Welcome! I'm Billie (she/her), and I'm a multi-fandom girl. You can find my greatest hits on tumblr below, and I’m also on AO3.
My ask box is open if you have any questions or just want to say hi! I'm always excited to discuss my fandoms and fandom history and culture more broadly.
Fic
My fics are tagged #billie writes fic and can be found on my AO3, which is archive-locked. I'm most proud of these fics:
it's not enough (this time) [Harry Potter]
Remus and Sirius: the end of the beginning.
(Or, April is the cruelest month, in the shadow of October.)
Tilted Ice [Heated Rivalry]
They fucked in Shane’s apartment and generic hotel rooms across Boston. That was—
Shane was fine with that.
keep you like an oath [A League of Their Own (TV)]
By unspoken agreement, Jess and Lupe keep Vi’s a secret—even from those who would be welcome. Lupe probably has a number of complicated reasons for it, but Jess only has one: she’s selfish as hell.
Fic recs and meta below the cut.
Fic Recs
My ALOTO, Good Omens, Heated Rivalry, and HP fic recs are tagged #bfe fic recs and collected on AO3. These are my most substantial recs:
[HP] The Wolfstar Yearbooks Project
Rec lists with reviews of my favorite Wolfstar fics published each year from 2003 to 2008, and condensed lists for 2009-2015 and 2016-2021.
[HP] “The Last Enemy” Series by CH_Darling
A detailed review of The Last Enemy series. TL;DR: I highly recommend it!
Meta
[HP] Early Wolfstar Fandom vs. Today
My understanding of what Wolfstar was like in the early days compared to today. Read the reblogs/replies for more!
Look, it’s a weird hill to die on, especially when I don’t really explain, but children deserve to experience fear, disgust, and discomfort in safe scenarios where they can process those sensations.
Media for children used to be scary and that’s important.
“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
― C.S. Lewis
Not sure why it's a new trend among fic readers to assume if the fic has not been posted within the week it's inappropriate to comment on it, like the fic has to be hot out of the oven to give feedback for.
I got a comment on a fic that is less than a year old and it was mostly an apology for being a comment on an "old fic" and how late they were in commenting.
Just comment on the fic. Doesn't matter how old it is.
i could be succinct for once in my life & condense this, but my skull is filled with soup rn. first word vomit of this blog ig
tl;dr—skip are really interesting but only as a framing device for privilege & hollanov
like many people i rolled my eyes at heated rivalry, in my case bc of the books & where i know they originated, but was won over. what won me over was episode 3 of all things, tho
for the first 2 episodes of the show we watch shane and ilya struggle to communicate emotionally despite wanting to & substitute their deficiencies with sex. typical trope of erotic fiction. i enjoyed it, but what intrigued me (high quality & acting aside) was that shane is half-asian in one of the whitest hypermasculine contact sports in the world and subtextually autistic, and ilya is a russian esl immigrant with some obvious ptsd based neurodivergence. piled on to them both being queer closeted globally ranked child athletes entering a multi-million dollar sports industry, that's a fucking saw trap
racist exotification and caricatures in these genres are common, especially of russians/slavs & asians, and so is a decorative approach to mental health challenges/disorders. i was admittedly wary of the show's thematic follow through & skeptical it was even aware of the microcosm it held in its palm, except for shane's autism (a hudson williams interview abt shane convinced me to give it a chance). mostly bc ik the vibes of its source material & doubted such a thing would take any interest in a racial narrative, much less an intersectional one
but then episode 3 happened. and oh this was really really fucking interesting
not the contained queer popcorn romance, which is fine, and certainly not scott/kip as a ship (sorry to kip but his actor shares a striking resemblance to #my dad and enduring that was actual psychological torture). what hooked me by the lip was the themes of privilege it introduced
scott and kip communicate basically perfectly, and expeditiously. their circumstances drive them apart, but never each other. there's no mess. they have a romcom style meet cute and altogether bow-wrapped little u-haul romance. even in their difficult moments they support each other and acknowledge the other's needs or try to do so. it's the all american cherry pie wholesome wattpad/hallmark fantasy of closeted gay romances, well made and produced and good enough to stand on its own
but it's episode 3. not a vignette standalone. this is part of shane and ilya's story
on the surface it seems like skip is expanding the depictions of what closeted athletes can look like, while assuring the viewer that the writers know how to write healthy communication with compelling drama. that's probably its intention. but it's not what makes it interesting
scott and kip are both white, usamerican, (mostly) neurotypical men. one of whom is an established, respected hockey player (man in the crease notwithstanding) and closeted but self-determined gay man. the other is a normal out gay guy in his 20s/30s with a loving support system, pillared (crucially) by his dad. they both have a great deal of security around and within them, in spite of scott being so closeted
meanwhile shane is mixed race, a model minority asian/japanese icon in his very racist hypermasculine conformist national sport, undiagnosed autistic, and a closeted gay man (Very Confused flavor). he has obvious signs of undiagnosed ocd & given all of this, probably cptsd. he's sexually submissive to the point of deviance. he sits like his limbs are filled with lead and his japanese parent is his manager
