Timothy's Thoughts

When I write a book, I work with an outline. I’ve tried to work without one, but I kept getting lost and forgetting what I needed to say and what I had already said. The outline for my current work in progress is shown in the picture above. I use the FreeMind mind mapping tool. On the left I keep little details about the characters. Lizi Mills, for example, has blond hair. Donna Jacobs has black eyes. That’s a fact that I must have mentioned early in the manuscript, but I don’t recall saying that. I’ll see it in the second draft, but keeping that fact handy will help keep me from saying something about her piercing blue eyes. On the right side I structure my outline around Blake Snyder’s beat sheet and it essentially replaces the storyboard that he recommends. My method is constantly changing and out of five manuscripts I haven’t done it exactly the same way twice. I put a word count total next to each section of the outline, rather than a page count. When working with novels, a word