This is the third entry in The Nine Draft Process, which is the method I’ve successfully used to write three novels with a fourth in progress. I’m hoping that sharing this information will benefit other authors as they search for their own way of converting ideas into books.
In these blog entries I’m using my novel, He’s Going to Kill You (HGTKY), as my example. So I highly recommend reading it first because there will probably be some spoilers in these blog entries.
Before we get started, let's reflect on the previous parts:
The primary goal of the Outline Draft is to transform the Conceptual Draft into an outline, but while we do that, we’re also going to start what I call a Book Atlas.
THE BOOK ATLAS
If you’ve never heard of this term before, it’s probably because I made it up. You’ll thank me for this later, because the atlas will provide assistance during the writing process and even assist beyond publishing.
I use Microsoft Excel to create my atlas, using the sheets at the bottom to identify the sections of the atlas. Here’s what you’ll want to track and why:
CORE NOTES: This is the place to collect information that you want to be on your mind the entire time you’re writing the book. I collect theme and audience information in this section. It’s important to keep these targets in mind. So this section is something I often look at each time I sit to write. This is also a good place to note word count goals and any to do items for the novel.
STATISTICS: In this section, I track my word count per each chapter. This is useful top level information about the flow of your novel. You can use this it to target chapters that might be too short or too long. I often write a quick note to the side of each chapter to indicate what happens in it. This section is also great for tracking word count goals.
WORLD BUILDING: Collect the information about places, things, and concepts in your world here. For The Visions of Bezek, this section was massive. For HGTKY, I just had some notes about the town, restaurant, and Lucy’s home. Nothing too fancy, but it still helped me be consistent. If I say the house is yellow once in chapter two, it may have slipped my mind when I’m writing chapter twenty-two a month later. This quick reference information is essential for consistency.
TIMELINE: This section is straightforward. Use it to track to chronological order of events. I even include events that happen before or after the contents of the book. If you like writing non-linear novels like me, this section will save hours of pain and suffering later on.
CHARACTERS: I suspect all authors track their character information somewhere, and that’s what this section is for. If you’ve got a great deal of detail for your characters, you might make this section it’s on file, but I’ve found it’s best to keep things simple and include only essential information here.
PROMO: This is something that often goes missed by authors, and will help if you want to market your book later. Include the best quotes from your book in this section. You can use them later for marketing, on the back of the novel, or just to remind yourself how great your writing is. This certainly beats going back through the book for this information later. Add them here as you identify your favorites.
VOCAB & STYLE: This is a section for collecting specifics of your writing style. Some words have multiple spellings, such as gray and grey or blonde and blond. Consistency is important, and this is where you ensure you don’t mess up. You can quickly reference the information you’ve recorded here.
I include a few extra sections in my Book Atlas because I do art work and bonus content for most of my books. You can include as many additional sections as you’d like.
Here’s my Book Atlas from HGTKY in all of it's unedited, spoilers-full, messy-typo glory:
And here is a blank Book Atlas for you to use:
THE OUTLINE DRAFT
Now let’s talk about the outline. Last time we prepared the Conceptual Draft, and now we’re going to organize that into the flow of our story. My process is to work my way down the Conceptual Draft, line by line, organizing the information into an order of events and connecting some dots between scenes. This might seem difficult at first, but don’t worry about the details too much. The primary goal of the outline is to organize the order of events. Basically, you’re just sorting the Conceptual Draft and dubbing the results “Outline Draft.”
I got very detailed with my Outline Draft for HGTKY, as you’ll see in the example. There’s absolutely no need to get this detailed. Again, you just want to organize the story flow. Here’s my Outline Draft from HGTKY, and please be aware, this is unedited and full of spoilers and typos. Enjoy. Ha.
If you’ve read HGTKY, you’ll notice a lot of content was changed. That’s just part of the process. Either way, you can see the concept is looking like a story. All I did was connect the dots I plotted in the Conceptual Draft. Pretty simple. The more detail you achieve here, the easier the following drafts will be.
And that’s all I’ve got for part two. Next time, we’ll discuss the Flat Draft. I hope this helps, and thanks for reading!
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