all-american cherry pie scott and kip are a framing device to demonstrate how healthy communication itself can become a privilege. bc of their national, political, and personal circumstances, shane and ilya literally can't communicate the way scott and kip do. their relationship is messy and confusing and sexually deviant. it's difficult to explain, categorize, and defies most norms. its fabric itself is queer in a way skip's isn't
ilya is an eccentric & brash russian/slavic esl immigrant living alone in the us on a visa in a foreign league which punishes players for having a personality more interesting than strawberry milk and white knuckles the cold war profile of russians like a woobie. at home he's a russian national athlete with an abusive family in the police/military and a closeted bisexual man (Will Be Jailed/Disowned flavor). he has textbook flags of undiagnosed cptsd/ptsd. he's sexually dominant to the point of deviance and he's financially responsible for his terrible remaining parent who's dying of dementia on the other side of the world (+ his crackhead older brother)
this is why scott and kip are the perfect couple to break the coming out barrier. they're about as ideal & commercially shippable as it gets for a gay couple in a cultishly racist/etc industry like hockey. this is also why so many cishet viewers are so fond of them. it's a recreation of their in-universe narrative purpose—skip are there to win normie audiences over, so you don't stick your nose up at hollanov & the queer dysfunction they depict
they have the potential to be more compelling than a lifetime movie if these themes become foretextual. i want to see them use their privilege in allyship to shane & ilya. this is why they're in the story
that's the core thesis of this entire damn thing, anyway. i can only hope jacob tierney goes balls to the walls with it (and..........is Aware Of It)
She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.
She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.
81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.
The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.
Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.
Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.
The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.
She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.
Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.
When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.
The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.
When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.
The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.
You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.
i don't understand why so many people think ilya is the opposite of fastidious or neat (and conversely that shane IS suuuuper fastidious or neat as a joyful characteristic).
they are both rich guys with people who are paid to clean up after them literally 24/7 at home and at work. their houses and clothes and dishes will literally not be dirty.
hockey players are notoriously superstitious and demanding about how they want their equipment, their set-up, and their routine. and they spend their lives on the road. packing and unpacking the same bags, taping the same stick, being ironed down by the same hegemonic-conformist culture. they get real good at it.
shane has specific anxiety around being gay/changes affecting his hockey specifically and that drives his devotion to not deviating from routine -> and if that reads as OCD, then compulsive checking does not equal fastidiousness, its an attempt to regulate his internal world thru his external world. if it's autisim, then resistance to change, focused interests and sensory reactivity are literally textbook and it's an attempt to regulate his external world thru his internal world, which can or can't be fastidious/neat.
ilya specifically demands control in his life to an exacting degree that requires work and attentiveness because he was stripped of it in childhood.
this manifests in attention to details, control over situations and people, and purposeful approaches to his actions and others:
- in his super neat home where yes everything is labelled by his nutritionist/cleaned by a housekeeper but he cares about just how cold shane's ginger ale is etc. sets a timer for the sammies and controls his own emotional activation w his family before returning to the couch bc he wants to convo to go a certain way/also pushes shane through the convo
- in conversations like sochi/post first time anal/shane panicking at the cottage/sveta jane-pushing/etc. where he shuts down or pushes paths of action/non-action and controls the tone and information being conveyed.
- in his appearance/fashion with his curated and rich and clean outfit choices and well kept hair.
- in the club when he may be seen as 'messy' by being promiscuous but he deliberately chooses to go out as a coping technique and rejects or picks girls to get with and is very forthright about it from all we can see -- not misleading or letting it get in the way of other things.
- in family matters keeping track of his father's abuse/demands towards ilya and then his father's medications/illness/QOL as well as being the primary monetary support for all his relatives with listed examples bc he knows what the money is being spent on! and criticizes his brother for not being as organized. and puts money and gifts in a trust for his niece and sets boundaries to what alexei gets/does not get.
- in sex with shane where he guides shane and takes his time with each act, likes to be called by honorifics, likes to order shane around, likes to have all of shane's complete attention and often cleans up quickly.
- in his plans for the future where he makes plans about his relationship with shane and tries to make conversations/interactions go just how he imagines them. thinks about signing with boston and thinks about his contracts and his immigration status and how to get what he wants.
