Updated on August 4, 2017 Marie moreWriting is my passion. I work as a freelance writer online and have done for many years. It is rewarding and enjoyable to craft words. Discover how to outline a novel by laying down the bare bones or a skeleton of what you want to write. This will make your whole writing task a lot easier. This way, you’ll find your writing project quicker to complete and there is less chance you’ll come unstuck halfway through. A novel outline will guide you through so you know where your book is headed. Most writing projects, fiction and non-fiction, benefit from at least a rough outline before you make a start. Certainly, longer writing projects are difficult to achieve successfully without building a skeleton or a framework to start with. I show you how to flesh out an outline below and you’ll soon be writing a novel outline which you can be proud of. These days most of us write on a computer or electronic device.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it’s just a really good idea to change tactics and get away from staring at a screen full stop. Index cards are fantastic for helping you to plot out exactly what you want to happen in your novel. The colored index cards can show if you are featuring one character too much at the expense of others. They can also show if you have you got too much action at the start of your novel and not enough later on. Try making use of a simple index card system to work out a better structure for your book. It’s easier to make changes to your novel and explore ideas with an outline and not a full draft. You can quickly plan out and assess the overall structure of how your finished book will be. Close your eyes for a moment and visualize a skeleton standing before you. You realize that there’s something slightly wrong with this skeleton and, when you look closer, you see that some of its bones are missing.<\/p>\n
When you walk around the skeleton and look at the back, you see that the spinal column does not fit together as it should and the skeleton is hunched over, misshapen and ready to fall at the slightest knock. Think about what would happen after placing muscles and flesh on top of this badly constructed skeleton. It would not only look deformed but it would not be able to function properly either. This scenario should illustrate just how important it is to construct a good framework on which to build your writing project to make a fool-proof outline. Attempting to fix a badly made skeleton is far harder once the muscles and flesh are in the way and the same goes with your writing. It’s far easier to make changes to your work and play around with ideas when you’re working on your outline and not when you’re working with a full draft. So, why make life hard on yourself? Get yourself a good framework first and the rest will follow. Research provides you with a starting point to work from and can help to prevent that dreaded writer’s block.<\/p>\n
Do your research before getting down to write so you have some material to work with before you start. Going ‘in cold’ to write is something that is very daunting – even to the more experienced writer. Think you don’t need research because you’re writing fiction? Any character, location or event can be greatly improved and fleshed out with a bit of research and thought. One horror story of mine, All that Remains, took a massive amount of research on the natural resources (animals and landscape) of South Africa. Fortunately, I managed to re-use research from a detailed essay I’d already done on modern hunter-gatherer communities. Once you’ve done your research and you’ve got your notes, you can start to work on an outline. All you need initially is some paper and a pen. Read through your research notes. What else do you need to add? There are some great books to help you with the process of writing. Stephen King’s On Writing book is one of the most inspirational and helpful books that I’ve read on the art of creating a book. When producing a fictional outline, I’d recommend starting with your main character.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Updated on August 4, 2017 Marie moreWriting is my passion. I work as a freelance writer online and have done for many years. It is rewarding and enjoyable to craft words. Discover how to outline a novel by laying down Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[13,14],"class_list":["post-429264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay-paper-writing","tag-essay-writing","tag-write-my-essay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}