welcome back to heart breathings today is probably the most anticipated video of preptober this year which is how to outline your book so I am so excited about this because I love outlining it's one of my favorite parts of the writing process and I can't wait to talk you through my process and give you some tools that might help you with your own book so let's get [Music] started I am joining you today with some hot tea because I have caught a little bit of a funk from my four-year-old daughter so I am a little bit lower energy today but thankfully this topic gives me some energy so what we're going to do today is I'm going to give you a little bit of a pep talk and then I'm going to show you top down how I would outline and I'm going to walk you through a process that you could also use but I want you to keep in mind that outlining and how much of it you need to do or whether you need to do any of it at all is a choice and and it's fully your preference and we all have different strengths and weaknesses we all have a different process when it comes to writing so what I encourage you to do when you're thinking about this type of process of outlining and everything else is to pay attention to what feels good to you because sometimes you might see someone else doing something and you think oh I need to do it that way that's how writers do it but then when you start doing it it doesn't really work for you and then when you actually go to start writing you're thinking I didn't use any of that outlining I wish I had just jumped in and had fun with just discovering the story as I go so one big tip is to give yourself permission to just let your process be what works naturally for you because you're going to be the expert and the guru of your own process and everything else is just a tool that you can pull out of a toolbox so I'm going to give you some tools today that you might be able to use take what works for you and just let go of everything else so now comes the pep talk when it comes to outlining your story or getting ready for something like nanor rimo or starting a new book sometimes what holds us back is this feeling of overwhelm because we're standing at the beginning of what feels like a Giant Mountain that we need to climb and we're thinking I don't know how to get from here to there and it can feel very overwhelming so my encouragement to you is to take a step back from that overwhelm and instead realize that you're going to get through this step by step nobody just sits down and snaps their fingers and immediately knows the plot and the process or the steps they're going to follow from beginning to end we are all going through that's why they call it a craft that's why we call it a writing process is because we're all going through steps to get where we want to go so let me give you an example I live in the Dallas Texas area if I wanted to drive to New York City I could get in my car and without any tool tools or any idea of what to do it would feel pretty overwhelming because I'm like uh I think I just need to go kind of like Northeast but I don't know how far north I don't know the best path through I don't want to waste time I don't want to end up in a place that's unsafe but if I focused on how big of a journey this is it could feel really really overwhelming however once I start to realize that I have tools at my disposal I have you know internet and GPS and I have maps and other things that I can use now I know and I can have faith at the beginning of the journey that even though I don't know every step along the way every turn every place I'm going to stop for dinner or all of those details I can feel confident that I'm going to get to New York City as long as I keep turning to those tools and taking it one turn at a time one decision at a time everything's going to work out I want you to approach the beginning of writing your novel in the same way having faith that as long as you stick with it and you use the tools that you pull out of different tool boxes that we have as writers and you continue to take it one step one turn one decision in your story at a time you know that you will eventually get to that novel so take a step back from the pressure of I have to have it all figured out and this has to someday become a novel that's going to be good enough to sell or to read or to make me you know a bestselling author take that pressure out of it here at the beginning of the process use what gives you energy and excitement like oh this is my first book this is so exciting or oh my gosh I get to write this next book in the series use the things that give you energy but try to let go of the things that make you feel overwhelmed or that at all make you feel like you can't do it because I promise you the same way that you could get into your car right now and get to New York City taking it one turn at a time you can sit down and figure out this plot and the outline and step byep in your manuscript and in your plotting tools you will figure this out I have complete faith in you but sometimes it can just hold us back to have that eagle eye view of like oh my gosh I have so much I have to figure out so take that pressure off yourself and let's talk about some ways that you can actually sit down and plot this out okay brainstorming and outlining this is some of my favorite part of the writing process and this is where a lot of the ideas start to flow and I love using lots of colorful tools washi tape different colors of posits and Page flags and things like that but of course none of this is necessary it's just the process that's important so you could do this in scrier or