- etc. etc. i could go on
ilya demands high levels of performance from people as a captain and as a lover and can be very hard to please. locker room: you fuckers each owe me 3,000$//cottage couch vacuum blowie. in hockey/sex, his intense drive and agitator antics mean, if anything, he is aware of mess and how to cultivate the illusion of it or take advantage of it.
shane and ilya do not have to be the opposites in everything. in fact, they are very similar in many, many ways.
i think people are overly invested in false dichotomies in life. they want a binary system to help them actualize how things are in opposite to something else, not as the thing exists. because that is fundamentally less labor, to just say. oh thing 1 vs thing 2. but these are illusory, reductive dichotomies: male is not the opposite of female, curly hair is not the opposite of straight, blue eyes are not the opposite of brown. etc.
so how i think this 1 vs 2 seeking philosophy presents itself in fandom is that have one character who performs at just the same level as another and doesn't show signs of being particularly messy in any way getting labelled as messy/unorganized, simply because the other character has been labelled as neat/meticulous.
also specifically i wonder if ilya's slyness and meanness is just twisted into being messy in an attempt to soften it or reduce it to something cutesy that shane can take care of as an attempt to ""power balance"" their D/s.
--
send me a 🌻 and ill just tell you whatever the fuck i want 🤗🌈
In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.
I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!
From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!
I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.
Edit: Yes, this also works on mobile!
The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.
(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)
If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.
The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.
insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box
add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box
delete -> self explanatory
on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic
The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.
Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.
Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
Had been thinking about this post (which is a fake excerpt from an imaginary narrative written to mock 'tumblr prose'), and how most "no actually this is good" comments are highlighting how the construction of individual sentences is interesting, how some of the language is evocative, how it Goes Hard. Because that post is written badly in a very thoughtful manner that focuses on core structural issues rather than going for low hanging fruit of poor technical proficiency with the written word, it is not bad in the most "obvious" of ways. So I think this is a legit learning opportunity, but also I don't want to dunk on anyone so instead I will just preach to the choir of My Followers.
But yeah like to be more constructive than just going "lol tumblr prose bad", really the issue in Large part that characterizes "tumblr prose" (which to be clear I don't think is a discrete thing and at most is a combination of several writing tendencies influenced by the medium of Online) comes down to the lack of real contrast in Any aspect of narrative construction, and an obsession with being quotable and constantly being at 100% of Going Hard (which go hand in hand).
In that post, the character voice is indistinct from that of the narration, and the characters quote one-liners that look Meaningful as excerpts and are borderline nonsensical as dialogue. There is no more than the faintest, most generic hints of characterization; these people exist as vague concepts to say deep words for the reader. The sentence length has little variation from its staccato beat, and so it is awkward to read and fails to complement the action or accomplish anything with the pacing (save for the slight slowdown when the torturer feels all that damp animal electricity). The timing is awkward and exaggeratedly dramatic. The description is a flowery kind of tryhard visceral and seems avoidant of describing anything too directly ("something dark and arterial" where there's nothing being accomplished by conveying uncertainty about what is currently gushing out of the injured character and the simple use of "blood splashed across the stones" would actually be 10x more effective), in a way that does disservice to what is supposed to be a torture scene, and leaves it weightless and ungrounded. In fairness to the people saying "this is good", that is MUCH easier to say when reading this fake excerpt as the standalone piece it actually is, but this kind of writing Cannot function in an actual narrative and is not what an excerpt from well constructed narrative fiction is going to look like basically ever.
It reflects a lot of very typical amateur writing issues that just about everyone has to grow out of (the minimal diversity in sentence length, simulated non-attention to scene pacing and timing), and issues common to fanfiction-influenced writing on social media (allergy to paragraph lengths of more than two sentences, little to no description of the characters or setting because, in fanfiction, the reader already knows their physical characteristics and mannerisms and it doesn't need to be lingered upon, Unlike In Original Fiction). But this particularly hits on an issue I think is semi-unique to narrative writing in the social media milieu, which is a focus on being quotable. This may not even be a conscious impulse at all But It's There. This kinda apparent terror of any moment not being as beautiful and hard hitting as possible (or for comedy, any moment not being A Joke). Everything "Goes Hard", so nothing actually does. A lot of "tumblr prose" type writing is less a narrative, more a string of quotes loosely assembled into narrative that vaguely gestures at things like Plot and Character. It substitutes depth for Suggestions of depth by utilizing stock symbolism without building it into the narrative, and by gesturing at weighty contexts without actually engaging with them. There can be little contrast or effective use of tone, pace, description when your story is a series of Hard Hitting Quotes.
I'm reading Watership Down right now and I think it's a great novel overall and can work as an example of how important it is to utilize contrast in your writing.
This segment is the lengthy first description of the titular down, which the rabbits are now encountering for the first time:
Adams is slowing the pace here to introduce us to the setting of the next segment of the book. The average sentence length is very long and keeps us lingering in the sensory detail, while still varied and thus smoothly readable. This new place is introduced by simultaneously conveying its physical description in vivid detail and conveying its feeling and character, and getting the most out of every described feature to do so. The thorn trees are "wind stunted". The air is "scented". The language takes on a very flowery character and heavily utilizes simile and metaphor. Woodland is "tumultuous with evening", sunlight filters through grass "like a wind" to the small creatures below, in contrast to laying "like a gold rind" on the hill when seen from a distance. This grandiose description is heavily functional and conveys both exhaustive physical detail and a feeling that this place is beautiful, awe inspiring to something like a rabbit, and full of life, though not without quiet hints of danger. It hits because Not Everything In The Book Is Described This Way. It means something that we're lingering like this and stopping to get a sense of this place on every possible level, and moving away from more direct, simple prose to convey the feeling of the place in depth.
