Start at the end. What is the very last thing that happens?
Ask “what causes this?”
Work backwards. Work backwards. Just keep asking yourself, “What causes this?”
Keep working until you reach the beginning.
Seriously, trust me on this. This thing saved my life.
True facts.
Or, you know. Maybe you don’t know the END. But you know something. So start there. What has to happen to get to this point? And then based on that stuff, where does it go from there?
Start vague, if you have to. Block in what you do know. And then once you’ve got that down, try a few different organizational methods to see what works for you, and see what falls out.
With Odalisque, I recently organized our stuff into a timeline, just a list in a Word doc with dates things have happened, are happening, and will happen (sometimes ‘nebulous date here’).
Once we could see it listed out like that, it got our brains going and we were able to start addressing the big vague grey chunk of “some stuff happens here” that previously existed between the point we’re at now in the story and the final fallout (which we knew early on). “Oh, this needs to happen!” and “What if this happened?” with some “Okay, and then that would mean…” and “If that happened before this and after this, then it would mean…”
I am increasingly seeing why so many writers tell you it’s death to attempt long stories without an outline.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1q8KwY0