Wednesday Writer Club: Outlining for Nano?

Congrats to all of you that have jumped into the NaNoWriMo pool!

I have to admit that I'm a little jealous.

Maybe that's why this month, all of my Wednesday Writer Club posts will be NaNo themed.

So lets say you have your idea, but don't know where to go from there?

Don't worry, it's still early in the game, with a few pots of coffee and a couple of late nights you can still catch up!

I really can't encourage you enough to write an outline for NaNo.  It'll give you somewhere to go on those dark times that you've realized you're a hack and should never have tried this experiment (because I'm pretty sure all NaNo-ers have gone through this at least once).

I've tried traditional outlines before, but they lacked the depth that I needed in those times.  Last year when I went through NaNo, I stumbled across the Snowflake Method of outlining.

The method is a bit intense, and may be a bit time consuming, but by the time you finish, you'll have an amazingly detailed outline and understanding of your characters that will make writing your novel that much easier.

(But don't worry, Pantsers, I changed quite a bit from my outline to my draft.  But it all fit well, because I knew the broader strokes of the story and the intricacies of the characters well).

There are 10 steps to the outline (feel free to skip some of the latter ones if you'd like), each one taking your story one level deeper.

You start with a sentence, then move to a paragraph, then develop your character's motivation, etc.

If this sounds like something you'd enjoy, need, or would like to use to procrastinate, check out the more detailed explanation here.

Happy writing everybody, and good luck on your first week of NaNo!