This segment describes the rabbit Bigwig being found caught in a snare:
The prose here here has the opposite approach of the first excerpt. The language is concise, direct, and brutal. It only veers slightly away from the literal to describe Bigwig's voice as 'bubbling out' from his mouth, both conveying that the saliva and blood in his mouth is literally bubbling as he speaks, and implying the unsettling way his voice sounds as he's being strangled. The sentences are much shorter on the whole, as fit for the pacing of a tense and rapidly changing scene, and the timing closely complements the action - "There was a pause" not only conveys That There Was A Pause but interrupts the rhythm of this segment; the moment of uneasy stillness is echoed in the act of reading itself.
The scene this is excerpted from is extremely effective and does in fact Go Hard, it's well constructed in of itself but its effectiveness mostly lies in its place in the narrative. It's the culmination of a long, tense buildup as the reader becomes more aware that something is deeply Wrong about the place the rabbits are in, and the payoff is effective in being blunt and visceral, which hits because Not Everything In The Book Is Described This Way. Nothing about these excerpts are particularly quotable because that is actually not what good narrative writing is about.
Using a Reverse Outline to Understand Your First Draft’s Structure Before Editing
I've been using versions of this tool for years, for both my own self-editing and when I work as a developmental editor for clients. Now I'd like to share a template and a hopefully not-too-long explanation of ways you can work with it!
First off: congratulations on finishing a draft of your story! Now, as you get ready to revise it into a second, improved draft, it helps to see what the story is currently shaped like. Even if you aren’t a “planner” who outlines stories before writing them, you can benefit from a reverse outline after completing the story. It's lower-pressure and often easier than a planning outline because you just need to describe what you’ve already written. In fact, writing about your story can be pretty fun! And it will give you a sense of direction and increased confidence as you begin editing.
A reverse outline can be as simple or as detailed as you like. I’m going to give directions (and a sample file) for a fairly detailed one, which you can use as-is if it works for you, or adapt to be simpler, or adapt to include additional elements if that’s better for your process.
Here's the link to the reverse outline template in Drive. I've filled out the first few rows with example information from one of my own stories. Please go ahead and make a copy for your own use! One tip: under the "View" tab, there's an option to "Freeze" columns or rows so they move with you as you scroll in the file. I've already frozen the top row; you may also want to freeze columns A and B for ease of reference when you scroll horizontally. There are quite a few columns, and you don’t need to use all of them at once—different elements are more relevant to different writers and in different stories. In the rest of this post, I’ll explain what each column can do for you.
(The second tab of the file includes a sample reverse outline for nonfiction, with examples from a book of advice on editing that I'm writing at the moment and which this post may become a chapter in. Exactly what columns you’ll want in a nonfiction reverse outline will depend on your overall structure. Narrative nonfiction and memoir use similar techniques as fiction and could benefit from the standard reverse outline.)
Column A: Chapter number and title, scene
Some writers make their reverse outlines chapter-by-chapter, but since each chapter can include multiple scenes, and each scene deserves TLC, let’s give each scene a row.
(My reverse outline sample is for one of my short story collections, so I've given the title of the short story instead of a chapter number. Again, the template is adaptable!)
Among other benefits, filling out this column shows if you've acquired two Chapter 20s by accident. Or if you've given some chapters too-similar titles. Or if one chapter has way more scenes, or way fewer, than any other—which isn’t necessarily a problem, just something to observe right now.
While I’m giving advice: using the “Heading” style to mark your chapter titles/numbers makes it easier to find things your manuscript. Headings get their own space in the Navigation toolbar that comes up when you hit “Control + F” in Microsoft Word or click the “Document Tabs” option in Google Drive.
Column B: Action summary
Write about what happens in the scene. How much detail to include depends on your personal taste and memory. You don’t want to crowd the box with information or take a very long time at this. But it can be useful to spell out not just what happens, but some of why it happens and what results. This helps you follow the chain of logic and spot where links might be weak or missing.
A quick example of how an action summary can include cause and effect: “Overhearing Jason’s phone call, Miranda begins to suspect he was involved in the murder. She confronts him, he denies everything, and he leaves the house and doesn’t come back that night.” If you feel comfortable with shorter action summaries, you might just write this as “Miranda confronts Jason about the murder. He leaves.”
If you're going to write a synopsis to query this novel to literary agents or publishers, the reverse outline can help you get started. (I made my first reverse outlines for synopsis-writing purposes, before adapting them for other uses as both a writer and a freelance editor.) It accomplishes the major step of turning a novel into a few pages. You’ll still need to edit those few pages into something shorter and smoother, and I'd write the actual synopsis after you've given the book a structural edit, since elements of the plot may change in the process!
