I finally realized I was outlining stories all wrong after 5 years of writing...

So I always did these massive outlines with like 30 bullet points for every chapter. Thought that was the only way to be organized. Then I read this short story by someone in a workshop, and they just had a single sentence for each scene. Tried that on my next project and finished the draft in 3 weeks instead of 6 months. Has anyone else found a simpler outlining method that actually works better than the complicated ones?

2 comments

2 Comments

brookefox9d ago

Wait, what was that single sentence per scene method you tried?

rayy839d ago

Have you ever noticed how most people's first drafts read like a conversation with someone who can't stop rambling? That method basically forced me to cut the fat from every scene. @brookefox, it's like when you're telling a story at work and someone says "get to the point" so you have to pick just the one important detail that actually matters. I tried it on a short story about my neighbor's dog digging under the fence. First pass had three paragraphs about the digging, the barking, the neighbor coming out. One sentence version: "The dog squeezed under the chain-link like it was made of rubber and ran straight for the highway." Everything else got cut because it wasn't pushing the story forward.