Google Docs or on a piece of paper with just a plain black pen like none of that type stuff matters it just matters how you're getting your ideas onto paper but when I start outlining I usually come to the table with already an idea of who my main character is and what this story is about in terms of the premise of the story I know the setup of it and the main conflict that's going to happen so is this a romance like I know the genre and then I have an idea of like the journey that we're about to go on to a degree so with The Disappearance of Vanessa Shaw that I'm currently wrapping up hopefully fingers crossed before Nano I knew going into it that the premise was going to be a group of teenagers get together one year after The Disappearance of their friend to celebrate her life and they get trapped there potentially with her killer so that is the premise of the story it's a murder mystery in terms of genre and it has some potentially Supernatural elements to it and that might all I know coming into it but I at least have an idea of the genre of the story and the basics of the setup of the story if you don't know that then you might benefit more from stopping this video right now or just watching it through and then coming back to watch my previous preptober videos about how to brainstorm an idea and think of your idea for your book and that also walks you through how to choose which one is the right one for you and then also my most recent one on World building and setting where I give you a worksheet that you can work through um on Google Docs to go ahead and start thinking and brainstorming descriptions and setting and a little bit about your world in terms of population and what uh locations this is in what time this is in especially if you're writing in a genre where you know you're going to have to do a lot of World building you might want to go through that video and that worksheet a little bit before you come to the outline but in some ways you could also just start here and and reverse engineer Your World building after you're done but I'm going to assume right now that you are coming to this video with an already an idea of who your main character is and what's the premise or basic setup or conflict in this book and here's where I like to start is I will start with the big picture items so for me I tend to call this I've always called this a threea structure cuz that's how I learned it but there are four parts and you know what recently I was just like I'm just going to start calling this four act structure or four-part structure uh but in the past I've always said act one act two part one act two part two and act three because that's the way I learned it but I'm just kind of letting that go because I get tired of distinguishing between the act two before the midpoint and after so I'm just going to call this four parts one two three and four and my story will be pretty evenly distributed between these four parts except four part four is usually the shortest part here and so I have down here at the bottom I have the Act One climax this is also often called the doorway of no return the first doorway then down here in act two we have What's called the midpoint of the novel then we have the second doorway at the end of part three and then over here we have the climax and resolution of the entire story so just understanding those broad Strokes of the story so here we also have the open opening or hook and then we have the climax the Act One climax or the first doorway I'll put them both here this is always how I start is I think about what do I see in my head what do I know so far about this story that I could fill in these one two three four five five to six basic broad Strokes so I can do it here on an index card I could do it on a piece of paper or whatever but I would start to just brainstorm what is possible that could happen in these slots the easiest part for me to start with usually is what's the opening or hook of the story so for something like this new story The Mirror um mirror of Shadows that I'm going to be working on for nanor rimo the opening Hook is likely to be something where we see my main character stealing something so she's a magical Thief she's a witch and part of the story is going to be her being a thief for the order of Shadows and so we'll probably see her stealing something because the hook of the story the opening scene of the story ideally is going to be something that hooks your reader in it doesn't have to be high action but it needs to be something sort of genre specific that makes your reader interested to read more it hooks them in it gets them interested in your story World your characters or the romance or whatever is about your story so since uh disappearance of Vanessa Shaw for example is a murder mystery the first scene in my book is the moment Vanessa disappears and so that leaves us on a hook of like oh my gosh what really just happened to her so coming up with a hook for a scene I may not know anything more at the beginning of this brainstorming process than what if I have an opening scene where she steals something and as I go through this brainstorming process to start outlining I don't get too attached to any specific idea so if this ends up not being the thing no big deal I just start a new note card or I could write this in pencil or just put it in a document so I can easily erase and and type over it so don't get too attached to every idea don't get stuck in the feeling that it has to be the perfect idea the first way through we're just following a process of trial and error brainstorm get it out there see how it feels move