How do you plot out a novel? I am not an outliner, but I'm not really SOP (seat of pants) either. I've got a general idea of where I want to get to and how the book should end, but identifying the necessary scenes that are steppingstones to get there is tough for me.
I am (proud to say) three quarters of the way through my novel Singularity Syndrome, and my head was starting to spin. What happens when? Does Finder culture the Glorp before or after he gets trapped in the factory? When should he confront the evil venture capitalist? And when the AIs tell Finder about their baby, had I already set up the plotline about the Librarian's transformation?
I was confused!
At other times when this has happened, I've cut the document into smaller chunks, each with its own descriptive file name, and tried to move them around. But my current manuscript was too far along. It would be too unwieldy for that.
I hit on a much easier way that works for me. It's super-simple. Maybe it will work for you, too.
I'm writing in Microsoft Word, using minimal formatting, just a few bolds and italics. For this to work, you need to be using a word processing program that supports headings and an outline view.
Do you break the ms into chapters as you go? Sometimes I do, sometimes not. If you haven't, the first step is to break the content into rough chapters that contain chunks of writing that you might want to shuffle.
As you do this, don't worry about numbering, but give each one a descriptive line or even two. For example, one of mine says, "Chapter Party with the Arcotypes." This contains one long, complete scene.
You can break down your manuscript scene-by-scene or section-by-section.
As you go, use "Headings" to give the entire chapter description the Heading 1 style. It doesn't matter what the actual style is. The important thing is the information that this text is top-level.
When you're done, here's the magic: In Word, go to "View," then click on "Outline."
In the second column from the left, you'll see a pulldown menu with "All Levels." Click on the little tab to change it to "Level 1."
You'll see a list of all the key scenes in your story. You can instantly see how they flow and what comes where. (It would be nice if Word let you print out just this top-level outline, but my version doesn't.) You could copy the chapter headings into a new document and shuffle them around, or do it in your head. Here's how part of mine looks:
You can quickly revert back to "Draft" or "Print Layout" view by clicking one of those buttons.
This method has kept me on track and let me figure out some gnarly plot issues. I'm ready to fly through the final quarter of Singularity Syndrome. Look for it from Pandamoon Publishing sometime in 2019.
PHOTO: Photo by Arash Asghari on Unsplash