I’ve always been a writer who outlines. I got a lot better at it once I worked in Hollywood and learned how to “break a story”. For an in-depth look at how that works check out my blog post called How I Plot. Point being, I’m a bit of a dinosaur, I like to outline the way I was taught in LaLa Land using either a white board and different colored pens or a cork board 4×6 cards and different colored pens. However, many of the programs I use have added plotting features. Final Draft 12 has this corkboard that is quite user friendly, and the latest update on my Mac now has FreeForm. I’m playing with that now as I try to work out this next big sequence in the novel I’m writing. And Scrivener has this feature as well though I don’t find it as intuitive as the other two.
All of these are very adaptable and have a ton of features, but I sort of liked being able to pace around, hand write out scenes, bit of dialogue. Move cards or erase and move entries. A friend of mine called it “getting mass on a problem”, and there’s a lot to be said for actually utilizing more of your body than just your fingers. But I am really starting to see the appeal of these programs. I can assign a character color to a card and not just the ink I write with. I can link them. move them easily. So all those 4X6 cards I purchased might just be used for errand lists and grocery lists and not for outlining going forward.
Outlines? Index cards? Colored pencils? Could it be that the tools of high school forensics have become a permanent part of your workday toolbox?
Absolutely. If you don’t know where you are going with a story you will inevitably end up in a swamp and then have to back out carefully to search for a different path. I locate all the swamps and dead ends at the outline stage and not when I’m deep into writing a script or a novel. And I use the cards with no lines on them. Makes it easier to scribble notes. 😂
Absolutely. Being able to see at a glance that I’ve lost track of a character because their color has vanished from the board is such a help when I’m plotting. It can tell me that I need more moments for that character, or maybe that I don’t need that character at all.
I read your blog post about “breaking” a story a while ago and adopted the same method for my books. I use an app called Scapple to do the final outline, and then I can drag the boxes with each scene over to Scrivener and they import as scene cards there.
Oh wow, there is another one I didn’t know about Scapple. Who developed that app?
And I’m glad you found my little essay helpful
Scapple is made by Literature and Latte, the same team behind Scrivener.
Then it’s probably really good because Scrivener is brilliant. I write almost everything using Scrivener unless it’s a screenplay. Then I use Final Draft.