Ian Dawson's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-craft"
The Outline: Your Roadmap to Story Success
It’s easy to read a novel, see a movie, or watch a TV show, and get overwhelmed by how much work goes into crafting an idea into a completed project.
While the finished manuscript, screenplay, or teleplay is the primary goal of the writer, it isn’t easy to get to a completed, coherent version without one piece of the creative puzzle: The Story Outline.
Story outlines come in a variety of styles and methodologies, but no matter what type of outline you choose, the goal of each of them is to assist you in getting your story constructed from start to finish.
The outline is where a lot of the heavy lifting is done, where it’s easier to brainstorm and change ideas and plot points before they’re embedded in thousands of words of manuscript.
Whether you prefer to write a simple or detailed outline, it’s an essential tool that will aid you once you sit down to write your novel or screenplay. It’s hard to get writer’s block or get stuck on a story point if it’s all laid out before you in chronological order, allowing you to write a draft with ease instead of dread.
I get it. We all want to dive right into the fun of writing the story. The excitement of delving into description, dialogue, character arcs, and plot twists is what all writers live to do.
However, it’s hard to get to any of that if you’re stuck after a few thousand words without a clear path forward for your story and its characters to take.
I encourage everyone who reads this to research the various outlining methods used for their particular project, then experiment and find the outlining strategy that works best for you. While it may take time to get used to this pre-writing process, in the end, you and your story will benefit many times over.
So, the next time you have a great idea that you want to develop and craft into a compelling narrative, take the time to outline it from beginning to end. The final product will be even better than you imagined.
Happy Outlining, and I’ll see you next time!
While the finished manuscript, screenplay, or teleplay is the primary goal of the writer, it isn’t easy to get to a completed, coherent version without one piece of the creative puzzle: The Story Outline.
Story outlines come in a variety of styles and methodologies, but no matter what type of outline you choose, the goal of each of them is to assist you in getting your story constructed from start to finish.
The outline is where a lot of the heavy lifting is done, where it’s easier to brainstorm and change ideas and plot points before they’re embedded in thousands of words of manuscript.
Whether you prefer to write a simple or detailed outline, it’s an essential tool that will aid you once you sit down to write your novel or screenplay. It’s hard to get writer’s block or get stuck on a story point if it’s all laid out before you in chronological order, allowing you to write a draft with ease instead of dread.
I get it. We all want to dive right into the fun of writing the story. The excitement of delving into description, dialogue, character arcs, and plot twists is what all writers live to do.
However, it’s hard to get to any of that if you’re stuck after a few thousand words without a clear path forward for your story and its characters to take.
I encourage everyone who reads this to research the various outlining methods used for their particular project, then experiment and find the outlining strategy that works best for you. While it may take time to get used to this pre-writing process, in the end, you and your story will benefit many times over.
So, the next time you have a great idea that you want to develop and craft into a compelling narrative, take the time to outline it from beginning to end. The final product will be even better than you imagined.
Happy Outlining, and I’ll see you next time!
