An amazing, wonderful, perfect thing happened today! I am no longer limping along pretending I know what I’m doing… Okay, right now I’m not writing on Seeing Is Believing at all besides the outline, but I finally got it done :D.
The total outline is: 12,306
The outline with the world building is: 13,830 words.
What this should tell you is that I do 99% of my world building within my outline. The other elements are character names, relationships, descriptions, and anything critical, and the notes I made as I was trying to figure out what went into the outline and where. Other than that, it’s either in the outline or irrelevant… Or in my head in some indefinable form that will be available when I need it and only then (I did start out entirely this way you know :)).
Still, having the outline complete is a real boon for me because now I can see how things intersect rather than just writing blindly and hoping they’ll all come together somehow. I still think there might need to be more fleshing out of the ending, but those scenes should come to me as I write now that I have the proper framework.
And here are the stats since they now actually make some sort of sense:
67 scenes
36 complete – 54% of the novel
31 Scenes remain
42,180 Remaining word count
91,163 Estimated length – with an average of 1,361 words per scene.
48,983 Current Total
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What this should tell you is that I do 99% of my world building within my outline.
Interesting–it usually happens the other way around in my case. My worldbuilding notes usually contain bits and pieces that eventually produce the plot when I join them up together and let them ferment for a while.
Well, I do a lot of that in my head and only start putting it down on paper once it gels, so there’s stages I don’t see. All I know is NO WORLDBUILDING allowed for short stories…or they turn into novels :).
See? I told you it would all come together. But I didn’t expect it to be this fast or this smooth! *big grin* Congratulations!
Smooth???? Fast???? This outline was supposed to be finished before March Madness…and I wouldn’t say it’s smooth. Poor Brian has his world shaken up several times :).
And you were complaining about this…sheesh. Congrats and good luck with the remaining scenes!
Maripat
Yes, preview with spell check is nice. Too bad I don’t use it.
But she wouldn’t be Mar if she weren’t complaining! 😉
Hey, it was hard. Very hard. Weeks and weeks of hard :p. But now it’s over and I can ignore the novel all together in bliss…yeah right :p.
Congrats. That’s great work. Now get cracking on that 42k!
Thanks Erin :). If not for the OTHER comment, I would say you were my supportive commenter ;). And I do have three more chapters to complete for the dare, but I’m lagging on my SAD stories so finding EXTRA writing time is hard.
But, but, but . . . I was supporting your right to be you!