Speaking of summary, if the action in the story draft is told in narrative summary rather than shown as it happens, it’s often helpful to make a note of this. Summary has its uses: it can convey a lot to the reader quickly and it adds variety to pacing. Whether you have too much narrative summary or too little is something to consider once you have the outline filled out.
Column C: Scene wordcount
Use words, not number of pages, because the same amount of words can fit on more or fewer pages with different formatting. In publishing and professional editing, there’s still the convention that 1 page = 250 words, but in my experience, 12-point Times New Roman font that’s double spaced often fits 300+ words onto a page.
Column D: Cumulative wordcount
I’ve entered a formula here to sum up column C to the current row. This gives you a sense of when each scene takes place on the scale of the story, and also how your pacing is. (You can click the corner of a cell and drag it down to extend the formula as you add more scenes.)
That's the simplest version.
If you just want to fill in the first three columns and let the formula fill out the fourth for you, that gives you a one-sheet "map" of your story that can make the full manuscript easier to navigate, and it can be sufficient to get started on evaluating your story. But you’re missing half the fun.
Column E: POV character
To avoid both reader and writer confusion, I recommend sticking to one POV per scene. Some editors and publishers insist on it. But if you want to risk omniscient POV, that can go here too.
This column reveals when POV changes and whose perspective we spend the most time in. In one story I’m working on, I've added notes in this column about alternative POVs I could narrate the scene from, if I decide to change things up in the second draft. You don’t need to divide POV equally among all your characters, even if you have multiple protagonists. However, if one POV evaporates from the story partway through, or one takes over a long stretch of chapters, it’s good to spot this. And readers may be distracted if you have one or two scenes that make atypical POV choices without clear reason.
Columns F and G: Location; Date and time
These may help you catch continuity errors, like if a character returns home from the same trip twice, a minor character is in two places at once, or a particular evening in August winds up way too busy.
Column G is especially helpful for stories that span a long time—or a very short time. Even if you don’t have exact dates, a note such as “three days after the previous scene” can help avoid logistical tangles. (When timeline is especially important to a story, some writers fill out a virtual or physical calendar with their story events. You can often get print calendars for the previous year cheaply at an office supply or stationary store in January/February.)
If your story takes place in a single location or timeline is not a big concern, you don’t need to use these columns—this reverse outline is always customizable!
Column H: Plot and subplots advanced
There’s a lot going on in a story, and often a lot going on at the same time. This column lets you track where and when different plotlines are developed. You may find it useful to label your plots and subplots with categories like “External” (dealing with the world around the protagonist), “Internal" (psychological change that drives character arcs), or “Interpersonal” (rivalry, romance, and more).
Column I: Conflict of the scene and character desires
Conflict doesn’t have to be violent or flashy. But stories generally include a goal and some friction that prevents the goal from being met. In this way, desire and conflict are often closely connected.
If nobody wanted things to change, there wouldn’t be much to write a story about. If everyone immediately got the change they desire, the story would be very short. Adding friction will make events feel more realistic and engaging to readers. Conflict creates suspense: if there are opposing forces, we can’t predict who will win (or how they’ll manage to win, even if we trust the story will end well for a character). Conflict also lets you explore multiple sides of a situation or theme.
Depending on how you fill out the action summary in Column B, you might cover much of this information there. But I suggest filling out Column I for at least a few scenes to get the hang of evaluating conflict and motivation. If these are missing, a scene can feel directionless and emotionally flat.
Splitting information across multiple columns can also prevent any one part of the outline from getting too swollen. Especially if you write long or action-packed scenes, you may find yourself writing a lot in each cell. A few solutions: one, you may prioritize only the most significant developments of each scene. You can always come back and add more information later. Two, you may realize a scene would work better as two shorter or simpler scenes. (Though don't do this just because it's busy in the outline: consider how the scene itself reads in the story.) Three, you may adapt the outline to give each scene multiple rows evaluating different elements. Just put the wordcount in column C as 0 for the added rows, and it won’t mess up the cumulative wordcount formula (I've given an example in the template).
If the protagonist does get what they want, you’ve either reached the happy ending of the story (or at least a subplot) or you need to give them something else to want, another itch to satisfy. Maybe solving one problem makes them realize there’s an additional problem. Or it’s a question of short-term vs long-term goals: Frodo has made it to Rivendell, but then he takes on the new goal of reaching Mordor.
Column J: Reader emotional response
One reason we write stories is because we want to make people feel things. Here’s where you can talk about what you want the reader to feel. This gives you ideas for what to punch up and enhance in revisions. If you want them to be sad, what is the line they’ll start crying on?If you want them to be hopeful, what should they hope for and why will they feel hope that it will happen?
