Outlining a book with index cards
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- This month, I'm working on book 5 of my ongoing epic fantasy series, Spectrum Legacy. I've been using this method to outline my books for a few years and I receieve a lot of questions about how I manage my outlining, so here's a quick overview of how my process works.
It's slightly different from a traditional 3-act structure, and slightly different from focusing on the middle of the book, but it has worked really well for me for the past dozen or so books I've written!
What's your favorite outlining method? Have you tried this one before?
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Fantastic presentation. ❤
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Wonderful process. My take away - This process starts with the highest level as columns and the character's stories as portions of the columns. The cards just makes this super portable and easily reorganizable. Expandable. ... (last adjective) I am looking forward to using this method this weekend. Got my colored index cards and fountain pen ink. Thanks Beth.
Glad you enjoyed it! This outline in particular was a little leaner than some others I've used this method for, since it's book 5 of a 6 book series... so the character arcs are pretty deeply ingrained in everything I'm doing. But I've done early-series outlines with dozens of cards before too, so definitely room to let it grow.
I wish I could do that, but if I would do that there wouldn't be much sense in writing something that already finished in my mind.
Really enjoyed this video. Is there any kind of structure you follow with where each character's card/step on the character arc goes and when?
Sort of; I give my character arcs the same sort of rise and fall pacing as what the main plot receives. It's harder to see here, since this is book 5 in a series, so there are only two unresolved character arcs. I structured this series to give each character a full book dedicated to their arc with just a few dangling threads to wrap up in later books, and you can see the ones that are complete (blue, red, and green) just get a quick check-in to show they're still tying up the loose ends. So most is focused on the rise and fall of events between the purple and yellow coded characters, and I tried to alternate what's happening for them, so when one is in a lull, the other is in a high stakes story point.
I hope that makes sense. I'm planning to make a video specifically about how I work out my character arcs and convert them to fit in my outlines, but it has to wait until I'm ready to outline a new book. I'm about 80% done writing this one, so hopefully soon! :)
Kia ora,
That was excellent, much appreciated, thanks.
Ngā mihi nui,
from Aotearoa-New Zealand 🇳🇿 💕📚
This is amazing. Thanks a lot.
thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
❤thanks , thats lovely
sometimes I sits and thinks (due to your video -outlining) And sometimes I just sits . So, off we go for research, Elvis has left the building !
Sitting and thinking is an important part of the creative process too!
Have you used Scrivener? You can do all this within the story and the research section . But it is a wonderful method.
I tried Scrivener years ago, but back then it had a weird compatibility conflict with the drivers for my Wacom tablet so the only way to use it would be uninstalling my tablet. Wasn't gonna happen. I'm sure they've fixed it by now, but this gives me freedom Scrivener wouldn't too, so it's nice :) I bounce around between writing on my laptop, my PC, my iPad, and my phone, so having my outline in my pocket or purse all the time is super convenient for me!
new writer here. thankyou
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks! Very helpful!
I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
What do you write on your cards? Pov, setting, conflict, goal? Something else?
@@lexyprice4753 It’s primarily bullet points for story progression. Things like “Character A sends a letter to her sister. Character B is sent to deliver it. Character C feels overlooked for not being chosen for the errand.”
When I write stories with many POVs, I will rely on the color coding of the cards to dictate what POV a section should be in, but this series has only had two POVs at a time so it hasn’t been necessary to track.
I don’t find a need to plan out scene-by-scene motivation or goals for my characters; those things should be baked into the beats of what’s happening as their actions progress the story.
This would have been a lot more helpful if you'd used details of a book you weren't concerned with spoilers (be it one of your previous or some other popular novel). I can't say this was particularly helpful.