Title: Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way To Success
Author: K.M. Weiland
Pages: 191
Published: 2011
by PenForASword Publishing
Summary: Writers often look upon outlines with fear and trembling. But when properly understood and correctly wielded, the outline is one of the most powerful weapons in a writer’s arsenal. Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success will:
Help you choose the right type of outline for you
Guide you in brainstorming plot ideas
Aid you in discovering your characters
Show you how to structure your scenes
Explain how to format your finished outline
Instruct you in how to use your outline
Reveal the benefits:
Ensures cohesion and balance
Prevents dead-end ideas
Provides foreshadowing
Offers assurance and motivation
Dispel misconceptions:
Requires formal formatting
Limits creativity
Robs the joy of discovery
Takes too much time
Even if you're certain outlining isn't for you, the book offers all kinds of important tips on plot, structure, and character. Includes exclusive interviews with Larry Brooks, Elizabeth Spann Craig, Lisa Grace, Dan L. Hays, Jody Hedlund, Carolyn Kaufman, Becky Levine, Roz Morris, John Robinson, and Aggie Villanueva, answering important questions:
Can you describe your outlining process?
What is the greatest benefit of outlining?
What is the biggest potential pitfall of outlining?
Do you recommend "pantsing" for certain situations and outlining for others?
What's the most important contributing factor to a successful outline?
MY REVIEW
As a writer the only outlining I do is on my character's back history. I like knowing every little detail about them. What makes them tick, what kind of music they like to listen to, what is their flaw. However, I never did care much for outlining my own projects. That might be one reason they never get finished. With Weiland's book you are taught the best way to outline a novel.
I found this book very useful. I like to just write. I have no outline and just see where the story takes me. Often with this method, I find myself in a writers block. I've been in a block for a few months now, and it's driving me crazy. This book was a great tool as how to still be able to use that 'just writing' method, but also do some intense outlining.
In the next coming days I hope to use some of the advice for my own project and hope that it takes me out of this writers block that I've been in, and help me get back to the project at hand. This book is highly recommend to writers.
No comments:
Post a Comment