THE POSTPRODUCTION OUTLINE:
Keeping Pantsers and Plantsers Alert to What’s Happened
and What Needs to Happen Yet!
If you, like me, are a Pantser with a touch of Plantser in your system, you’ve found there is a point when you aren’t sure what has happened that needs to be fleshed out and then wrapped up at the close of a story.
Sometimes it’s a small thing, but sometimes it’s much larger. Particularly if you’ve given your characters some major personal changes to deal with, or there’s a mystery to solve. Since I don’t outline, don’t even do a free-write synopsis these days (because the story never followed any of it during creation), I have found that sometimes I’m not sure what’s in the story and what I considered putting in it but then didn’t. Thin dividing line at times.
Recently, I tried something different. A Postproduction outline. I created it when I was past the middle part but still a ways to go to hit the conclusion. It told me very briefly what I’d already put my characters through, even comments they made that might come back to bite them, and what sort of questions needed to be taken care of, wrapped up, made astonishing (!) by the final line on the last page.
It worked so well, I wondered why it had taken me so many years and so many manuscripts to realize this guided me into the remaining parts of the story. Now, I’d like to share it with you. Sound interesting?
Presenter’s BIO:
Beth Daniels has had her nose to the story creation keyboard since the late 1970s. She learned her craft through numerous rewrites, some of them starting the story over from scratch, and that’s because the Internet was still decades from being birthed, and the world of online workshops still further into that future. Fortunately, her first novel was picked up for publication in 1990 and she was well practiced through turning out manuscripts (now up to 41, though only 39 published currently) and began presenting online workshops nearly 15 years ago. She’s written under many names and in many genre niches and has found she has absolutely no conversational skills if the topic is anything other than writing genre fiction. Her family either ends up with glazed eyes or tunes her out. So short sighted of them!