Tuesday 12 January 2016

How to write - Part 2

Here's the thing - once you are lucky enough to get published lots of stuff changes and for me, that included the way I did my planning..

For one thing I realised was that people are actually reading my work! Anything I do now has to live
up to a lot of people's expectations and I want to write well and get better at it. My editor Imogen asked me to use a book map for my next novel and I did - there's an example here. This is just a part of it there are character outlines and a synopsis too.

As you can see in the example above, every chapter is outlined in some detail and you think about what you are going to reveal/hide from your reader and how your characters will behave.

The great thing about outlining your story, characters and motivations in such detail right from the start is that it frees you to WRITE. I know where I'm going and how to get there and if I change things along the way then that's fine - I'll eventually return to the road map or just ditch it and change my route.

Again Scrivener is a great tool if you want to take this approach.