Talking about outlining with memes got me wondering - how do you like outlining and planning? Do you have a system? Does it vary story to story? Inquiring minds want to know! :-)
hello! thank you for the ask!
ok so if you head to this post you can hear about my outlining process on Hurricane (and I haven't written another outline for it since, so that holds)
this is what I have done for Dragonsong:
I think of it as "instructions to future me", otherwise known as "telling" the story with no showing. the length/proportions vary, but for example this:
Late the next morning, they’re all upright enough to eat around the building’s ground floor table where Aurelia and Jasper usually eat and cook etc. They’re all still on the tired side, to be fair, but they’re upright and eating. Cole is having some difficulty, but he’s still also upright, and he’s being helped.
became this:
Some of the exhaustion was gone from her. The others, too, seemed to be feeling better. They all managed to stagger down to the ground floor room where Aurelia and Jasper usually cooked and ate. None of them were in shape to fight anything, although Isi might have managed a very sluggish capybara.
As was to be expected, Cole was having some difficulties, but he was nonetheless upright and eating with some help, and Isi was glad of it. The food was hardly interesting, since Jasper didn’t usually have to cook for eight, but Isi was too hungry to care. Silence fell around the table as they ate instead of talking.
or this:
When Isi comes to, she’s in a room. And very confused. She sits up, which makes her head spin, and someone tells her to take it easy. She wants to know where she is; the voice (whose owner she can’t see yet) explains that she (and Jasper) heard the explosion and went to investigate. They found Sierra the only person upright and conscious, and even she looked the worse for wear, and brought them all in. So all of Isi’s friends are here too.
Sierra was not super keen on this but didn’t have much other choice.
Isi still wants to know where she is and who’s speaking. It turns out they’re in a town right near where they brought down the barrier spell, and she’s speaking with one of the town’s resident knights — a pretty recent posting in fact, who reveals she knows Isi (and calls her Tor Isadora). She’s on the small slight side, with pale blonde hair tied up in a bun, and introduces herself as Aurelia. (Does she have any kind of nickname?)
became this:
Isi opened her eyes to be greeted by a dark wood ceiling. She was in a room of some sort, lying in a… bed? This wasn’t where she’d been last she checked. What?
She sat up abruptly. Bedcovers slid off her. Her head spun.
“Be careful,” said a soft voice to her left.
The room was too dark to see the owner of the voice. Isi frowned. “Where am I?”
“Jasper and I heard the explosion and went to investigate. We found you and your friends and brought you back here.” The speaker paused, then continued, “Your friends are down the hall.”
The sheets under her fingers felt oddly familiar. Isi bunched the material into her hands. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“This is the birdhouse and knights’ quarters,” the voice continued.
Knights’ quarters. That was why something felt familiar. A match flared, then a wick. Isi flinched at the sudden brightness and shut her eyes. Slowly, she opened one eye, then the other.
Golden light now spread through the room, enough to see the speaker by. She was small and slight—if Isi had to guess, she would barely come up to her shoulder—with pale blonde hair tied into a bun. “I’m Tor Aurelia.” She smiled nervously. “And you’re Tor Isadora.”
my outline involves me talking to myself and being very casual. it often doesn't involve a lot of dialogue (unless I come up with a particularly top tier line), just the gist of the conversation. it depends on the scene and how clear an idea I have, but I will try and get some kind of thing down for every single scene. at minimum, a paragraph describing what goes down. some other sections get very long.
I also like to use a dashed list to add extra information that's kind of notes to myself that isn't quite relevant to write into the scene itself, but is important to know. (or stuff I don't know where to put)
in terms of process... I usually start with an inciting incident/concept and a handful of characters. for Dragonsong, it was the idea of a female knight choosing not to kill a baby dragon, and came with Isi, Robin and Enya. (not named, just concepts)
then I worked out Act 1 (up to Isi quitting her job), then kinda figured out the end... and then it was a mixture of worldbuilding and outlining, out of order, from there until I had everything I felt I needed!
(and now as I write I am creeping up on the climax... but battle plans are hard)