisfied with your passion. But there is a system of five basic steps – brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, formatting – that all writers essentially follow every time they work on a story or a nonfiction book.
• Outline your scene when stuck on what to write
When stuck writing your story, you may want to borrow a technique from screenwriting by making a scene outline. This is a blow-by-blow description of the story’s events.
• An outline is the gas that my creativity needs to drive down the writing road.
Among the most common pieces of advice given to aspiring authors is “Outline your book!” I give the same advice and even follow it myself. An outline always gives my manuscript focus. It forces me to think about what I want to say so that when I do begin writing the sessions are productive. So long as the outline is treated as a flexible document, it can save you time by eliminating a lot of rewriting.
• Why you can’t get your outline into words
Sometimes despite penning an outline, the writer can’t seem to organize those points into complete sentences and turn it into a draft of a story. Is this writer’s block? Probably not. The problem likely rests with the depth of the outline itself.
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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.
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