You may update this column after getting beta reader feedback on an early draft (but not a first draft—the first draft is for you): where and how did your beta react? Was it the way you hoped for, or were there surprises? You could even ask your beta reader to fill out a version of this chart.
Column K: Questions raised or intensified
A powerful emotion to draw readers in is curiosity. And every story will involve some exposition and explanation as we learn about the characters, the setting, and the plotline. Some writers use the term Dramatic Question or Narrative Question to refer to the single biggest and most crucial question that keeps the story going. Once that single question is answered, the story wraps up. Others use the term Story Questions for the various mysteries on different scales that keep readers turning pages—and not just in mystery novels. Whatever you call them, you can track in this column the questions you expect readers to ask with each scene.
In general, when a question is answered, a new, larger or more intense one should take its place. Or the answer to a still-lingering question becomes more urgent. By the end of the story, the majority of questions are answered. You may include a sequel hook, and writers often leave some small, tantalizing details open-ended to make a story feel more realistic, more vivid, or more haunting—or because we don’t have space to chase down every loose end. But if your biggest questions aren’t resolved, the story doesn’t feel over.
I find story questions hugely exciting because curiosity is what most often sucks me in as a reader. But a story isn’t just an intellectual exercise. It’s fatal if a reader ever decides, “I don’t care about learning the answer to this question.” Make sure your other columns are providing reasons for readers to care (especially column J).
You don't want this column to be empty. But you may not want it to get too full, either. It’s possible to draw out a question for too long, leaving readers confused or frustrated. It’s also possible to raise too many questions to easily keep track of. If they’re asking too much and learning too little, some readers might give up on ever finding answers. So be sure to consider both new questions and the weight of the questions already hanging over the readers' (and characters') heads.
As for where to track the answers, it’s dealer’s choice—you could put them in this column, or the answers might be described as part of the action summary or another column. Use this outline in a way that matches how you think, since it's organizing your story.
This is another column it can be useful to ask your beta readers to fill out (or "What questions do you have at the end of this chapter?" could be something to ask them in another format.) You may be surprised by what piques your readers' curiosity!
To reiterate, the mysteries that draw a reader to the next page or chapter—or sentence—don't have to be big. Jack Hart’s guide to narrative nonfiction, Storycraft, provides two excellent examples of opening lines with tiny mysteries that hook you. Joan Didion begins a piece with “Imagine Banyan Street first, because Banyan Street is where it happened.” Right away we wonder: what is “it”? And where is Banyan Street? The second example was written by Spencer Heinz in the Oregonian: “Pat Yost was in bed when she heard the sound.” Most readers will give Heinz’s next few sentences their attention to learn what the sound was, and Yost’s vulnerability makes the question feel urgent. You can get a bit too obviously manipulative with tiny questions (so that the reader asks “For crying out loud, what is it now?”), but it’s a useful technique to keep in mind.
The other beauty of these questions is that they can make the need for exposition work for you. Rather than being bored to tears by an infodump, the reader is intrigued by hints and glimpses, then satisfied to receive more context and explanation.
Column L: New characters and concepts introduced
This column can help you pace your exposition and introductions. (It overlaps with the previous column, but different writers find different angles helpful for analyzing a story, so I’ve included both. You may not fill out this column for every chapter, especially shorter chapters or chapters later in the story.) Tracking this can prevent you from introducing the same person in two different scenes. It also reveals opportunities to energize any doldrums in the middle of your story by adding a new idea.
Column M: Notes (and whatever else you desire)
I use this column to make revision suggestions to myself. You can also use it to track elements you find important but which don’t fit in other columns. Again, please feel free to add more columns and delete ones that aren’t a priority for this story or your process!
Mystery writers may want a column to keep track of where clues or red herrings appear. Romance novelists may want to track beats. A kinky romance novelist may want to keep track of which toys the characters use in which sex scene. Other writers may want to track what Robert McKee calls the “value charge,” measuring how much closer to or farther from their goal a character has moved.
Using the Outline
You don't have to fill out the entire spreadsheet in one sitting. You might do a few chapters/scenes at a time. You might get one or two columns completely filled out in one go (I do columns A and C together) but take time to do the rest. Some columns may never get entirely filled out. My tip is to try every column to start with, because you never know what will make something click for you. It’s better to fill out half the columns than none.
Some authors create reverse outlines as they write the first draft. After completing each chapter, they end their writing session by filling out a row with a summary of what they’ve just written. This has the benefit of your memory being fresher, and if it sounds like it’d work for you, please try it! It may help you spot issues early and course correct. However, some authors find too much analysis paralyzing in the first draft stage. Personally, I find it easier and fun to do my outline at the end, in a sugar rush of triumphant celebration at finishing a story. I write it up, stand back dusting my hands, and go “Well, what do we have here?”
And what do we have here?
