My NaNoWriMo Journal

Outlining Day #1

And so begins my journey.

Today, I started outlining an entire trilogy, after a stroke of inspiration last night. I love outlining; to be honest, I prefer outlining to actually writing. My methods tend to vary depending on the book and my mood that day, but today, here's what I'm doing:

I made a chart with three columns: Major Events, Intros, and Questions.

Each chapter gets filled out under all three columns. There's the "main event" of the chapter, along with any supporting details I think of that I don't want to forget. Then there's the "introductions": here's where I list which characters I'll be introducing in the chapter. 

PRO-TIP: Never introduce more than one or two characters in a single paragraph, and try to break up your introductions with action. Going down a list of all the characters in the room tends to make it hard for readers to keep up with who everyone is and why they're important. For myself, I'm trying to limit my introductions to no more than four people a scene. So some chapters may have more introductions than that, in the beginning of the book, but you don't meet them all at the same time. And I'm counting even off-handed mentions of background characters as introductions; sometimes those people become more important, later, so I don't want their information muddled in with the scenery.

Third column is "questions." My book is about a girl questioning her faith, so in this case, the questions are theological, but more generally, this is where my main character reflects on what's happening in the chapter. I don't want her to spend an entire chapter reflecting on all the things going on in her life, so it's better to focus on one reflection at a time. 

How's the planning going for you so far? Post your favorite outlining methods in the comments!