things around so let's say I know she's stealing something but the premise of this story is that in the process of doing her job for the order of Shadows she has a rival person who pushes her through a mirror and in that mirror she's stuck similar to like an Alice and Wonderland sort of portal or Nar Narnia or something like that she gets stuck in this Shadow World in this mirror world and so for me that is a natural Act One climax the first doorway because it's a literal doorway into a new world so I would come over here and I would say she's pushed through the mirror and my notes are going to be really sporadic here because I'm trying to do them quickly for the video but so we start with her stealing something at the end of act one she gets pushed through the mirror so then I can also go ahead and kind of fill in something here that we have the introduction to the new world right like her reaction to it what does it look like um description of it who are the people in it so I could go ahead and start brainstorming the World building parts of it here description World building what's her reaction who are the people here so I could make those notes because I know all of that's going to happen in this first part of the second act but then I'm going to skip ahead and say okay then what happens at the midpoints the midpoint of a book is typically the this changes everything moment it could be the moment when your characters first realize oh my gosh I'm actually falling for this girl it could be sex um that these characters have sex for the first time it could be it doesn't have to be obviously it just can be genre dependent it could be that we find a second body if it's a murder mystery now there's another body and it was one of our Prime suspects um it could be that like if she's here in this mirror world what could be the midpoint here so maybe at the midpoint she uh is challenged to a duel to the death so we know that this is a dangerous world right so now I could come and say well maybe let's say this is a dangerous world and she's got to fight for her life and then at the midpoint she's challenged to a duel and she has to fight for her life and this changes everything because she is now going to be put in danger but then you know we'll see if that is what sticks or not we're just putting out ideas and seeing how it goes then we're going to have a second doorway where there's going to be another thing that shifts new information comes to light a new battle they try try to make a new plan and make their final stand you know whatever it is second doorway sometimes in a romance is that something happens between this couple and new information comes to light and they break up or they have to have like a black moment kind of thing where it's like they're not going to be able to be together something else happens in the story that breaks them up or pulls them apart in some way so then we also have the climax and the resolution so what happens at the end of this story so she's stealing something she gets pushed into this mirror world what could happen at the end of the story with a murder mystery like disappearance of Vanessa Shaw there's a genre expectation of what happens at the end of the story with romance there's a genre expectation that they're going to get together um with my Shadow Demon Saga there's a expectation in my series that it's going to end whatever the main conflict was of this particular book but then there will also inside the resolution be a new problem presented which is why my fans call them Sarah hangers because it'll be like oh it's all wrapped up oh no it isn't this the world has now fallen apart again um so what is the genre expectation of how your story will end and what can you go ahead and brainstorm that might possibly happen in this story so I have not actually had any time to plot my mirror of Shadows so this is just all coming off the top of my head real time but I I can see her getting pushed in the mirror potentially going through a lot of trials and tribulations in this mirror world but to create a good climax of the story I would love to have her um you know free free from the mirror so somehow a battle or some kind of struggle that sets her free from the mirror and then the resolution is what is her life like after that right what um I already have some ideas but I don't want to put spoilers in there of like my little touch of the next Story coming in here once you have at least a few little things on this big Picture level of opening midpoint doorway write down any other ideas of things that you know you want to happen in the story so for me I might take another note card and just write brainstorm or something on it or you could just do this anywhere and I'm going to say what else besides these moments do I think would be good for this story like is there a subplot with a romance okay so I would just come in and I would write down anything else that I know needs to happen in this story so for disappearance of Vanessa Shaw it might be okay I know that I want to have some encounters where they think it might be Vanessa's ghost I also want to have them following Clues to try to figure out what happened to Vanessa I don't have to get super specific about each of those things I just need to go ahead and write them down and let my subconscious mind go ahead and be working on these story problems for something like a mirror of Shadows I know that I want to have um different characters have different abilities uh powerful abilities right and I want them to all be different so something I know that I'm going to need to do is to Showcase those characters