Outlining is critical. My first attempt at writing a novel did not end in failure because the idea was bad. It failed because I failed to fully develop the idea before I started writing. As I wrote Dawn of the Epoch, I identified four different types of outlines that were essential to my work. I will call them the overarching outline, the part outline, the scene outline, and the chapter outline. The overarching outline is the broadest and the chapter outline is the narrowest.
