I decided to create an outline of book one. Sooner or later, I’ll need to work up a detailed synopsis and I figured that having an outline would make the process smoother. I made the simplest outline I could — a spreadsheet where each scene is on a line with the scene number (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc.), the point of view character, and a brief summary. The outline revealed a couple of interesting things.
First, there are 168 scenes in the book. I don’t know if that’s significant, but I had never counted them before.
Second, and more useful, looking at the outline, I can see that some of the scenes are unnecessary. The protagonist’s story arc leading up to the main crisis point drags in a couple spots. Now, I can see pretty well where those spots are, just from the summaries. I’m going to go through and trim some of the fat (improve the pacing, I think, might be the proper way to put it.) My goal is to turn 4 of the chapters into 3.
I’ve never been a fan of outlines. I can see now that they provide a useful view of the work in progress. Once I finish trimming the fat from book one, I’ll definitely be making an outline of book two. Hopefully doing so will make the revision(s) go a lot quicker.
The more I’m learning to write the more I think outlines become beneficial. So at the least I can pepper the story line with some well balanced scenes.
Also I’ve started to draw character relationship diagrams and character bios so that I know what my character’s personality traits will be initially and know how that character will grow/change throughout the story.
I’ve been wondering myself about scene count. I figured an average of 750 words per scene in a 100,000 word story will give me about 133 scene.
Don, I’m finding that it’s much easier to look at the outline rather than flip back and forth through the manuscript while trying to figure out what’s going on where.
That sounds like a good idea, making the diagrams and bios.
Thanks for the comment.