hi! ive been following you awhile, i really admire your meticulous approach tontracking your own progress! it makes me wanna try writing again! (got any general tips for planning a story btw? you mentioned doing that in ur progress notes so im curious ab how that works)
hi!! omg it makes me so happy that my posts make you want to write. 🥺 you should totally go for it!
as for advice on planning stories... i can definitely share some of my own methods although, i think it really depends on the project and what your writing/planning style is like.
i consider myself to be a "plantser"—that is, somewhere between a "planner" (someone who plans out their stories meticulously before writing them) and a "pantser" (someone who delves right into drafting a story without planning it). i like to have some general idea of where the story is going, but my brain doesn't work well with trying to use a particular structure/formula.
so, i'm more of an exploratory writer and my planning methods are a bit all over the place, but to share some of my own process:
i usually start with what i call the "braindump" where i open a document and just write down every single idea i have for the story so far. it doesn't have to be in any particular order or be properly punctuated or anything lol, it basically is a stream of consciousness. i will usually go back to this every once in a while for at least a few months until an actual story starts to emerge out of it.
when i reach that phase where i feel like an actual story is forming in my brain, i create either a separate section or separate document which i often call "the actually coherent outline" or something along those lines 😂 here is where i start to plot out the story in the order it actually happens. however, this isn't to say i know every single thing that happens in the story. i essentially write out a list of bullet points of scenes in chronological order, but there may be gaps where i just put in something in brackets like "[i'm not sure what happens here]" lol.
i'm a fan of "zero drafting" by which i mean, basically drafting out whole scenes but in an extremely rough form. so especially for important scenes and/or ones i'm most excited about, i tend to flesh those out more and outline them beat-by-beat and write down specific lines of dialogue i want to include and so forth. keep in mind these are still not even properly punctuated or formatted or anything; it's just vomiting the scene onto the page in its rawest form before i lose momentum or inspiration lol.
sooo basically my outlines end up being a messy hodgepodge of ideas, lists of events, and zero-drafted "scenes." 😅 i can't say that this will work for every writer's brain but it works (??) for me haha.
if you like craft books and/or are looking for additional resources:
if you're like me and prefer a more exploratory approach, then refuse to be done by matt bell and 2,000 to 10,000 by rachel aaron are both books i found to be really helpful and motivational.
if you think a more structured approach than what i described above would work better for you, save the cat! writes a novel by jessica brody may be a good place to start (or just look up the "save the cat" method, there are a ton of beat sheets out there). story genius by lisa cron is another popular one that has a method for building your story around your protagonist, so this may also be helpful if you're interested in doing more character work + writing character-driven stories.
hopefully this helps! 💖