I write everything down on index cards -- one idea per card -- and keep sorting and shuffling and stacking them into clumps and groups until something emerges. In school, I always turned in the outlines *after* the paper was done.
I agree with mr. Clemens. Outlines are boring. I do something similar to mike-- if I plan at all. I get a bunch of scenes and line them up, or write a treatment that is not an outline but tells what is going to happen... Yeah, scriptwriting is so much easier, but you can apply the same principles to a novel. This year, I'm trying to write with just a bunch of random ideas and pulling them out of a hat...
I've been using mind maps lately. I think it's the best of both worlds (outlining and note cards). There some free software called FreeMind I've been high on lately. It works on all OS's.
I've used a mindmap for a couple of shorts and it was really easy once the mindmap was done. I kind of think that way, adding in a detail here and there and I am a natural categorizer, so by the time I'm done, I've outlined the entire thing!
You might want to give it a try and see if it works well for your planning.
I hate outlining.
ReplyDeleteI write everything down on index cards -- one idea per card -- and keep sorting and shuffling and stacking them into clumps and groups until something emerges. In school, I always turned in the outlines *after* the paper was done.
I agree with mr. Clemens. Outlines are boring. I do something similar to mike-- if I plan at all. I get a bunch of scenes and line them up, or write a treatment that is not an outline but tells what is going to happen... Yeah, scriptwriting is so much easier, but you can apply the same principles to a novel. This year, I'm trying to write with just a bunch of random ideas and pulling them out of a hat...
ReplyDeleteI've been using mind maps lately. I think it's the best of both worlds (outlining and note cards). There some free software called FreeMind I've been high on lately. It works on all OS's.
ReplyDeleteI've used a mindmap for a couple of shorts and it was really easy once the mindmap was done. I kind of think that way, adding in a detail here and there and I am a natural categorizer, so by the time I'm done, I've outlined the entire thing!
You might want to give it a try and see if it works well for your planning.