An Outline Idea I Think Works

When you’re writing a long-running series, discovery writing a complex world with many aspects and an intensive magic system likely won’t be easy to do.

In this post, I’m going to share a few tricks that might help someone else along their journey.

I’m a discovery writer when it comes to prose and character arcs, but an outliner when it comes to plot beats and the long-spanning nature of a series.

If I were purely discovering all this as I went along (which can be fun), I’d have to take fifteen years to write each novel. George R.R. Martin takes his time and doesn’t deliver The Winds of Winter because he is a discovery writer, and it takes so much more work to get these things out there. I respect that he keeps it all in his head. I wish I were that incredible at this to keep ALL of it in my head.

I keep some of it up there, but it’s difficult to have it all organized that way.

But my biggest piece of advice is to live in the world as though you’re there in the world.

I did this by writing a study by Sonateena Vibratos on the magic system, building out the magic system as an in-universe study and research project. Making the world-building and magic system design a part of the world itself.

Seriously.

Try it this way.

Instead of constructing the world and magic as an out-of-universe document, do it as though you’re studying it in-universe.

If you do it this way, not only will you feel like you’re there in the world, you’ll be able to repurpose your outlines into something that can be placed within the world later down the line if you so choose.

Just something to try out that’s a bit unconventional.

Adding the rest of this article since I had something come up and had to stop.

I cut the study off on purpose to not give too much away, but I think having an outline presented helps understand how this works.

There’s also dialogue here and there to set the tone of the scenes. I bolded the name of a sea in my outline to remind myself it’s the Percussus Sea, since Treblesong sits between it and the Paranova Sea. In the following example, I tell myself to add foreshadowing and clues for later. I also note to add little chibi-art character interactions to keep things a little more lighthearted. Notice there is dialogue here, too, not just exposition and plot.

The essence of it, anyway.

Notice I give myself direction on how the prose should be, but leave room to discover the prose as I go. Flexibility is important, as outlines can be rigid.

Too much more and the plot will be spoiled.

I tell myself as the author to use the world’s unique traits to both build it and captivate the reader.

My outlining is basic, but it tells me what I need to know. Some people might not understand some of my quirks (stars will be music notes in the final product) but it works for me.

The outline isn’t fate, either. If the story needs to diverge, please diverge and follow that rabbit trail.

I hope this helps somebody in organizing thoughts, though you don’t have to do it my way.

I made this outline in Docs because there’s too much Copilot going on with Microsoft, and it’s getting annoying. It’s very long, but the writing will be cake because the hard part is done.

The important thing is to not stop, and finish what you start.