introduce those characters and that's most likely to happen here in this sort of fun and games sort of area of act to then we have some other things that I need to establish her normal life before she goes into the mirror because we need to see her character Arc right so we need to see who she is at the beginning of the story versus who she becomes by the end of it so I need to show her normal life before the mirror I always have to have a romance in my books so it's just a necessity even if it's not a romance novel there's always got to be a romance subplot so I know I want a romance maybe I don't have any idea yet what I want it to be but maybe I know kind of the Trope is that I'd like to play around with an enemy to lovers romance in this one so I might just start writing down all these things that I already know about the character like I know I want to give her an ally inside the mirror I know that I want some um some battle scenes maybe I have an idea for um a potion shop inside the mirror and I could just write down all those things that I know so far and when I start combining this idea with this maybe I have some idea of where these things are going to come into the story so for example I might say here I know that I need her normal life and I need to introduce the um the antagonist that's going to send her through the mirror right um and maybe I also want to um sort of show her magic a little bit these aren't specific scenes they're just things I know I want to happen in the story then I might say okay okay well here in the new world so I need to introduce the love interest then I need to introduce the new character so that's like the the people and maybe I could make a note to say I want to showcase their powers if you were writing let's say A Space Opera or something like that you might have the beginning you know genre wise is going to be like them loading up the ship and heading on a new adventure or something and then something goes wrong in act one that puts them into the story right it puts them into the premise maybe it's that they uh discover a new land or maybe they get into some kind of meteor shower and their sh ship gets messed up and they have to land on this foreign planet that would be the act one it's like what's the first big problem that comes up for these characters and then how do we introduce the new world that they're put into could be actually literally a new world like it will be with my shadow story or it could be a new world in that okay I met this guy I had sworn off love he kissed me or I just found out he's my new boss boom now what is the new world now I have to work this job where there's all this tension between us that's all the stuff that goes in here so just start brainstorming bullet points of scenes that you could see happening between your characters or as they find their bearings here and then boom once we get to this midpoint we need another shift so we have our first shift here at the at the end of act one we need another shift here at the end of act two where we say everything changes right so maybe in your space like Alien Invasion story or whatever it might be your sci-fi story maybe Everything Changes is something you could brainstorm like what's another conflict that could come up that they thought they were alone on this planet but in the midpoint they realized that they actually landed on a planet they're familiar with that has an entire race of uh people that hate humans like there could be anything there but like something's got to happen at this midpoint that changes everything and even as I'm talking through it let's say in this new world everyone says there's no way out of the mirror but maybe at the midpoint she discovers instead of being challenged to a duel maybe she discovers that there's a way out that if she were to cast this spell on midnight at the such and such whatever she could actually break the mirror spell and she finds this um this book that explains what she needs to do but there's a conflict as to why she can't do it so then I would want to explore that conflict here in the third part and that's going to lead me down to the second doorway where let's say she's getting ready to cast this spell but someone does something terrible and they like ruin the one piece of of the spell like the crystal gets broken and now she can't cast the spell anymore so all her hopes are dashed and now we've got her with a Race Against Time to try to repair the crystal before the sunsets on the third day like I don't know I'm just throwing stuff out there but you would just think through what are the major twists and turns that could happen and of course it really greatly depends on what genre you're writing as to what type of twist and turn these moments in your story are going to be is it going to be romance then each one of these little points needs to have to do with your Romance the first time they kiss first time they have sex when they break up when they get back together like it could be that simple right um if it's a science fiction story it's it's their first doorway their first sense of real trouble then the exploration then another big conflict comes along then the final big conflict comes along that they have to face and overcome in this last part like their final plan their final hope of seeing it all through so think about your genre and just start exploring once you have as much of this down as you can I highly recommend taking a moment and doing a bit of a mind map with each of the pieces that you have in place because at this point you might have lots of little dots filled in but they might not be specific