Chuck Wendig - subscribe now

1. Chuck Wendig - subscribe now

   #1

   From the below blog post:
   
   (Disclaimer: NAPLO YONOMO is the protagonist of STAR WARS AFTERMATH TWO: EWOK SNUGGLEBOO. He’s a fancy gentleman Gonk Droid with a debilitating spice addiction!)
   
   Next month is National Novel Writing Month, aka, NaNoWriMo.
   
   This month, I am declaring to be NaPloYoNoMo, or National Plot Your Novel Month. Or, if you prefer the more profane edition, NaPloYoMoFuGoDaNoMo month.
   
   I want you to think about the planning, plotting and scheming of your novel.
   
   I want you to think about outlining that novel.
   
   Now, some of you are resistant to the idea of outlining. I know. I get it. Some of you upon hearing the word “outline” clenched up so hard, your buttholes permanently sealed shut. Now it’s just a smooth patch of flesh like bubble gum stretched across a puckered mouth.
   
   BUT NOW HOLD ON.
   
   Calm down. Unseal thine buttocks.
   
   Outlining fucking sucks. I fucking hate it. Every time I do it I have to grit my teeth and swig whiskey and engage in a movie montage where I ragefully punch frozen beef and run through snow. And it takes me like, a day or two — three, tops — and then it’s done and suddenly I don’t fucking hate it anymore. It’s probably like building a house and starting with the basement. Building the basement has to be super shit-ass boring. It’s a basement. It’s just a cinderblock prison. It’s a horizontal dirt cave. The house itself above it — oh, that’s fancy. You get to think about where doorways are and which room will be the living room and the dining room and the SEX TARP room. You get to place windows and floors. But the basement: Ugh, fuck the basement. And yet, you need the basement. You need the foundation.
   
   I need outlines. I am a pantser by heart, a plotter by necessity. I engage in the misery of extricating an outline from the hot pile of skull-meat I call a brain, and then I slap it onto the page and suddenly — boom-bam, there’s the book. Not in its entirety, but in its sheer potential. It makes a book feel possible. It makes a story feel a bit more manageable.
   
   Plus, sometimes a publisher will ask for an outline. Work-for-hire will demand it. And often, pitching an unwritten novel (which becomes hypothetically doable once you’ve sold your first novel) may require an outline, too. So, it becomes a skill worth learning. I’m asking you take this month — October! — and try however much it chafes your particular genital configuration to outline your upcoming book. (Or, if you’ve already written a book, practice by outlining the one you already wrote. You’d be amazed at how clarifying this can be.)
   
   Time, then, to talk about outlining.
   
   --------------------------------------
   
   Now, go read the rest. Actually VERY informative information on different outlining options.
   
   Plus, this is the dude who wrote the first new Star Wars book that just came out. He blogs a few times a week and every single one of them is a riot to read!! Been following him for years. Not sure why I only now am bringing it up.
   
   Subscribe to his email list immediately.
   
   http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/10/06/how-to-outline-during-national-plot-your-novel-month/
   
   

2. Re: Chuck Wendig - subscribe now

   #2

   November is always shit for me, too much stuff going on for me to put in the time to plot and write a novel. Instead, I'm going to try to have the majority of my existing novel revised by the end of NaNo.

3. Re: Chuck Wendig - subscribe now

   #3

   I'm the polar opposite case to what Strolen/Chuck describes- at the start I have to create an outline first in order to embark on a story-writing expedition as opposed to a normal Citadel submission which is really more of an article type of writing, else I won't be able to convert what is just a nebulous idea floating around in my mind somewhere to something concrete like a story. But then I can't go with developing a full outline either before I get impatient and want to start the biz of actual writing. At least, that was how it was with my stalled novel attempt. So for me, it's like at first I can't survive without an outline but then I get sick of the outline creating biz half way.
   
   Having said that, being part of the pulp fiction epub taught me that starting writing from this semi-state of having an outline is okay for a short story cos it's very easy for a deeper understanding of character and plot to emerge by itself through the actual process of writing as opposed to planning. It wasn't okay for my stalled novel though- when it got stalled, it was at a point where I encountered a detail that I haven't thought up before and then I just went "uh oh, I can't fudge this anymore" (I'm self-dubbed plotting/planning maniac but then time and again there're detailed aspects in the plot that I haven't worked out in my planning stage that will create a writer's block/lethargy for me in the writing stage) and I'm not sure that an outline would rescue it from the state of being stalled. But then I'm rambling.
   
   This is on the whole a worthy enterprise to try for those of us who always said that we will work towards publication someday but are too much taken up with the daily grind to do anything that really pushes us towards the realm of publication.
   
   

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