I love outlines. The adventures couldn’t be written without a very structured workflow. However, when it comes to novel writing, I’ve found outlines only somewhat work for me. I want them to work. It would cut down massively on my editing process, but every time I’ve tried it, the outline falls apart as soon as the story truly takes off on the page. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t try to outline every time I write a novel. It just means I don’t have a system yet that truly works for me. 

Last year I started writing the third book in the Hidden Mythics Series. As always, I didn’t have a clear structure for the story, but I did have random scenes that persisted in my mind. Usually that’s a good sign that the story’s ready to be written, so I wrote the scenes down. They don’t follow a timeline, and they’re not connected to each other. I just needed to get them on the page. 

And then I hit a snag. I had 40K words and had no idea where I was going. Then the beginning of this year happened, and writing fell off my iceberg altogether. 

Now that I’m back at it, I really want a structure to follow. So, I did some searching and found the Snowflake method by Randy Ingermanson. And for once, I have a synopsis written before I even write the book. Since I’m indie-published, I’ve never had to write a synopsis to sell the manuscript to an agent or editor, so it’s never been a high priority to write something that most in the industry consider snore worthy. 

And on top of that, I have a scene list. Huh. That’s never happened before. 

I can’t say that the story won’t immediately dive into the grass as soon as I start the actual writing, but so far, it seems to be working. I’ll update you as I progress. Maybe I’ve finally found an outline that kinda, sorta, works for me. 

Blessings,

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