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September 09, 2006
On Outlining
Poison to the Dead is manifesting itself as a full book, so drawing upon the experience of the last two books, I have begun the outlining process.
The first outline I ever did (for Firebird) was in a separate file and took about a week, start to finish. This time I'm evolving the technique. I'm creating a file for each chapter and writing quick scene summaries. Example:
- So they leave the village and head on out to the forest. K. is watching the light and they keep on riding and at some point E. wants to know if they should stop, but no, no, K. says, keep going.
So they do, and just as the sun slips past the horizon, K. says to stop.
He says this is the between-time, the dusk is the hour of unseeing. No wizard can see anything at this time. They lead the horses back up the road, tie them up, and slip off into the forest to find PttD.
In this way I can get out what's fermenting in my head without going insane. It's still fun to write, because things still emerge during the writing, there's just more structure to it now.
Meanwhile, I'm doing another experiment with Writely: writing a novel in my sparetime at work. A neat, twisty idea emerged while I was listening to the song "Pretty Girls (The Mover)" by Against Me! and I'm working that into Kitsu's genesis. No outline there. Just letting Kitsu lead me where she wants to go.
- make sure you call before you leave
keep on top of the game
i'm losing control, falling by the wayside
Posted by sdshaver at September 9, 2006 11:50 PM