A couple of weeks ago, I suggested writing a very high level synopsis of your story—where it begins, where it ends, and a little bit of detail on how your MC gets from point A to point B. Now we’re going to expand upon that, a little or a lot.

How goes the planning? Does your brain hurt after last week? 😅

I should have mentioned that these questions are important for everyone, not just folks planning to start a new novel. If you’re in the middle of drafting or revising, these questions are just as relevant and answering them can help you gain clarity. So don’t skip them just because you’re already in the thick of things.

This takes me back, all the way to 2018, when I had what I was sure was the final iteration of my outline. 🤣🤣🤣 To paraphrase Leslie Knope: Kerry, you beautiful tropical fish.

No one gets it 100% right the first time. Writing a novel is a process, not an event.

What I really had, I know now, was a bunch of plot points. Their only connection was that they tracked the events of my protagonist’s life. There was no real meaning, nothing juicy–just the dreaded ‘and then this happened’. And, friends, I wrote 145K words worth of ‘and this this happened’. Blerg.