and they might not be fleshed out now for some people as I said in the intro you don't need to flesh this out maybe this is more than enough and you just have a note card that has some bullet points on it and you just start writing and you're all good to go maybe you spend a little bit of time with your world building like we did last week's video and then you just are ready to start writing for Nano for other people you might want to go ahead and have this all filled out on note cards the way that I do so it's really up to you how deep you want to go in this process and I would really highly encourage you to use your intuition with that that if you think okay do I feel excited and ready to write or do I want to figure out a little bit more of this story and just go to the point where it feels continues to feel good to you cuz for some of us you're just going to discover these pieces in the writing but let me keep going for those of you that want to keep going so I would continue to mind map so then we're going to break it down remember how I said that trip to New York City right I don't have to like these are my places I'm going to spend the night along the way but now I'm going to try to actually figure out what's my route for day one of this trip so I might come in here and uh let me think how best really do this like I might come up here and I might just put act one and then I'll say something like um the first thing that happens is she's stealing a crystal and that's the first thing we see from the character is she stealing a crystal and I know that somehow I want to get her to this act one climax or the first doorway of being pushed into the mirror but I have to figure out all the things that happen in between and and I have a few ideas about her normal life and the antagonist and showing her magic so I'm going to go ahead and and pull those out in little pieces over here so I might say okay who's who's the antagonist this might not actually even be the right word for her because we're not going to see her in the mirror world but she's kind of the Catalyst person um who's the girl that pushes her through the mirror right who is that then I might have a question and I can Circle that over here and then I might have a question over here of normal life and then I put over here uh MC's magic so these are all the little pieces that I pulled from here and now I'm just putting them out on a mind map sort of uh page and then I can just start brainstorming and it like I said it doesn't have to be attached to any idea just open your mind up and say what would be kind of fun for her magic what kind of magic do I want her to have well I know she's a thief so let's say she can go invisible she can pick locks she can um she has in infite Pockets that would be kind of cool and I could just start writing down different forms of her magic what is her normal life okay so she's an orphan she lives at a ruby prima's house and I could just start writing down the things I know about her normal life what do I know about this antagonist that pushes her through the mirror what would be some fun things and as I go I can just start circling the ideas that I like best then I can start thinking okay with all of these pieces in place how do I start telling this as a story and this is where we're either going to come to my working outline sheet or you're going to start actually giving yourself bullet points right so again I'm just using these big note cards cuz I like them and you could brainstorm scenes here too so you could say okay here's her normal life let's talk about a scene that would happen in her normal showing her normal life and you could write out what happens in this scene what's a scene where we see her using her magic magic well the thief scene is where we're going to see her using her magic for the first time but where does she encounter the antagonist and start thinking of these things that you already had in bullet points as scenes now we're going to go in here and we're going to make a like a little act one or part one note card and we can start just doing Simple scen bullet points and sometimes the way that I like to do this is l Lally just stepping My Mind through the story now for those of you that are familiar with threea structure or different plotting methods that have Beats this is where you're going to start to work through the Beats of your story going from the beginning of act one to the climax of act one now if you wanted some books to read up on Jessica Brody has a book based on Blake KN Blake Snider's screenwriting book called uh save the cat and this is called save the cat writes a novel and she specifically goes through different story beats that you have in a lot of stories so you've got the opening image the setup the theme the Catalyst the debate the break into two the funing games and so on and so this will walk you through it if you understand those beats you can use her beats there's also if you're writing a romance Gwen Hayes has a book called Romancing the beat I will link all that below I tend to follow just a typical like hero's journey or I'm studying more on the heroin's journey as well in a threea structure which like I said I'm now calling a four-part structure and that's what I've walked you through in your preptober planner and again you can get this for free just sign up for my newsletter list down below and I will send you a link to my resource Library where you can download it but I will start with okay what's the hook of the story what's that opening scene and I will write out everything I figured out in my brainstorming and then I might come down