July 9: Of Outlines

In high school, our College Prep Composition teacher, the legendary Jake Polta, required us to write outlines before composing our essays. I hated it. How could I know what I was going to write before I wrote it? The madness continued in college. To skirt this seemingly illogical mental task, I wrote papers, and then I reverse engineered the outlines.

But now?

Now I am an outline lover. And I have a new question: How will I know what to write without planning it beforehand?

So I spent my writing time Wednesday moving ideas from my mind and research notes into a grand Excel document. I have columns for main characters and their nicknames, minor characters/customers, general plot events (out of order so far), pranks, and theme topics. And I have columns for each chapter, where I can sketch outline the events and touchpoints for each chapter. The first five chapters are pretty set.

When I wrote SPOTD, I enjoyed plotting out the super powers and main plot events in this way. It was important to spread out the "good" and "bad" powers and hit the powers I needed at specific times over the course of the story. And I could easily add ideas to any day's outline. When writing, I picked up a chapter's outline and jumped in. Here's a look at an early version of the outline (sorry for the poor quality):

The colors mark my efforts to divide the story into three volumes in a logical way.

I still have serious thinking to do for Summer of Kings. Specifically, my brother Nate has requested scenes of valor, so I need more jeopardy. But the outline is coming together nicely. 

New prewriting: 1136 words