1/4 Feel free to ignore this if you want. I'm just wondering if I could ask you something of a bit of advice? I'm doing an online college course, and I've been doing fairly good at it but I've kind of hit a slump. I've got to do an assessment and it's to write a chapter-by-chapter outline of a storybook for either children or teenagers, and it has to be two pages or less. I don't normally write outlines for my things, so that's hard enough as it is for me, but the less than 2 pages thing
2/4 is absolutely KILLING me. Since I can't write outlines before writing the book, i was doing an outline of a book I've already written and is sitting quietly on my computer, but it is incredibly hard to condense 30-40 chapters down to 2 pages. So I was going to try a kids book, because I have a plot for that rattling around in my brain but the more I develop it, the more... not kid like it becomes? I don't even know how to write for kids. It's kinda a superhero novel thing? and even so,
3/4 it'd probably beat the 2 page limit anyway. My mother suggested coming up with an outline for a story that I don't even have to write, which seems like a pretty solid plan - except... i still can't do outlines before writing it. Which I know is just stupid, but when I try I just stare at a blank page for like, until I get bored. And I should have had this done months ago, but a lot of stuff happened in my life which pushed this far to the side, and my finish date for the course is coming up
4/4 in a few months (june or july I think) and I still have one more assessment after this one to do. oh and it has to be double spaced so it knocks my actual writing space practically in half. So yeah. Any advice you have would be utterly helpful, but like I said, feel free to ignore this. <3 <3 Sorry this got longer than I meant, but like I said, everything I write gets longer xD thanks :3
Alright. I don’t know how much I can help, but I’ll give it a shot.
I have a similar problem to you, not so much with having troubles with outlines, but in that everything I do has the potential and habit of ballooning into a bigger and bigger monster from its humble beginnings.
The thing is, nearly anything, as an event, can be boiled down to increasingly simplistic descriptions. So what I’d recommend is taking whatever story you have that has the smallest number of chapters, just hacking it to a toothpick.
For example, if I was making a reverse outline out of Looking Glass in this fashion, my starting point is:
Prologue - Lavellan goes back in time.
Chapter One - Lavellan wakes up in the past. Meets Mythal and Pride.
Chapter Two - Lavellan bonds with Pride and some spirits.
Chapter Three - An earthquake strikes. A council is called to discuss it.
Chapter Four - Lavellan attends the council.
And so on and so forth. Break it down as bare bones as you possibly can. Then, if you have space left, you can flesh things out a bit more. So like maybe the prologue’s description goes from ‘Lavellan goes back in time’ to ‘Lavellan’s world is destroyed by her lover, who sends her back in time, and dies’. But the thing that’s actually the crucial event of the chapter is Lavellan going back in time. Chapter Three has two defining events, but most only have one. Even though we meet Haninan in chapter four, and he’s very important to the story, I can still lift him right the hell out for this, and then throw him back in if I find I have room for him later.
With an outline, it’s important to remember that you’re not telling the story. You’re pinning down goals you need to accomplish in order to tell the story. You can leave vital information out of an outline, because it’s basically a skeleton. Skeletons can’t walk around without either living muscle tissue or necromancy to get them going. They just lie there like a bunch of useless bones, even though nobody does great without bones, either, so they’re not actually useless.
...I think my point might have gotten away from me there, but in essence, simplicity is your friend. If you’re having troubles breaking down your chapters, break them down as far as you can, and then take a solid look at what you’ve got left and just get vicious about things. You’re in escape pod, and there’s only enough air left for one or two of these events, and you’ve gotta decide who to throw out of the airlock so that the rest can live.
