Anyone who knows me at all knows that I do not like to outline my books. I much prefer to sit and write and make things up as I go along, because once I take the time to outline, I feel like I've already told the story and know what happens, so I lose all desire to actually write the story.
But during an online class I took, a few people raved about the book, Million Dollar Outlines by David Farland. Knowing he'd mentored the author (Stephenie Meyer) of one of my all-time favorite series (Twilight), I figured checking out this book couldn't hurt. Who knew -- maybe his words and methods would change my mind about outlining.
As you can see based on all the sticky tabs sticking out of this book, I certainly picked up on a lot of useful information. Did reading this make me want to change my mind and start outlining my books? Nope. But, it did make me realize something that I think will help me moving forward.
I'd always thought outlining meant planning what happens chapter-by-chapter, but this book made me realize that's not necessarily the case at all. "Outlining" can be any prep work that goes into writing a book -- everything from deciding the genre to the emotional beats you want to hit to the setting. Which led to my realization...
When I'd started writing the Cursed Series, I took a solid few weeks to develop the curse, the timeline for the curse, Chloe's lineage, the vampire lore, and researching the town where the story takes place. Once I had all of that worked out, writing the actual story was rather easy. I didn't have to stop to look something up, or get sucked into a research rabbit hole because I had already done that prep work. So while I don't ever go in depth in terms of laying out what I want to happen in each chapter, I often do a little outlining prior to writing, and that seems to be enough for me to get the first draft written.
If you're a fan of outlining, you absolutely need to read this book. If you're more like me, still read this book because I promise you will find something useful in here. What I liked the most, though, was that the author didn't just talk about HOW to outline. He talked about the benefits of outlining, how to retrain your brain to view it differently, and he used examples from popular books to make his points -- and I don't know about anyone else, but seeing the tips translated into successful media / books is super helpful to me. Thanks to this book, I've also bought a couple other craft books that the author recommends. I haven't read them yet, but they are high on my TBR pile.
Anyone else read this book? Thoughts? Are you an plotter or a pantser?
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