Since I'm now posting on Tuesdays only, I plan to use my weekly post to give my progress report and talk about the various stages of writing a new book as I go through them. As I said last week, I've finished the outline of my new wip and have moved on to writing the rough draft, which I am very, very happy about! But this week I'm going to take a step back and talk about outlining.
I start an outline by figuring out my main storyline, as well as all my subplots and layers. I figure out the plot structure for each of these storylines and then write a step-by-step progression for each of them. Then comes merging it all together so it makes some sort of sense. The way I do that is by getting as many different colors of markers as I can find and a ginormous piece of paper and writing it all down. Above is a picture of my outline for my new wip. Yes, it's a mess, but the color coding helps me see each storyline at a glance and also the story as a whole.
If you're an outliner, how do you outline? Do you use a chart like mine? Any tips to share?
If you're not an outliner, do you have some method of keeping track of the storylines as you go through your rough draft? Or do you make an outline after the rough draft is complete to use for future drafts?
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