I tried a different technique on the book I just finished writing. I started with a detailed outline on a spreadsheet that included GMC for hero and heroine, plot, subplot, POV notes, and emotional arcs for each scene. I was hoping to cut down on plot holes and revisions. Here’s what I discovered.
1. For the way I write, 67 scenes is way too many for a 90,000 word book. I ended up ditching or condensing about 1/3 of the outline.
2. I need to do a better job with the emotional arcs before I start writing. I didn’t fill in the entire spreadsheet before hand, and regretted it.
3. Some of my rows were really only more development of the same scene, and unnecessary.
4. Every time I significantly strayed from the outline, I ended up deleting however many words I’d written because I wrote myself into a dead end.
5. I seem to have a fixation with travel in my books. The characters almost always end up going from one place to another, if not cross country, then across town. I built this into the outline, then had trouble accommodating it though the emotional development of the characters required it.
6. Having the GMC down pat before I started made a huge difference, but still left me with a lot of choices as I wrote. At least I didn’t get lost in the choices the way I do when I’m pantsing.
7. Google Earth is addictive. I didn’t find any caves, but had fun looking.
8. I don’t need to list POV for scenes because I tend to move around so much anyway as to make it a moot point. Not that I head hop. I break the scene into segments to accommodate changes in POV. About a third of the way through the book I stopped paying attention to POV info.
9. Too much setting detail in the outline actually slowed me down in the rough draft because I would get fixated on making the scene play out the way I had originally visualized it instead of the way that best fit the book as written. OTOH having the setting helped me keep track of what was coming next. Don’t know if I’ll keep that column in the future or not.
10. If I don’t keep my characters clearly in mind as I outline I will end up with a different character on the page.
11. I need to keep the climax in mind better as I do the outline and as I write. I’m pretty sure this one is going to get tossed, but I’ve had to toss out the climax in almost every book I’ve written, so no surprise there.
12. Joining Sweat with Sven, the Gonzo group, and the 100 day challenge helped a lot, but the bottom line in still just me.
13. If I set a deadline, then reset it, I don’t work as hard.
As you may have guessed, I’ll certainly be using this technique again. It did indeed speed up the rough draft and help reduce plot holes. I won’t know if it helped that much on revisions until after I have tackled them, but what I’ve got so far looks better than a lot of my rough drafts. I have high hopes.
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