here and say this is the act one climax where she gets pushed through the the mirror right and then I'll start either way I can back up like what happens right before she gets pushed in the mirror and I can reverse engineer some of this stuff and I can also work my way forward I can also work in any of the things that I saw here that I know are scenes that I want to get introduced in this part so at some point we need to meet this antagonist and she needs to push her through the mirror but maybe we just see the antagonist here um like antagonist or Catalyst whatever you want to call it confronts her at the Ruby house and so I can write down anything I know about that scene and then at the climax of that scene she pushes her through the mirror at the hook we have her in a warehouse stealing a crystal so what might happen next okay once she I and I just literally will walk myself through the story of like what's the lot next logical thing that might happen she's stolen the crystal where does she take it if she's stolen it for the order she's going to take it back to her Handler or or whatever whoever requested the crystal so I might have a scene there where she takes it back then I might have her go to high school like maybe this is her me showing her normal life remember I had this part where I was like I got to show her normal life so maybe she spent her whole night and morning working on this Crystal and now she has to go to high school and pretend to be just a normal girl or maybe I'm going to put her in college and I can start brainstorming that college scene where I show her normal life and then I can just try to conect the dots based on how long I want this act to be and so I might say like um okay we've got the antagonist that confronts her at the Ruby house what else could happen in between this That Could set things up for what's happening later in my story and I would just continue to look at those beats if I get stuck here and I'm not sure what happens in the middle then I'm going to come to these actual story beats and I'm going to start filling them out so for example main character the beginning this is going to be my hook their normal world this will be the scene of her at college and then opening scene how does it how does it hook the reader in so actually this is not the hook when I say main character at the beginning I mean like what's her emotional state at the beginning so from this character in my mirror story it's very much like her emotional state is that she's trapped here um that she doesn't have any Independence that she's going to be basically a Workhorse for the order of Shadows her whole life but she never is going to be let into the order and so she's feeling hopeless she feels trapped she feels like she has no control or agency in her life then I show her normal world where that emotional side of her is actually shown in scenes then the hook is that she's going to steal this Crystal right so I can write everything that I know about that but then the dramatic question of this story is what now because she's going to get moved and pushed into this mirror I need to think about what's happening later in the story so the dramatic question might be something like will she ever break free of the order or the control that other people have on her will she ever be strong enough to break free of of other people's control how does she feel about the conflict or the disturbance at first so the disturbance is the stealing of this Crystal and maybe you know what's going on here that's usually the conflict or the disturbance going on here or I could say how does she feel about this idea that she's not free and I can just Riff on that a little bit the inciting incident is something that typically happens um you know in a bit into the story but it can also be something that happens before the story so for example in disappearance of Vanessa Shaw the inciting incident is Vanessa's disappearance which happens in the prologue but sometimes the inciting incident doesn't happen until later in the story as is the case here the inciting incident is that she's going to be all of this inciting incident and key event all happen kind of together where she's going to get pushed into the mirror and I will sort of caveat this by saying I'm writing this book as a serial so I will actually go through a slightly different plotting process because this is going to be broken into pieces um and I won't structure it exactly like I would a novel so if you're interested in seeing how I'm going to structure the serialized story let me know and I will do that but right now we're kind of focusing on novels but basically that process is what I will go through with every single act so I will take the overview of the story and any scenes I could imagine there and I will go through act one act two act three act four and I will just step through okay now that we're in act two and she's in this mirror world what are the scenes what needs to happen next to get her to this point where she discovers in the library a way to escape from this mirror and I already know quite a bit about her reaction to getting into the mirror and what all is going to happen here in The Disappearance of Vanessa sha the first doorway is that they also get stuck or trapped on this River and they in this cabin and they think the Killer is there and they're all in danger potentially Vanessa's ghost as well is part of the story so all of this that happens at the first part of act two is a reaction to this first doorway and so this for me tends to be an easy place to write but then sometimes I get stuck trying to figure out what