Things a reverse outline can reveal:
Where does your climax—the peak of suspense, intensity, and emotion—happen in the story? How close to the end? How do you build up to it and climb back down? Are there mini-climaxes earlier in the story to keep readers engaged? Your main plot will have a climax, and so will your subplots and your character arcs. These may be located in different places, or they may all climax together. (Stop snickering, you in the back!)
What’s left unresolved at the end of the book? (For traditional publication, you’ll have the best luck if your first book is a “standalone,” though it may have opportunities for a sequel if it sells well. You might think self-publishing is more forgiving, but in fact, readers may greet a cliffhanger ending with bad reviews if they feel you’re trying to trap them into buying more books for unclear payoff. They may even return the book and demand a refund. However, in both traditional and self-publishing, books later in a series may end in cliffhangers once the author has won readers’ trust by finishing earlier stories in a satisfying way.)
How do the character arcs develop? Anything important enough to write a story about will probably change a person—how are each character’s actions and desires different at the end of the story than they were at the beginning?
How long are questions left unanswered or conflicts left unresolved? You generally want these to last for at least a few chapters to let suspense grow and keep the story flowing. (The author Benjamin Percy, in Thrill Me, speaks of his failed early novels: “I treated chapters like short stories, introducing and resolving trouble in fifteen pages. The containment, the stand-aloneness of my chapters, gave my books a stop-start quality that destroyed any sense of momentum.”) At the same time, each scene should make a little progress, whether positive or negative. It will end with the character a little better off or worse off (or better in some ways, worse in others) than they were before.
Friction, tension, conflict, and struggle make a story richer and more vivid. Even for small and simple goals, let the readers and characters yearn just a bit before you give them what they want. Make sure your payoffs each have setup.
Do you have scenes without action? Or where the action is all internal rather than external: does your protagonist sit around thinking until they change their mind about something? This isn’t fatal—I’ve done it myself on occasion. But try not to make these static scenes too frequent (and internal action is better than no action at all: beware scenes that are pure exposition).
Do you have scenes that are overgrown transitions, moving characters from Point A to Point B? In particular, you have an overgrown transition rather than a proper scene when there aren’t enough questions, conflict, stakes, urgency, or emotional engagement. Make your story more vivid by fleshing out these transitions or removing them (a transition can often become a paragraph or sentence at the beginning of the next scene).
Do any significant events happen off-page or between scenes? Would it be clearer or more impactful for readers if they happen on-page?
Do you spend a lot of wordcount introducing a particular character, setting, or detail that doesn’t go on to play a significant role in the story? Be wary of one-offs: characters, POVs, locations, and apparent subplots that only appear once may be a sign you should develop them further—or take them out entirely. Not always! But make sure it’s clear to readers why you break your story’s pattern. Sometimes, an author will give a character one flashback scene to share backstory. However interesting the backstory, be sure the events of that flashback are relevant to their present-day storyline!
How does each scene fit into to the larger story? How do the subplots connect to each other? If something doesn’t connect, does it belong? Can you flesh it out and connect it more? (Whether you connect it more tightly or delete it often depends on if your story is longer or shorter than you want it to be—see next section.)
You can color-code rows by subplot if that makes things easier for you. The reverse outline can become a very visual document, helping you see things it’s harder to find in a manuscript of text.
Look at scenes that only advance a single plot or subplot, and see how strong they are in the other columns. One way to punch up a sagging scene is to combine it with a second scene and do two things at once. Maybe the scene in which Miranda overhears Jason’s suspicious phone call is also the scene where she reels from the revelation that she’s about to be fired from her dream job (which she learned in the previous chapter). As our friend writing at the Cincinnati Enquirer in February 1947 said, “Life is just one damn thing after another, is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.”
Do tensions and stakes rise over the course of the story? This is often phrased as “things have to get worse and worse for your characters,” but that isn’t the only option. Giving your characters an occasional “break” provides hope, which, for you literary sadists, gives characters more to lose when things get worse again. Hope raises the stakes. And building a character up lets you continue a story for longer because it gives them farther to fall. The occasional achievement can give your character new abilities and resources to make future scenes exciting. Also, alternating hope with loss or disappointment creates a variety in tone and texture; most readers find variety welcome. (This also means you should beware of too many scenes of unmitigated success, even if your story's tone is one of cozy wish fulfillment.) In some genres, both your character and your audience may need occasional injections of hope to be motivated to see the story through. There are exceptions—a short horror novel may be nothing but things getting worse—but overall, don’t worry that you’re failing at suspenseful storytelling if your characters are sometimes happy! But there still should be something missing, an unanswered question, an unachieved goal, or an unresolved risk that keeps the story going. And generally, these risks, goals, questions, and unfulfilled desires should get bigger as the story goes on.
How's the length of your story?
Some writers end up with first drafts way longer than they want. Some wind up with first drafts that are too short. For some authors, each story causes them wordcount-related stress in a different way. And in every manuscript, whatever its overall length, some scenes will go on a bit longer than they need to, while several character details and plot threads will tantalize with their ability to be developed further.
