Outlining

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me about my writing process.

It's a common question. People always ask writers about their process. Always. It's a question I have asked of other writers, myself.

The question is often framed as a binary: Are you an architect or a pantser? In other words, do you like to plan/outline or discover your story while writing (writing from the seat of your pants)?

Of course, all writers do some measure of both.

Personally, I like to make sketchy outlines. I like to know the 2-7 most important things that need to happen in a scene before I start writing it. That helps me know why the scene matters. Then as I write the scene, I usually let the characters do their own things. It's funny how often they surprise me. That's actually one of my favorite parts of writing -- because it's more like reading.

While writing SPOTD, I had a tight time frame. The entire story had to take place between the two blue moons, so 30 days in the month of May. I created 30 docs and dated each one. Then I listed the superpower for each day, how it would be used, what bits of foreshadowing were needed, and what other events needed to happen. Each doc eventually became multiple chapters.

My process for Lio and Lamb has been a little more discovery writing. I often sketch out the next 3-5 chapters by planning who the POV characters will be and what should happen within those chapters, but until lately, I didn't have an exact end in my sights, so I hadn't planned too far ahead.

A great thing happened at the beginning of the summer. I was driving home from somewhere and vaguely thinking about the end of the story. That is, the end of the entire trilogy. And it came to me.

Since then, I have been outlining like crazy, writing double and triple my usual word count, and having a lot of fun. And as I am writing, I still discover characters in places I didn't expect them to be doing surprising things. It's delightful!

Right now, this third story is closing in on the magic 90K words. It will end up having approximately 125 short chapters, of which 115 are written. I'll probably be done with the draft early next week. The funny part is that I'll have the third book in a trilogy mostly done, while the first book is only 80% done and the middle volume barely exists. I'm a reverse Martin/Rothfuss!