Introduction

What exactly is this “outline transcript” thing you’re now reading? And why would you want to read it in the first place?

Two possible reasons:

 

1. You’re a reader, and you love the idea of getting a behind-the-scenes look at the process of an author (me, in this case!).

2. You’re a writer trying to figure out how best to outline your books, and you want a little insight into how another author (me in this case!) does it. Ever since writing my book Outlining Your Novel, I’ve gotten all kinds of requests from authors who wanted to see a full example of what my outlining process looks like. Outlining Your Novel contained excerpts, but, as you can see, this full outline is book-sized in itself and simply wasn’t practical as inclusion at the time.

 

But now, here it is! This is the complete outline transcription for my historical/dieselpunk mashup novel Storming. I feel this outline, in particular, is a good example of my process for several reasons:

 

1. It’s relatively linear and cohesive, so should make decent sense to others.

2. It includes a look at my ever-evolving approach to story structure and character arcs.

3. It’s very similar to the story you find in the published book.

 

Two Caveats

Before you read on, let me say the obvious: spoilers! What you’re reading here is pretty much the entire book, so you’re going to know everything that happens in the plot after reading it.

That’s caveat number one: don’t read the outline if you want to be surprised by the book!

Caveat number two is: read the book first anyway. I say that not just because I really, really want you to read my book (of course!), but because the random nature of the outline itself will make way more sense if you already have an overview of the actual story. You’ll also be able to recognize the places in which the finished book ended up evolving beyond the outline, for any number of reasons. (For example, SPOILERS Storming started out in the outline as something much larger and more complex than it ended up being in the book, and the female lead started out being the protagonist and only narrator, whereas the male lead ended up in that role in the book END SPOILERS.)

 

A Few Guidelines and Resources

I write my outlines longhand in a notebook, so what you’re seeing here is obviously a transcription. In the notebook, I use a color-coded highlighting system to help me organize my notes. I’ve mimicked that highlighting throughout this document. For easy reference, here’s the guide:

 

Green: These are questions: things I wanted to return to in the outline and explore in further depth.

Yellow: These are “keepers”—plot points and other information on which I was putting the stamp of approval for future reference.

Orange: I call these “orange notes,” and they’re simply odds and ends of approved info that won’t go into the actual plot outline, but which I want to keep for future reference. They’re often world-building or thematic notes.

Blue: These are the “official” outline notes. Anything highlighted in blue will be transcribed in full into my abbreviated outline in Scrivener.

Pink: This means “move.” Whenever something ends up being written out of chronological order, I highlight it in pink and indicate whether it should be moved up or down in the outline, with another pink marker to show where it should end up.

 

You can find the complete list of questions I use for my character interviews in the Outlining Your Novel Workbook. (You can find versions of advancing levels of completion in this post, in my free e-book Crafting Unforgettable Characters, and in Outlining Your Novel. But since I’m always updating the list, the most complete version is in the Outlining Your Novel Workbook.)

 

For world building, I use Patricia C. Wrede’s incredibly comprehensive Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions.

 

A Note on Typos and Inconsistencies

I’ve tried to keep the text as close to the original—mistakes, random punctuation, et al.—just so you can get the sense of my creative flow. However, there are bound to be a few weird typos that slipped through (I used Dragon Naturally Speaking to transcribe the text), so please forgive any you may run across.

I hope you find this glimpse into my create process both interesting and useful. And I hope you enjoy both the outline and the book itself, which, by the way, you can learn more about by clicking right here.

 

Happy flying!

K.M. Weiland