Too long/too short is also a question of the audience you’re writing for. Young adult novels tend to be shorter than adult historical epics. If you’re writing fiction to publish in magazines paying pro rates, you'll often have a better short with a 4,000-word short story than a 9,000-word novelette. And if you don’t intend to write a novella (I love them, but they can be tricky to sell), then a 40,000-word “novel” probably needs more development.
If your story or scene is too long, either:
Too much is happening
You’re giving too many details about what’s happening
(It may be both at once, of course.)
You’ll want to make changes in that order: first, decide what needs to happen in the story. As I advised earlier, making some of it happen simultaneously can reduce the number of scenes and make each scene more intense. But upon consideration, and with the help of your reverse outline, you may find one or two excess subplots. Save them for a different story.
Once you’ve reduced your number of scenes, if you’re still longer than you want, look at each scene and tighten paragraphs and lines. But that fine-tuning is something to work on later, in the line-editing rather than organization or structural edit (what I'm calling the second draft in this post, and which we editors also call developmental editing).
If your story is too short, either:
Not enough is happening
You’re not giving enough details about what is happening
Should you add a subplot, or draw out a subplot you currently have? Do the characters’ problems get resolved too quickly? Have you raised enough narrative questions? Given enough answers? Is the conflict strong enough and are the stakes high enough? Have you shown how high the stakes are? Look at where you’ve used narrative summary. Would any of this be more interesting or dramatic as a scene? Are there sentences you could expand to paragraphs, or paragraphs into chapters? Don’t pad the story, but flesh it out.
You may want to do more research, especially if you put research aside to complete your first draft (which you've done—congratulations!) Learning about your characters’ jobs, the world they inhabit, and processes within it can open up lots of avenues, many of which you wouldn’t have predicted.
Or you may write short because you know so much about the story. You’ve been developing this magic system since you were in high school, so you don’t realize how weird and wondrous it is to your readers and how much they’d enjoy a (vivid, active, non-lecture) tour of it. Now’s the time to add some more scenes of your protagonist learning to use magic! Or, switching genres, a mystery writer may have meticulously planned the crime—but they need to add enough description that the reader can follow the logistics.
The emotions of revision
Personally, I think adding more scenes and details is great fun. You get to write fanfiction of your first draft—and publish it! However, expanding a story can take time and requires you to keep track of what you’re doing. The record in the reverse outline will help with that.
Cutting scenes, plot threads, characters, and even favorite sentences can be melancholy. I encourage writers to save what they cut in case it can fit in a future story—even if it doesn’t, this feels less like a final execution. However, sometimes cutting something is a relief. You’ve had a feeling that element wasn’t working out, and now you can let it go.
Some writers may get a little too eager to cut. It might seem like the easy way out, but if you delete everything that causes you trouble, the story will get smaller and smaller, and it might wind up less interesting as a result. You’re also depriving yourself of the chance to stretch your creativity and try new things. (Mary Oliver in A Poetry Handbook warns that “deletion teaches nothing.”) It’s a judgment call: does this troublesome bit have enough potential that it’s worth rescuing through revision? Try sleeping on it in case your subconscious offers a new solution you hadn’t expected. If that doesn’t pan out, you can always save the idea to try again in a different story. As Matthew Salesses says in Craft in the Real World, “Some encouragement (hopefully)! The bulk of successful writing is in the fact that you have an endless number of tries. Persistence is key.”
To wrap up, a few more uses of reverse outlining:
Reread your story in light of the outline. Going between the outline and each scene, consider this question: does your outline describe what’s actually on the page or what you intended to write? If your outline is more wishful than actual, that's still progress: it's helped you express your intentions, which is a step that brings them closer to reality. Now the reverse outline has become a planning outline for your next draft.
Similarly, some authors find it tricky to revise existing scenes. Instead, they write the second draft more or less from scratch in a new file. They trust their memory to give them back the best parts of the stroy and to drop or rework what wasn’t succeeding. If you want to use this approach but still need some guidance, the reverse outline can be made into a new outline.
You can reverse outline other people’s books! It's fun and insightful to examine how a favorite author works on a scene-by-scene level. Heck, it can also give insight into how an author you can’t stand, but who is undeservedly successful, works on a scene-by-scene level. Maybe you can learn from their success after all.
Again, here’s the reverse outline template in Google Sheets, with an example from one of my own stories filling out the first few rows. Make a copy and make it yours!
i’m going to hold your hand when i say this. rachel reid has demonstrated such a degree of carelessness when it comes to shane’s relationship with his race that it’s okay to disregard the text when analyzing shane’s experiences with racism
my cat is completely obsessed with watching the bathroom sink drain and I have started calling this "her shows." as in when I'm in the bathroom and she meows and runs up I'll be like "oh you want to watch your shows?" and run the faucet for an extra few seconds so it fills a little. she will then sit there at the edge of the sink for ages totally entraptured by the drain. blorbo from her sink
