Hello all you patrons and participants of the literary arts,

There is a truth at one time or another all writers must face (actually this is  a lie. Writers have to face this particular truth several times in their careers and I argue several time with every piece they produce).  What is this reality that we strive to avoid? Okay here’s goes … are you ready?

Writing isn’t always fun. I know this comes as a shock to some of you but those who have dabbled with pen and ink know that sometimes writing can be difficult especially if you are trying to give your reads the best possible experience as you can which is of course what you should always be doing.

Lately I’ve been struggling to figure out the best way for book two of the Traveler’s Guide series to go and I had found that my usual pantsing method wasn’t working as well as it usually does my characters though interesting on their own were not coming together and focusing on the task at hand, i.e. what I wanted them to do. I’ve been trying to figure this out for the last couple of weeks now and I think I hit upon my solution.

Outlining.

Okay it’s more of a very loose outline but I figure if it works for grade school reports maybe it will work here too.

Basically I’ve had a vague plan in my head of important things I want my characters to experience and eventually where I want them to end up, but the problem is getting there. This is trickier than it sounds since I do have a lot of characters a lot of settings and as always I do want my characters’ emotions and decisions to feel genuine not forced. Still I felt like I needed to develop some kind of structure that made logical sense to get from point to point.

The solution to my problem came in the form of creating a chapter by chapter guide for my travelers that looks like this…

Chapter One

POV: (This is the character whose perspective we’ll be viewing the action from, A few of the POV entries in my outline have multiple people indicating that I might have more than one POV in the chapter or that I’m not sure yet which character’s POV I want to use.)

Setting: (This is the setting where the characters are in the beginning of the chapter sometimes there are multiple settings if I know for sure in that chapter that they will be in more than one place other times I have left the setting slightly vague such as “On the Road”.)

Goal/ Theme: (Okay, so nobody gets too confused in my outline goal and theme are slightly different. The “goal” of the chapter generally refers to something that the character wants to have  happen or something they are working to accomplish while the “theme” of the chapter is something I want the character to do or realize about themselves or an emotional setting.)

End: (This one seems a little redundant but I think it will prove helpful. The “end” is where I want the story to be at the you guessed it end of the chapter. This helps me know when to stop writing and move on to a new scene and most often a new character perspective.)

I’m excited to take my outline and see how it can help me to have more productive and focused writing sessions in the future.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have a story to write.