Part II: An Outline of How I Outline
Part III: Drafting & The Secrets of Time Management
Part IV: CPs, Beta Readers, & Alpha Readers
Hey, it’s me. Back on this blog shit like it’s my ex.
I genuinely enjoy reading about authors’ writing processes, so I figured I’d do a mini-series of my own. My system is far from perfect, or even consistent, but I’m hoping this will help glean some insight into what it takes for me to write one of these darn book things.
Over the course of the next few months, I’ll be laying out exactly how I brainstorm, outline, draft, and revise my work in excruciating detail. Or, I mean, I’ll try. Let’s see how far we get.
Part I: Turning a Daydream into a Book Idea
I physically cannot tell you how I come up with my initial ideas, because they come from everywhere, all the time. It’s a curse, honestly—I have a backlog of concepts that will take me 86 lifetimes to write.
But if you’re stuck and at a loss for inspiration, consuming other media is your best bet. For fantasy and scifi writers in particular, I recommend absorbing as much non-SFF as you possibly can. (Including non-fiction!)
This might sound counterintuitive, but I find that constantly consuming only SFF has a stifling effect on my creativity. Yes, it’s almost always more fun, and yes, read in your genre, but my brain gets caught in this loop of all right, we’re gonna do this Overdone Trope next because it’s a Typical Fantasy Trope. Maybe this is just because I’m happiest when I’m genre-bending and writing things that are almost impossible to categorize, but I like to draw inspiration from unexpected places. It makes everything feel fresher.
Anyway, once I have that Single Nugget of an idea, my first order of business is trying to flesh out that idea and try to make it work for an entire freakin’ book. What I’m looking for here is a basic hook. I want characters and a conflict I can comfortably write 80k+ words on. I need to go from ‘world where kids are routinely stolen by monsters’ to ‘In a cutthroat world divided by an iron wall, a young woman takes up her blade and follows the monsters that took her brother, only to fall in love with the worst monster of them all.‘ Get some meat on those bones.
Your goal for this stage is to have a short, sweet, one or two line pitch. The details of this pitch will most likely change, and that’s okay—for now, all you’re looking for is a framework, a jumping off point. For me, this is where I find the core of my story, and knowing what the Main Point of the book is from the get-go is miraculous when it comes to writing a strong outline and a tight plot.
This step is also critical because it’s where I decide if an idea is worth pursuing. At this point in my life, I don’t want to spend half a year or more drafting a book only to abruptly realize the idea had no traction from the start. I’ve got shit to do! Know when to jump ship early.
Part II: Vomit Time
A basic one- or two-line pitch is usually enough for me to grease my brain engine enough to start spitballing ideas. This is the Maximum Chaos stage, and I usually just pull up the Notes app and start flinging down thoughts in no particular order. Character concepts, arcs, theme, worldbuilding, plot points—whatever you can think of. It’s 1 AM on a Wednesday and you’re me after college pint night at the local pizza joint. PUKE IT UP! Even if it’s a dumb idea and you know it’s a dumb idea, write it down. Future You is probably smarter.
I’ve found this works best when timed. I like to open up the Notes app/pull out my journal, put in headphones, turn off notifications, and hammer away for an hour or two, with five minute breaks every once in a while. Without the need to be perfect or even coherent, it can be a very freeing exercise! Think of it as taking some vacation time with your brain.
If you’re a sensory person like me, it may also help to seek out audio and visual inspiration to nail down tone, setting, and aesthetics. This is sort of a nebulous process, and depending on the project I’ll do anything from create soundtrack playlists to make moodboards to draw the characters and settings. I usually can’t even begin to figure out a character’s voice and personality until I draw them out, because I love character design and I’m a visual thinker.
If I’m feeling a little stuck, particularly with fantasy worldbuilding, it’s also nice to take some time to do some light research. Of course, your mileage may vary on the amount of research your story legitimately requires—a historical fiction book, for example, would probably warrant a few long months in library archives, whereas a secondary world fantasy can probably get away with a couple of peer-reviewed articles and some intense alone time with Wikipedia. PS: Don’t be afraid to use Wikipedia. When I’m having trouble visualizing the little worldbuilding details or I need something specific, like how to make a sword from scratch, I do a Wikipedia deep dive. The information is accessible and streamlined, which is super helpful for quick, non-critical questions.
Oftentimes, this is also the stage where I’ll jot out a couple thousand words or so, just to get a feel for the tone and style I’m going for, and to see if I’ll have actually fun writing this thing. It’s a miniature pantsing session. Sometimes I scrap the results, and sometimes I don’t. It’s all part of the vomit.
Part III: Cleaning Up
Once I’ve puked up everything that I can, I take what I’ve written down and emotionally prepare myself for the outlining stage. To do this, I’ll organize my vomit into three broad categories: Character, World, and Plot.
Once it’s all loosely categorized, I’ll clean up my notes and translate them into a story bible. This is a handy tool for people who are forgetful, or like to work on multiple Things at once—aka, me. Throughout the entire process of outlining, drafting, and revising, I’ll keep referring back to my bible. It’s probably one of my favorite parts of the process, because yes, like Marie Kondo I love mess. This shouldn’t take more than a day or two, and is an invaluable tool in the long run.
The nice thing about having a pre-prepared story bible template is that you also know exactly what gaps you have to fill in, and which parts of your vomit were entirely unnecessary. I’ve included a downloadable version of the template I use for virtually every book I write, so have at it! It’s just a formatted Word Doc, nothing fancy, and it can be altered as needed.
Well, that’s all for now! Next week I’ll be covering outlining and why I think it’s critical when writing a well-plotted book, so keep an eye out for that. (Or don’t. I’m not your mom.)
xx
lynn d. jung 
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