How to Write by the Seat of Your Pants: Outline or No?
I
am a seat-of-the-pants writer by nature and inclination. However, after
having written four books, I have found that devising a working outline
of a book prior to starting writing helps me stay on track. I do not
plan out each scene or chapter, but I have found the basic story
structure formula to be a very good guide for keeping a book on track.
The
formula I currently use is the 7-Point Story Structure, which lets you
map out the important, pivotal points in your story, namely the hook,
first plot point, midpoint, second plot point and resolution, as well as
the two pinches where the villains rear their ugly heads. The author
Dan Wells did a great presentation of this formula, and you can watch
that on You Tube, so I won’t go into detail here.
These
days, I basically plan my characters, setting, main conflicts and the
resolution before I start writing. Knowing how a book will end helps me
plan the beginning, and weave in the necessary transformation that needs
to occur in the main characters. It also helps me to stay on track
with the plot, since knowing the ending helps me target everything I
write towards it. That is not to say that my plans don’t sometimes
change, but such is the reality and magic of being a seat of the pants
writer.
With
my latest Progeny of Time YA dystopian series I actually have the first
three books all planned out in terms of their endings, which lets me
write them so much faster. I published the first book in the series, The Grower’s Gift in mid-May, and I plan to have the second book ready and available by the end of July.
The
future is bleak in the year 2102. The planet is in chaos and the
weather patterns have completely shifted, turning most of the world into
an uninhabited wasteland.
The
rich and powerful of North America have pulled back into the six
remaining megacities, erasing all trace of a central government and
leaving millions displaced by the environmental crisis to fend for
themselves in the dying world.
Sixteen-year-old
Maya has a gift, a power she thinks can heal the earth and make it
habitable again. A gift that she must learn to harness. The school for
the gifted in Neo York is the only place where she can learn to control
her power and reach her potential.
Yet
the school is not what it seems. Ran by the ruthless head of the city
of Neo York, the school’s only objective is to extract the powers of the
gifted and then discard them. Only Ty, heir to the city, can keep Maya
from being destroyed there. But Ty has a secret, and his loyalty to his
family has never wavered.
Will his growing love for Maya be strong enough to save them both?
Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre - YA Dystopian
Rating – PG-13
More details about the author
Website www.vannasmythe.com
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