else happens leading to this way and so I will just follow that same process of writing out a bunch of bullet points you can start with maybe like eight scenes let's say we're going to start with eight to 10 scenes per act or per part and just start reverse engineering and filling in the blanks of anything you see so far and get as specific as you can but don't worry if you can't get too specific then come into my plotting sheets here I'm not going to walk you through all of this but if you would like to know a little bit more about these beats then I will also link my how to Plot a novel series I will be redoing that entire Series in 2024 which I know many of you have request Ed so there will be more coming up on the plotting part but I do kind of walk you through some of these questions like how do these like what challenges come up next how these challenges make her grow or see the world differently what happens at the midpoint what's happens at the mirror moment and if you watch that series on plotting you will see um what I'm talking about with the mirror moment another thing that I do like to do speaking of the mirror moment when I'm brainstorming my plot is I will create this little triangle here where I say who is my character at the beginning of the story and this is sort of a character Arc thing which we'll get into more later who is she at the beginning of the story and then who does she need to become in order to fulfill the end of this story question right in a romance it's like how does this girl who has her heart closed off from love come to fall in love and truly give herself to this person right something along those lines there's always that character Arc now you might be writing like a detective mystery where there's not much of a character Arc so you may not need this but this can be another tool where you say here's where they are at the beginning here's who they become at the end and then we take a look at the middle of the book where James Scott Bell says there is usually a mirror moment which is a moment of like who have I become I must change or I'm going to die it can also be a moment of the odds against me are too great which if I stuck with the idea of her being challenged to a duel um in my mirror story she might be like the odds against me are too great I'm probably going to die here but I'm going to go down fighting and then throughout the rest of the course of the book she becomes so strong that she finds a way out so sometimes figuring out your character's Arc can also make you think oh I need a scene where she learns this new type of magic so where's that going to go and then you can go back to your little story line here and say okay this is where her magic is going to grow a little bit I know this looks a little bit chaotic but for me the back and forth of what can I figure out along the way starting with the big sort of tent poles of the story the things that hold up the story the biggest turning points of the story emotionally and you know plot-wise can I figure those out and then can I re reverse engineer and kind of work my way backward and forward using any scenes that I knew or anything I know I want to happen so for example a subplot in this story is going to be a romance so I can separately go out here and create another mind map to say who is this romance going to be here's the one I was using who is this romance going to be I could start a whole new mind map here and say romance and I could say Okay I want it to be enemies to lovers but this but this but this and I can start mind mapping and coming up with different scenes that might be possibilities and the more I can open my mind instead of feeling like I have to have it figured out perfectly right from the start the better off it's going to be and sometimes if you're following a really strict structure like a romance novels sometimes have pretty like strict structure in terms of the different things that readers are expecting especially if you're following certain troopes that it might be easier to find your way to these scenes with some things like literary fiction or more complex like multiple POV novels you might not have as easy of a time figuring out each individual beat so that's why I've given you this sort of road map to figuring out the beats and then understand that as you're writing you just need to be thinking what what's the next logical thing that could happen that could impact this story and how would my character knowing what I know about them react or respond what would be the next thing they would do and just walk your way through the story like that I hope this has been helpful I know this again is a longer video but by the time I typically am ready to write I will have all of these things figured out for myself now you can see kind of um my desk is chaos here here as well but for like The Disappearance of Vanessa Shaw for example I will have like this is act one and I will have it mapped out according to the plot Which chapter what's happening in the scene what's the conflict of this scene what's the purpose of the scene like the goal of this scene and then how many words did it take me to write that and this type of thing really helps me in terms of keeping on track now I don't always know this before I start writing I'll just have pieces of it just like we did in that note card and then I will gradually fill it out as I go because as you write you're going to start having light bulb moments and ideas now we will have a video later about what happens if you get stuck that you've written the First Act but now you can't figure out what happens in act two but hopefully some of this will help you another way that I like to organize my notes because I'm very much a paper plotter kind of person is I will either take my note cards and put them on just take like a little um hole punch and I will punch them and put them on one of these like book rings that you can get on Amazon just like this to keep them all in order or I also have this cool little thing that I've been using lately where you can slip them into sleeves and then you can just kind of page through it like a book and I have been enjoying this because I get a bigger view than just one note card at a time but on my note cards I like to put the basic premise of the scene my character's goal in the scene the conflict of the scene and the outcome how does it turn out and then any notes that I might have about that scene and the way way this helps me is if I can identify what my character wants to achieve in this scene and what their conflict is going to be and then how that conflict leads to an outcome they didn't expect I can usually say okay so now that she's realizing how alone she is and how bad she feels what would she do next maybe she runs off to her room and she has a good cry you know or something like that or maybe she runs to a friend and that's where the stuff like the Mind mapping or sitting down with a friend and saying what could could happen next here's what I've got so far in the story and just start bouncing ideas off each other well what if she did this what if she did this what if she did this and sometimes that can help me when I'm feeling stuck is I'll say here's the outcome of the scene and here's what's happened so far and then I'll just jot down a list of like set a timer for 10 minutes and jot down a list of what's 10 more things that could happen and keep in mind what's the next big story point that happens so like at some point they're going to have a storm and they're going to get trapped here or at some point she's going to get pushed through this mirror so what needs to happen before that and in the context of that what are 10 things that could potentially happen and eventually you just make a choice and you write it and it feels right or it doesn't and if it doesn't feel right you write something different and that is the process of being a writer and I think sometimes where people get really stuck is that they feel like it has to be right or perfect the very first time you do it but the truth is you have all these pieces of paper all these chances as much as you want to be able to take it and try new things and brainstorm new scenes but I know that for nanoro specifically we really want to try to have as much of it figured out as we individually need in order to keep moving forward so I do have lots of resources in this preptober planner for you to continue to expand on what we've done today so you've got this full four-page outline that will walk you all the way through to the very climax of the story and it even is going to inform Your World building as well as your character Arc then I also have an explanation on how to then take that and write scene by scene and I explained to you how I created these scene cards and this brainstorming scene process to reflect on what just happened determine how to best transition from this scene to this scene and it walks you through these steps I do also have a series here on YouTube about how to write your book from scenes so I will link all of that for you below if you just want to keep watching and that is all of the sort of brainstorming stuff that I have for you and I hope that this is super helpful please let me know in the comments if there's anything that you want me to expand on or that doesn't work for you or a place that you've tried all these steps and you're still getting stuck let me know and I am here to help as much as I can but eventually there comes a point where you just have to try and be willing to for it to not be the right thing and then try something different and then try something different and just never give up okay we did it that's it for our nanoro outlining video our preptober outlining video I hope this was helpful I hope something here really resonated with you I love talking about plotting because it is such a great tool for keeping your story cohesive for making sure that your story and your characters are telling the story that you want they have the theme and the meanings that you wanted to put into it and it's also something that you can always turn to when you feel like you're stuck but like I said do it your way so let me know in the comments are you a plot plotter are you a pancer traditionally and you're just watching this video looking for a little bit of ideas or are you still searching for your perfect process let me know in the comments please subscribe to this video share it with friends if you know of anybody that is still looking to get ready for preptober and join us for nanor rimo and of course go and download your preptober planner down below you just have to sign up for my newsletter you'll get an email first that will ask you to confirm your subscription when you do that you'll get another email in just a few minutes that will have a link to my entire resource Library where I've got World building information preptober planners how to Plot a novel how to edit your novel how to write a series tons and tons of great free totally free resources there for you and all you have to do is sign up for my list so hope you enjoyed this I will have a new video coming out talking about pacing and subplots soon so just stay tuned I will see you in that next video bye [Music] I